The whole of humanity is on track to take more than a billion photos in 2015. In fact, we take now more pictures than were taken in the entire 20th century…every single day. And photos taken on our smartphones account for the majority of them. People love their photos, and we want to keep and cherish them for a long time. It used to be that you would take photos on an analog camera, get the roll of film developed, and you then have a stack of physical photos that you could store indefinitely.
Now we are in the digital age, however, and the overwhelming majority of our photos are taken with some sort of digital camera. It’s harder to keep track of our photos and organize them how we like. Software and app developers have answered this call by offering cloud-based photo backup and storage services.
Here at StateOfTech, we like our photos a lot (check out our Cameras section!), and we devour every new technology and service that promises to help us keep and organize our photos. That’s why we have created this shootout of some of the best cloud photo storage services available today. We will go over the pros and cons of many aspects of each of these services and their apps, and offer you our picks for the best-of-breed. In this shootout, we will be looking at price, storage, ease of access, organization capabilities, and more. The services we will be looking at are Dropbox, Flickr, Google Photos, iCloud Photos, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, and Shoebox. Read on as we work our way through the breakdown of each of these services.
Pricing
Determining the best pricing between all of the options is a bit of a thorn field: pricing tiers and included features from each service is not at all universal. While some – like Flickr and Shoebox – are dedicated cloud photo services, others are borne from file syncing and backup apps (Dropbox, OneDrive, etc). To figure out which service is the best deal, you first have to determine how you plan to use it.
Some considerations:
- Do you want/need storage space for files in addition to photos?
- Are you taking photos at very high-resolution, and you want to keep them that way?
- Is the user experience important to you? What about video? More ways to organize? Online access?
Here’s a relatively simple breakdown of current prices as of July 2015:
- Amazon Cloud Drive: Free with Amazon Prime account, $12 per year for unlimited photos (including RAW files) plus 5 Gigabytes of video. $60 per year for unlimited files, including photos.
- Flickr: 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) free for photo and video uploads, no paid plans available.
- Dropbox: 2 GB free for all files, $10 per month for 1 TB for all files
- Google Photos: Unlimited free “optimized” photo and video uploads, full-resolution photos are subtracted from your Google Drive available space (tiered plans available for additional Google Drive storage).
- iCloud Photos: 5 GB free for photos, videos, and everything else iCloud, $0.99 per month for 20 GB of iCloud storage, $3.99 for 200 GB, $9.99 for 500 GB, and $19.99 for 1 TB.
- OneDrive: 15 GB free for all files (you get an extra 15 GB if you turn on the “auto backup” setting), $2 per month for 100 GB, $4 per month for 200 GB, and $7 per month for 1 TB.
- Shoebox: Free unlimited “optimized” photo uploads and 15 minutes of video. $5 per month for unlimited full resolution photo uploads and 10 hours of video.
If you want a simple answer for which to pick, either Google Photos or Shoebox is probably the way to go for most users: both provide a free, unlimited tier for photos and both have great all-around user experiences. However, every service in this shootout has its own set of unique features and caveats. Keep reading to find out what option is best for you.
Our Pick: Tie between Google Photos and Shoebox for most people.
Runner Up: Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photos is a great deal for full resolution uploads.
Storage
When discussing photo backup and sync apps, one of the biggest concerns is that of space available to you. After video, photos are one of the biggest drains on storage, and often take a big chunk of the available space on mobile devices. And even though the size and quality of photos taken with smartphones have increased steadily, the amount of available storage has not kept pace with the storage requirements of bigger image files. One of the biggest draws to these cloud photo apps is being able to quickly access your photos without having to store them on your device.
For photos, the best bang for your buck is either Shoebox or Google Photos, if you are ok with potentially lower resolutions: both Shoebox and Google will lower the resolution on your photos. While Shoebox reduces your photos down to 10.6MP (or 3264 pixels on the longest side), Google will downsize your photos to 16 MP but also run them through lossy compression algorithms to reduce their file size. That means you will lose fine details in some of your photos (PetaPixel has a great article looking at Google’s compression). For most people who use their smartphones or a point-and-shoot camera, neither service’s downsampling or compression is cause for an automatic fail.
