Google Photos allowed users to store their images & videos free of charge. However, the service has changed its face, with due warning, & now only allows 15GB storage across Google’s apps from June 1, 2021. Many people have more (or plan to have more) than 15GB stored on Google so what are the alternatives, if you need them? Here are Google Photos alternates.
Facebook offers free, unlimited uploads of both pictures & videos. Yes, I hear you…you don’t want your data publicly available, you want to “store” your images & videos privately. Well, Facebook offers that option too, all you need to do is set the upload or album of uploads to “me only”. