So which the Best Photo Storage Apps to store your photos & videos?
It wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone if you said that the best camera you have is your iPhone. It’s easy to take amazing photos and it’s convenient because it’s always with you. But, How do you back up all the photos and videos you’re taking? And what if you accidentally lose your phone? You can save yourself a lot of headaches in the future by saving a copy of your library to a cloud-based photo storage app.
Best Photo Storage Apps
This article reviews the top three photo storage services (Amazon Photos, Google Photos and iCloud) and shares everything you need to know to help you decide which service is best for you.
Amazon Photos vs Google Photos vs iCloud: The Price
Even comparing the pricing options of the top three photo storage services can be confusing because they all offer something different. For example, Amazon bases its pricing on an annual fee, while Google and iCloud will charge you every month. Each of them also offers a free tier with different benefits and limitations. But if you want to upgrade to more storage, here’s a breakdown of each service:
Amazon Photos
- 100GB for $19.99/year
- 1TB for $59.99/year
Google Photos
- 100GB for $1.99/month
- 200GB for $2.99/month
- 2TB for $9.99/month
iCloud
- 50GB for $0.99/month
- 200GB for $2.99/month
- 2TB for $9.99/month
How much cloud storage do I get for free?
As we mentioned earlier, each service offers a free tier with different features. Here’s a comparison of what you can expect from these free options before you have to upgrade and start paying for storage.
Amazon Photos
To say that Amazon Photos has a free service is a bit misleading. They offer free and unlimited photo storage, but only for Amazon Prime customers. And that’s just for the photos. You only get 5 GB to store your videos for free. To back up more videos, you’ll need to upgrade your storage.
If you want to use Amazon Photos without being a Prime member, there is no free option. You will need to subscribe to one of their paid storage tiers.
Google Photos
The good news about Google Photos is that you get unlimited photo and video storage for free. Yes, you read that right: free, unlimited storage for your photo library. However, the problem is that you can only save compressed versions of your images and videos.
If file compression isn’t a big deal for you, then Google Photos is a bargain. But if you want to save your photo library in the highest quality, you can upload 15GB for free before having to upgrade to a paid storage option.
iCloud
Of these three services, iCloud is probably the easiest when it comes to pricing. The free tier gives you 5GB of storage, but not without issues. That 5 GB of storage is shared with everything else in iCloud.
If your iPhone is connected to an iCloud account, it means you are splitting that 5GB of free storage between your photos, notes, text messages, contacts and the iPhone backup file. As you can imagine, that 5GB doesn’t add up to much when you factor in all of those things.
Is Amazon Photos, Google Photos, or iCloud more convenient?
There is a lot to consider when comparing these services, especially when trying to determine which service will be the most convenient for you. For example, if you’re using an iPhone, then iCloud, from the start, is the most native because many iOS features depend on having an iCloud account. But here’s a closer look at how these services hold up when pitted against each other.
Amazon Photos vs Google Photos
If you’re just looking for free online photo storage, these two are definitely the ones you want to explore. The immediate downside to either of these is that they both require a second application. So while you’re taking photos with the Camera app, everything you capture ends up in the Photos app first.
Fortunately, both services allow you to automatically upload your images as you take them on your phone. This is great if you’re using it to back up your photo library. But if you want to free up some space on your device, Google Photos gives you an easy “Free Up Space” button that will delete the pictures from your phone after uploading.
It’s features like this that give Google Photos a slight edge over Amazon Photos. That said, if you’re already an Amazon Prime member and want to save your pictures at the highest quality, Amazon Photos might make a little more sense for you.
iCloud vs. Google Photos
Deciding between these two services is not so easy, as they offer many of the same features. The great thing about Google Photos is that it is platform independent, which means it works on Android devices just as well as it works on iOS. That means you never have to worry about your photo library because it lives in Google Photos and can be downloaded on almost any type of device.
That said, the fact that iCloud be native only for iOS it’s a good thing and makes it more convenient to use than Google Photos. All you have to do is turn on iCloud Photos and everything in your Photos app will be synced to the cloud. That is all. There is no second app you have to use to manage your photo library. You don’t have to worry about remembering to free up space. Everything works with iCloud and the Photos app as it should, without any extra effort on your part.
Amazon Photos vs. iCloud
Amazon Photos offers many features similar to iCloud and Google Photos. Features like facial recognition, organizing photos by location, and even automatically creating memories from your images. And if you’re just looking for a backup for all your photos, then you can’t beat the free, unlimited storage that Amazon Photos offers to Prime members.
Where Amazon Photos might not work for you is if you have a lot of videos you want to back up or if you’re not a Prime member yet. There is also the inherent benefit of iCloud being part of iOS.; it’s not an additional app you need to worry about, like with Amazon Photos.
So which is the best photo storage apps, all things considered?
Taking everything into account, the best photo storage option is iCloud. Because all of its features are native to your iPhone, iCloud is the most convenient option and will be the easiest to use in the long run. Especially if you’re trying to keep multiple devices, like a phone, computer, and tablet, in sync.
What is the best free photo storage app?
If you’re looking for nothing but the best free option, you can’t go wrong with Google’s unlimited photo storage. While it slightly compresses your images and videos, it doesn’t compress them as much. In fact, the quality loss is so minimal that you’ll probably have to look at the photos side by side to notice any degradation.
Whether you want to back up your photo library or just trying to free up space on your phone, there are great cloud-based storage options. If you’re not entirely sure what to look for when you sign up, it might seem a bit confusing at first. Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the differences and determine which photo storage app will work best for you when choosing between Amazon Photos, Google Photos, and iCloud.
