I know you said you aren't interested in mobile stuff, assuming meaning Tapatalk, but I would definitely look into that before paying for a smug mug account. When I first started using Tapatalk a few years ago, it kinda sucked compared to how it functions today. So back then, I would surf hardline via laptop at home or desktop at work, then if I wanted to post a pic, I would type on pc then go back and use Tapatalk just to post the pic. Now Tapatalk functions pretty damn good, the photo uploader is much more simple than before and is easy to learn. If you spend most of your time on here via home pc but still have a smartphone, it would be worth downloading Tapatalk to share photos straight from your phone, then you can go about uploading them in photobucket, instagram, facebook or whatever to save them. Now if you are uploading and needing to host photos taken via digital camera, that's different....but if you are taking the photos you want to share with your smartphone, I can't think of an easier way to share pictures than via Tapatalk.
The photobucket app for smartphone sucks pretty bad too, but suffices 10x better than the website for creating albums. Just open up app, create/select folder, and upload photos straight from phone all at one time. I do that to save my pictures, then use Tapatalk if I want to upload any here.
I think I paid a one time fee of maybe $3 for the Tapatalk Pro app.
Anyways, good luck to you. Photobucket has awesome potential, they have just drowned their pages with ads and such to the point of running everybody off, sadly.