If full resolution photos are a must (if you are, say, a photographer), you’re in a bit of a sticky place. While that free 1 Terabyte from Flickr sounds good at first, there’s no expanding that space after using it up (Yahoo! – the parent company of Flickr – shut down sign-ups for Flickr Pro several years ago, which included unlimited uploads). If full resolution photos are the only priority, the choice is probably between Shoebox and Amazon Cloud Drive. Amazon’s $11.99 a year for unlimited, full resolution photo storage sounds pretty juicy, but you also have a less user-friendly mobile experience, and no native app for browsing/editing photos on the desktop. Shoebox has a much friendlier user experience all around, but $60 a year is also quite a bit more expensive.
Our pick: Google Photos or Shoebox with their free plans.
Runner Up: Amazon’s Cloud Drive for full-resolution photo backups.
Getting Started
Backing up your photos to the cloud can be split into two main epochs: the crucial first push of uploading all of your existing photos, and everything afterward. That first part can absolutely make or break a cloud backup app, and most of our contestants manage to get it right.
If, like most people, you have many hundreds or thousands of photos, the initial upload will take time. Possibly a long time. Every service here has a desktop uploading app that will work in the background to upload the photos you have on your computer, and shouldn’t slow down your system too bad (most can also be configured to limit bandwidth to prevent your internet connection from slowing to a crawl). The mobile apps are a different story: due to limitations set on app developers, photo uploading in the background is limited, if possible at all. That means in order to upload your phone or tablet’s photos, the app will have to be active (I.e., the device is unlocked and in the app).
One point of relief for this limitation however: every app tested here lets you navigate and use the app so you don’t have tie up your device and stare at a progress bar for (potentially) hours.
iCloud, being fully integrated with every iPhone that’s signed in to the service, provides probably the most seamless experience. Sign into a new iPhone or iPad, the web interface, or the new Photos app for Mac OS X, and all of your iCloud photos will be there.
The speed of both the initial batch and subsequent regular backups are largely dependent on your internet speed and connection quality. These days, cellular data connections are pretty fast (often as fast or faster than public Wi-Fi), but uploading a large number of photos will quickly use a lot of data. Bad news if your mobile plan has a data cap. However, every mobile app tested here has the option to limit or block uploads based on connection type. That means you can disable the apps from uploading while on cellular and eating up any of your mobile data.
Our Pick: iCloud. Despite the exclusivity to Apple, it’s still the most seamless startup experience here.
Runner Up: Six-way tie: every other app has a comparable experience during your initial upload.
User Experience
After the hurdle of the initial backup, the rest is down to the user experience of the service. How we access, view, organize, edit, share, upload new photos and remove photos (and other files) is of the utmost concern, and there are a lot of places where these services can get it wrong.
The primary purpose of photos is looking at them, so being able to access and view them is vitally important for any cloud photo service that wants to carve a spot into our lives and occupy a space on our home screens. Due to the widespread use of mobile devices and all the pictures we take with them, our photos are now stored in more places than ever. When gathering all these photos in one place, getting the experience right is just as important (if not more than) as the pricing and capabilities.
So far, through trial and error and iterative development over time (in some cases many years) have led to some extremely well-executed interfaces and overall experience on most of the services here.
Amazon Cloud Drive
- Mobile App: Android & iOS
- Desktop App: Uploader only
- Web Access: Yes
Amazon’s Cloud Drive app is probably the least polished experience of the apps discussed here. Uploads seemed slower, photos in both the gallery view and individual photos took longer to load, and many navigation and organization options seem less intuitive. Still, if this is the worst app here, we are spoilt for riches, indeed: other than an initial hangup on the iPhone app after first logging in, the Amazon Photo app still performs admirably, with background uploads, decent gallery and photo views, and serviceable methods of organization.
