Google Photos is the perfect service for storing images across your device. However, Google Drive and Gmail only offer 15GB of storage for free. Google Photos offered unlimited storage for images for free, but that’s not the case.
If you’re looking for a better photo storage plan, various features, or if you want to move away from Google’s ecosystem, here are a few options.
Free Storage: 1,000 Photos
Storage services typically provide storage with limited size. However, Flickr takes a different approach. People can store 1,000 images and videos for free. One of the advantages of Flickr is that it allows you to upload images up to 200MB in size, compared to the 75MB limit of Google Photos in the free plan. Flickr’s paid plans start at $10.44 per month for unlimited storage.
If you want to see features beyond your personal usage, Flickr allows you to publish your photos so that others can find them. You can also join groups based on a variety of topics.
Free storage: 5GB
Dropbox is not a photo-centric storage service, but if you are trying to store more than photos in the cloud, that can be an advantage. The company paid the plan starting at $9.99 a month for 2TB of storage, similar to Google One’s premium plan.
Free storage: 5GB
ENTE was created by a former Google Engineer as a more private alternative to Google Photos. The service has end-to-end encryption protection for your photos. This means that the company does not collect data. The app is available across platforms and includes the ability to identify and annotate people. View photos from various locations. Create categories such as sunsets, memes, documents, and more. All of this is handled by the device.
ENTE’s monthly plans start at $2.49 per month with 50GB of storage. This can be shared with the other five. Since ENTE’s core code is open source, you can also modify it so that it can change the self-hosted version.
Free storage: 100MB
Cryptee is another photo storage service focused on privacy. It’s also open source. You can create an account using your username and password (there is an option to use an email and password as well). The free tier doesn’t offer much storage, but the paid tier starts at $3.30 a month with 10GB of storage. The service works through progressive web apps on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux, and uses AES256 encryption to protect your media.
Apart from being a photo storage service, it also includes a document editor that supports Markdown, Code, and Katex Math. Additionally, you can use views alongside documents, save and edit files as PDFs and DOCX, and use elements such as tables and checkboxes.
Free storage: 5GB with Prime membership
This is a great perk for Amazon Prime members. You can pack some additional images in the free tier of Amazon photos. Additionally, if necessary, 100GB storage plans start at $1.99 per month.
Free storage: 21 high resolution photos uploaded per week
500px is aimed at enthusiasts and professional photographers. There are community features to highlight your work and ways to showcase snaps in an uncompressed format. The plan costs under $50 a year and offers a discount that allows you to store unlimited high-resolution photos. The Premium Plan removes ads from the platform and also provides insight into how photos are working on the platform. Priced below $100 a year, the High-Rise Pro plan offers the tools to build a portfolio with custom domains.
Free Storage: No free storage
Although they don’t offer free tiers, Photobucket offers one of the lowest storage rates, costing $5 a month for 1TB of storage. If you pay for the plan each year, the price will be lower. Photobucket offers a $8/month group bucket plan for 1TB storage and an ideal way to share photos with different groups. This also gives you access to the editing tools.