The thing to remember here is that Zenfolio, Flickr and the like are Public Hosts - where as Gallery2 needs to be installed on a server and it is essentially private.
While it is possible for someone to set up Gallery2 and then give out account details so that other people can upload image sthat is not what it was originally developed for and its a poor choice for that unless teh photo site is collaborative.
Its possibly a minor point that I am bringing as so far I get the feeling that those of you posting into this discussion understand this, but new readers might not realise the difference.
So just to clarify. If you own you own domain name, have a hosting plan and have a bit of technical skill and computer knowledge then Gallery 2 is somthing that you could look at.
But it is not easy to set up and get working, permissions have to be set, php pages have to be edited and a lot of customiszation.
Flickr and Zenfolio and other Public Hosts work pretty much as soon as you create an account with them. The problen with Flickr and like site is that you cant customise the look. And they are really just a place to dump and share. Zenfolio certainly looks much better ( at first glance) as being easy to use and custimizable with a range of themes
If I had abit more time ( Hey I am busy publishing some photo books on Blurb
) I would - should do a comparison but then Google probably has something out tehre.
Flickr is free - Zenfolio is Userpay and their fees are reasonable - after all their offering Website Hosting effectively for $40US where you can link your domain name ( if you own one) to them.
I currently use gallery2 on
http://www.davidtasker.com but have planned for sometime now to move to some software that my son Sean has developed. ( This is not an advertisement)
Even with remote upload I still dont do it often enough - in fact its been over a year since I uploaded anything and Gallery2 is awkward to re-arrange things.
As I have my own hosting company I am reluctant to use ( pay someone else) for Zenfolio as obviously I want to use my own hosting space
But what I have seen so far Zenfolio is a pretty good deal at $40US - Oh if only the OZ dollar wasnt so weak we wouldnt even think about it. Just do it.
David T