Anything has to be worth a try. I'm not anti paying host. I'm anti any host that compromises the security of my machne by forcing me to disable basic protections in order to view pages. All image hosts use pop up and banner advertising. It's how they monetize their service and we have to accept it because it's the deal we make for free image hosting. Not all of them do so with such complete disregard for the end user. That Chrissy Teigan post was not a joke. Two full galleries and not one bloody image would open while my anti malware and firewall were running. A few weeks ago the attachments to a single Kaley Cuoco image were so numerous they behaved like an e-mail bomb and my computer actally hung. I waste HOURS sandboxing a browser to check posts on imagetwit because I have no idea what malware is embedded in those popups and popunders, and I'm sick to the back teeth with it. I never had a problem with infections till i started moderating and now my computer is like the crotch of a 50 yr old Navy swab based in south east Asia. It's ridiculous.
Wasn't familiar with pixroute so I found them, ** DEAD LINK REMOVED ** and image then opened it.No issues or problems. Why not try them for a few weeks and see how things work out?
This post on the Digital Point forum discusses paid hosts at length
https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/legit-and-highest-paying-image-hosting.2635053/
and there are many other suggestions here you might wish to look at.
Also, while I take your point about traffic levels, please do bear in mind that most of what is posted currently is low end social media shit, and we are dumping at least 40% of what is posted. Increased forum traffic, yes, but its not quality and much of it is scams. Post a picture. Wait a day. Post another from the same set with "Add" as a prefix. Or blow it up a little and prefix it with "bigger" and so on and so on ad nauseum. Or just sling up any old crap from celebrty and gossip rags irrespective of what it is or what it shows.
This remains my favourite example of imagetwist posting and what profit motive encourages people to post in search of volume
It is also the main reason I came up with the idea of working on consensus of opinion judgements among moderators, because, frankly, this is a set of images of a bushpig in a hazmat suit and IMO should not have been approved. But there you go. Subjective decision making at work in the absence of a consensus of standrds.
Being forced to scale back protections to view this pigswill is just rubbing salt into the wound.
BOC
We prohibited all paying image hosts for 6 months during 2013. New celebrity image posts sharply decreased as did forum visitors; this is the only reason Imagetwist has been allowed. I know Imagetwist posters can be too aggressive. I know the host is not great. I wish we could manage without allowing a paid image host; sadly, we can not.
Pixroute is another paying image host allowed at our other forums. We could substitute Pixroute for Imagetwist for a while and monitor the results.
