This fills a need, I'd say. I currently use a service (smugmug) that does this sort of thing and love the way the everpix interface looks. My primary complaint of most of these sites is speed, so this is worth a look.

I've never understood the aversion to paying for cloud backups. Even with a mirrored NAS and some (probably no longer readable) DVDs I feel like I could easily lose photos. These services are so much easier/cheaper in the long run.