Where Should You Keep Your Photos?
*Updated February 22, 2024 to add Mylio Photos+
**This post may contain affiliate links and I may earn a small commission if you purchase through the link at no additional cost to you.
There has been a lot of news lately about changes in services that used to want to store your photos. Costco has shut down its photo storage and transferred your photos to Shutterfly; Shutterfly is shutting down its Share Sites and now requires a purchase every 18 months to store your photos. I'm sure others will follow.
Even before these changes I counseled my clients not to keep their primary copy of their photos in a free storage site. Why? Because "free" is never really free.
If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.
Think about why a company might “give” you “free” storage. I’ll just leave it at that…
So where should you keep your photos?
First, let’s keep your photos safe. Back them up.
You should have 3 copies of all of your photos (and important documents), on 2 different media, with 1 off-site. This is key and ensures that if you lose one of your copies, you have another one or two safe and sound.
My favorite whole computer backup solution is Backblaze, because it automatically backs up your entire computer and all attached external drives. Carbonite is similar. Time Machine (Mac only) will backup your Mac, but not external drives. I use both Time Machine and Backblaze, along with a few other processes for specific files. Overkill? I don’t think so - think about how you would feel if you lost all of your photos and videos - these are memories, the stories of your life and your loved ones.
Second, decide: where should you keep your photos?
Some considerations (this is not an exhaustive list, but should get you started):
How large is your library?
Do you want to be able to access your photos from you computer, your phone, all of your devices?
Do you want to own or rent (subscription) your storage?
Do you want the ability to share your photos? All of them or just some? With how many people?
Do you want a place where others can add to a common album?
Do you want to control your privacy settings?
Do you want the ability to make print projects, such as cards and books, directly from your photo library?
Let’s look at some options. I am not addressing all of the above criteria here as that would make for a very long post, but here are some high and lowlights for some of the photos storage solutions I use with my clients. Except for Apple Photos, all of the below options work with both Apple and Android phones, Mac and PC computers.
Amazon Photos (subscription based): you may not know this, but if you have an Amazon Prime subscription, it includes unlimited photo storage.
Pros: you can set Amazon Photos to automatically back up your camera roll with full resolution files. It has built-in artificial intelligence to help you find your photos.
Cons: Any organizing (keywords, captions, facial recognition, etc) added in Amazon do not export out of Amazon, and video storage over 5GB is an additional cost.
Apple Photos (subscription based): if you are all-in with Apple, it doesn’t get much better than Apple Photos.
Pros: it’s built into all of your iDevices, and syncs between them. It has built-in artificial intelligence to help you find your photos. The new shared library is a great way to share all or many of your photos with a spouse or partner instead of constantly texting back and forth.
Cons: just because it’s syncing doesn’t mean you have a backup. If you delete from one it deletes from all because it is a two-way sync. So you need to either export out of Apple or use another service to automatically pull your photos to make your backup. It’s not great for sharing with a lot of people.
Forever (own your storage): promises to keep your photos safe … forever.
Pros: Forever guarantees to keep your photos safe for your lifetime plus 100 years. It has strong privacy controls. Any organizing (keywords, captions, etc.) and photo edits (cropping, etc) will stay with your photo upon export. You can store pdfs and audio files along with photos and videos. You can set up a free 2GB account and use it for as long as you want to check it out or to order photo print projects. Click on the link, go to log in, then “sign up free”. Any captions, descriptions, dates added in Forever can be easily exported out with your photos.
Cons: expensive up front costs for large libraries, and the searching is not as good as some of the other options on this list. It will store and keep your videos safe, but streaming videos is extra.
Google Photos (subscription): you probably already have some photos in Google and might not know it.
Pros: already included and set up on most Android phones. Excellent artificial intelligence for searching.
Cons: it can be difficult to get your photos out at their original quality, and it takes extra steps to extract any organizing you may have done within Google Photos. I don’t generally recommend my clients store their photos in Google for these reasons, but everyone has different wants and needs.
Mylio Photos+ (subscription): access all of your photos from all of your devices without storing them in a third party cloud service.
Pros: can work cross-platform with PC, Android, Mac, and iOS devices. Does not store your media on their cloud server (unless you choose to). Excellent organization and searching, including pdfs.
Cons: it can be complicated to setup and has a bit of a learning curve. See my blog post on why I use Mylio Photos+ here.
SmugMug (subscription): you can essentially create your own beautiful photo website.
Pros: store unlimited photos and videos (up to 20 min long), and it has lots of organizing flexibility. The automatic upload from your camera roll goes into dated folders. Excellent for sharing and easy slide shows for your tv. See an example of my site.
Cons: because it is super flexible, it can be a bit complicated to set up.
Choosing the right access and storage solution for your photos is complicated. And it can be confusing. But it’s important to make the right choice to both have easy access to your photos and to keep them safe. Do you need help deciding which photo option is right for you? Let me help you - I offer a stand-alone in-depth consult that takes your wants and needs into account so I can recommend the right photo storage solution for you. Learn more and sign up here.
Where do you keep your photos? Do you need help figuring it out? Let me know in the comments!