Just a few personal thoughts after reading this thread, since I am in the process of changing my web site
www.Johngibbel.com from Flash to HTML5. I did most of the work on my previous website with a little coding help from a freelancer, but now want to move to a simpler way to update to html5. The notes below are my own personal thoughts. I would rather have my web site on my own server, since I already have 2 other sites running on it.
www.aPhotoFolio.com $17.00 per month + $1000 setup fee or $34.00 per month no set up fee’s. I like the look and feel, setup fee is way to high and monthly is a little high.
www.SquareSpace.com - $16.00 per month, sample site does not resize to screen, cutting off part of window. Template Site html5
www.Photoshelter.com - $29.99 per month. Each page you have to click to go to gallery, then click again on a image to view gallery instead of going directly to the gallery image. Template Site html5
www.livebooks.com - $19.00 per month or $199 year. Sample on site is different then the real photographers website? I don’t like the sample page- powered by live books on the website. The photographer's real site does not have that link. I am also not sure if you can rename portfolio 1, portfolio 2, portfolio 3 to custom names. Livebooks use to have a good name but since the ownership change they have lots of negative reviews.
http://www.zenfolio.com $140.00 per year, Template site HTML5 & Flash
Similar look to other sites.
Dislike most of the templates, you have to click through to gallery then click again to see gallery of images then click image to view full size images.
http://www.artstorefronts.com Looks more like photography retail then portfolio site
http://format.com $20.75 per month. I did not like having a link for the host on the page. Sample was very slow to load images. I also viewed a few sites using format and did not like having to look around on how to scroll images. I then noticed you have to use the scroll bar on the bottom to slide images.