Minor demerits for the lack of a native desktop browser on either Mac or PC, but since the web interface is largely a port of the mobile interface and is just as functional, we don’t knock it too hard. However, no native browser means no offline support.
Dropbox & Carousel
- Mobile App: Android, iOS, & Windows Phone
- Desktop App: Uploader only, essentially.
- Web Access: Yes
Instead of building out a dedicated photo app for mobile, good ol’ Dropbox decided to acquire a company and app called Carousel. While the Dropbox app itself can handle photos fairly robustly, the company knew what it was doing when it picked up Carousel: the app does the basics like uploading and timeline views admirably, and has a lot of useful ways to organize and discover your photos. The Flashback feature highlights photos from months and years past that you might be interested in or haven’t viewed in a while, and it’s a nice feature for discovering your older photos.
Dropbox on the desktop integrates well with your file system (Explorer on Windows, Finder on Mac), which is a great way to deal with files in the cloud. Though for photos, not so much. Luckily for us, Carousel is also on the web, and can be accessed from the Dropbox website.
Flickr
- Mobile App: Android, iOS, & Windows Phone
- Desktop App: Uploader only
- Web Access: Yes
Flickr’s mobile app is likely the most confusing to navigate of the apps we talk about here, but that’s likely due to Flickr not merely being a photo backup service. Flickr has been around for more than a decade as a photo sharing site and community built around photography. The app does just fine for navigating your photos in addition to seeing the timeline of people you follow on the site, taking photos and video through the app, and searching Flickr’s library of more than 6 billion photos.
While a desktop app for batch uploading is available, Flickr remains a service meant to be used primarily on the web.
Google Photos
- Mobile App: Android & iOS
- Desktop App: Uploader only
- Web Access: Yes
Google Photos was announced to much fanfare at Google’s developer conference in May this year, touting features like unlimited photo and video uploads, and the ability to search for things inside images for things like “dog” or “cars”. The app is one of the better ones here, with Google’s expertise at mobile app experiences on display. Thumbnails load faster than seems like should be possible, even when scrolling through thousands of photos. Selecting photos individually, by folder, or by swiping across a series or group of photos is very quick as well, which makes batch operations much easier. In addition to looking at photos in chronological order, Google Photos will create “collections” of your photos, grouping sets of photos that Google determines should be together according to time, location, or appearance. The Assistant feature is similar, but more interesting. Google Photos will try and create GIFs, slideshow videos, and stories based on your photos. Overall, Google Photos is really fun to use, both on the mobile apps, and on the web. Though the amount of information Google is able to glean from your photos borders on creepy, the benefits (currently) outweigh the drawbacks.
As with every service so far, Google Photos lacks a native client for the desktop, eliminating the possibility of offline access from your computer.
iCloud
- Mobile App: iPhone only
- Desktop App: Yes, Mac only
- Web Access: Yes
iCloud Photos is a bit of a black sheep in this heard of cloud photo apps since the service is exclusive to Apple products, most notably the iPhone. The drawback being that iCloud is essentially a non-starter to Android users. iCloud is the most integrated and ubiquitous cloud photo service here, since it’s built into practically every iOS device. As of iOS version 8.4, photos in the Photos app on the iPhone are also on iCloud, and new photos are automatically uploaded.
Although only available on the Mac, there is also a desktop app – conveniently also named Photos. Recently released as a replacement for iPhoto, the app is lightning fast even with libraries of thousands of photos, has an interface that perfectly matches the OS X, and seamlessly integrates both the photos on iCloud and on your computer.
OneDrive Photos
- Mobile App: Android, iOS, & Windows Phone
- Desktop App: Uploader only
- Web Access: Yes
Microsoft’s OneDrive is the most file-centric app in this list, and unlike Dropbox, it does not have a dedicated photo viewing app. The OneDrive app does an admirable job dishing up your photos to you, though. The app utilizes interfaces that fully match whatever device you are using the app on (Material design for Android devices, the flat iOS aesthetic on iPhones, and the “metro” look for Windows Phones), and includes support for photo albums and tags.
Similar to Dropbox, OneDrive on the desktop amounts to a folder that is synced with the service. Photos on the OneDrive website is serviceable enough for most needs, however.
Shoebox
- Mobile App: Android & iOS
- Desktop App: Yes
- Web Access: Yes
Shoebox is beautiful, the end. No, not really, but having been conceived and designed from the beginning as a cloud photo app, Shoebox does practically everything right. While the app has the usual timeline of all your photos in chronological order, Shoebox instead gives precedence to the Explore view that groups your photos by event, according to time, day, or place the photo was taken. The regular timeline can also be organized to view all the photos together chronologically, or grouped by month or year. Shoebox even has a nifty “this day in history” type feature that occasionally highlights photos from months or years past. Shoebox does all these things using an impeccable, beautiful interface with zero lag on either the iPhone or Android versions during our tests.
I’m also happy to report that Shoebox also has a desktop client for both Mac and Windows computers for both viewing and uploading your photos. As you can expect, the desktop app is beautiful and just as functional as the mobile apps. As an added cherry on top of the cake, your photos on Shoebox can also be accessed from their website. That makes Shoebox the most ubiquitous and easy to access service in this shootout.
Our Pick: Shoebox gets our nod for the best looking app, easiest to navigate, and most cross-platform.
Runner Up: Google Photos, for a very functional interface that fits in with Google’s Material Design aesthetic.
Stand-Out Features
Our focus in this shootout so far has been about how well these apps accomplish their main goal: backup, storage, and viewing of photos. Not all of these apps are built the same, however, and some services include features that the others might not have. These features could be a deciding factor when it comes to choosing an app to trust your photos with. Let’s have a look at some of the biggest differentiating features from the apps and services in our shootout:
Search in Google Photos
Google became, well, Google by being really great at search, and they’ve only gotten better at it over the years. Google brings their expertise in search to Google Photos via advanced image recognition. Text-based search queries now go beyond info about the photo (e.g., meta data such as date, geographic location, and camera info), and finds things inside the photo. You can now search for things like ‘car’, and Google Photos will find images both of cars, and photos taken inside of cars. And of course there is facial recognition as well. While searching for things inside photos is not flawless, it’s more than we have ever been able to do before.
iCloud’s Integration
Despite iCloud’s limitations (namely it’s lock-in on the Apple ecosystem), the simple fact is that you never need to think about iCloud backing up your photos safely on the cloud, as it’s baked right into the iOS software. No app to download, no extra signup (beyond your initial iTunes account when setting up the device).
Shoebox is Everywhere You Are
Shoebox is the app that is on more platforms than any other in our shootout, and that ubiquity of access is vital. Shoebox is also one of the very few with a dedicated viewing app for desktop, and it’s the only one here with a Windows app. And for those on platforms that almost nobody supports (ahem, Windows Phone), there is full access to your photos at their website.
Flickr’s Got People
While every service here aims to be a silo for your photos, Flickr began life as a social network based on photos, and now boasts a mature, active community. This experience is at the core of Flickr’s offering so that you not only get to enjoy your own photos, but also the photos of those you follow on Flickr (don’t worry, your photos are private until you post them publicly).
The Final Word
Although we have provided our picks for the apps that do best for certain criteria, this article was not written to tell you which cloud photo app is the best. The one that’s best for you is based on how you plan to use it, what you’re willing to pay, and the features that matter most to you.
This article might not have been necessary, or even possible, just a couple years ago: apps that are able to safely back up all of your photos from all of your devices in one place is easier and cheaper than ever before. There really is not much to complain about with any of these apps, and the fact that two of them even offer a free level for unlimited photo backups is a fact that might have sounded completely preposterous not too long ago. We hope you have found this article informative and that it has helped you determine the best cloud photo app for you.
For the TL;DR, we put together a table for you with a breakdown of features included in each app:
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