Photo Organizing Software Spotlight: FOREVER®
**This is NOT a sponsored post but does contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission if you purchase through the link. There is no additional cost to you but it does give my small business a tiny boost! I am a FOREVER® Ambassador because I believe this software is the perfect fit for many photo organizing needs.
There are a lot of different photo organizing softwares out there, and I have tested and used many of them. In a prior blog I outlined my requirements for my own photo organizing software, you can read that full list here. That list has not changed. To recap, I want:
accessibility
searchability
organizational tools
ability to share
easy backup
basic and complex photo editing tools
future proof
privacy
There is still no one software that hits all of these points to my satisfaction; I’m pretty sure I’m looking for a unicorn. When I work with clients I assess each one of these factors and more with them, determine which is most important - something they often don’t know until we work through it - then help them choose the best software for their particular needs. My top go-tos are Apple Photos, FOREVER®, Mylio Photos, and SmugMug.
Full disclosure: I use Mylio for my entire personal collection, but I also have a smaller legacy collection housed in FOREVER®, and for many clients, FOREVER® is the solution we choose. I have mentioned FOREVER® before here on the blog, but it just recently (September 2024) had a huge refresh adding features that I think were long overdue, and making it more attractive for a broader swath of people.
What is FOREVER®?
FOREVER® is a web-based photo storage platform that allows you to store, organize, and preserve your memories by purchasing permanent storage guaranteed for your lifetime plus 100 years. It is accessible from anywhere you have an internet connection, and has some great sharing features for family and legacy collections. Like other photo organizing software you can review your media chronologically, organize your photos into albums, add tags, add facial recognition, and search. FOREVER® also provides digitizing and video conversion services, genealogy research help, and the ability to create print projects right from your account. Today I’m focusing on the storage and organizational aspects.
Unlike many other photo storage platforms FOREVER®’s model is to purchase storage up front for a fixed fee - no subscriptions for storage (there are subscription fees for some features as I’ll discuss below). When you purchase storage and upload your media, FOREVER® promises to keep your media safe for your lifetime plus 100 years, and to migrate it to newer formats as needed. You can try out the platform before purchasing storage; FOREVER® will give you a 2GB free account to test drive all of it’s features (minus the guarantee - you need to purchase storage for that).
A note about the FOREVER® Guarantee Fund
You may be wondering, how can they promise to hold your media for 100+ years? What if they go out of business, change their business model, or unexpectedly add surcharges? Of course they anticipate this question and have the answers in a fair amount of detail on their website.
Screenshot from https://www.forever.com/guarantee, taken on September 27, 2024. You can download their investment policy and more details from the website.
FOREVER® Pros and Cons
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of FOREVER. Remember - there is no one software that is best for everyone. You need to think about what you want to do with your photos, what you need, and what your top priorities are. Then see how those match up with the different photo storage softwares. Generally I suggest looking at your top three “musts” and finding the solution that does those top three the best.
FOREVER®: Pros
These are the reasons I like FOREVER®:
Web-based, so accessible from anywhere
Easy to use: it takes very little reading, research, training, whatever to get up and running. The platform is clean and straightforward, and generally just “works”. Even technologically challenged people can use it with just a little help.
Works on Macs, PCs, iPhones, Androids and tablets, and has an app for the TV that works through an Amazon Firestick.
Easy sharing for families and groups. You can decide who sees what, and have as many groups as you want. For example, Group A has access to photos from one side of the family, Group B has access to photos from the other side of the family, and both A and B have access to photos of your kids. This is very easy to set up and the possibilities are endless, all that is required is that the people you are sharing with have a FOREVER® account - it can be the free one. This is a privacy feature that helps control who can and cannot see your photos. You can also share with anyone with just a link or QR code.
Gallery privacy settings.
You can set up a gallery that allows others to upload to it, so great for gathering photos from an event. At a family reunion? Set up a gallery and allow everyone at the reunion to add their photos so that they are all in one place. As with group sharing above, anyone who wants to upload will need a FOREVER® account.
You can add long descriptions to your photos and these are searchable. See this cool trick to more easily add the descriptions. You can also add shorter tags.
Create print projects right from your account, no need to download then upload to somewhere else.
Multi-tag searching. I’ve been waiting for this forever (see what I did there?) and it’s finally available. Now you can search in combination - for example if I want to find photos of both my kids together, I can finally do that.
Facial recognition - both the fact that FOREVER now has it (this is new as of September 2024) and the fact that it is fully contained within your account are pros. FOREVER does not train its AI on your photos.
No subscription fees for basic storage, so if you want to create a legacy collection to pass on to another family member they won’t need to pay for it.
FOREVER®: Cons
This all sounds great, but there are cons to the FOREVER® software that should also be considered:
Web-based, so cannot be used off-line
Expensive for large libraries. As of September 2024, 500GB is $3,499.00, 1TB is $5,999.999. It is nice to not have subscription fees, but for large collections it would take many many years to reach $6k for a TB. Google and Apple are currently about $120/year for 2TB (twice as much space!) so it would take 50 years to reach the $6k and 92 years to reach the 2TB storage plan. Mylio is currently $120/year for unlimited (although you store on your own drives at an additional cost of roughly $100 for a 1TB drive - and adding cloud storage is extra but I would argue that you should have your entire collection on at least one external drive no matter what platform you use), and SmugMug is $246/year for unlimited space. I think the sweet spot for FOREVER® is collections of 25-100GB. That is still a lot of of photos and videos and probably enough for most people - if not for an entire collection it would likely be enough storage space for a pared down legacy collection.
Backing up your library onto a hard drive is not automatic and requires either a lot of time or an additional expense to use a separate FOREVER® Valet software. I am a big believer in having a complete copy of your library in-hand as a backup; this would be a manual process with FOREVER® or an additional expense. Note that the Valet software is currently $59.99/year, so not terrible, especially if you do a backup on day 1 and day 364 and pay for it once every 2 years 😉.
Some features that are included in most other platforms require an add-on monthly or yearly subscription. These include facial recognition and video streaming. With videos you can store them on the platform as part of your purchased storage, but to play them you either need to download them every time or purchase the streaming service. Note that you can subscribe to facial recognition for a year, tag your backlog of photos, then cancel the subscription😉. But new photos will not be automatically added to your “people”.
Currently no map view or searchable GPS data (I hope this is in development)
No AI searching other than facial recognition. If you want to find all your photos of your dog, you need to individually tag them instead of doing a search for “dog”. Most other photo storage platforms have AI searching making it much easier to find your photos (Amazon, Apple, Google, Mylio and others).
Who should consider FOREVER®?
Take a look at my criteria at the beginning of this post, and think of your top three “must haves” in a photo storage software solution. Does FOREVER® satisfy your top three? Then you should consider it.
If you have a small to medium size legacy collection that you want to preserve and share with other family members, you should consider FOREVER®. Of all the platforms that I use, I think the FOREVER® sharing features are the best both in ease and functionality.
Want to give FOREVER® a try?
You can create a free 2GB FOREVER® account to check it out. The free account does not come with the guarantee, but does allow you to put quite a few photos onto the platform to test out most of the features. You have nothing to lose, so why not take FOREVER® for a test spin?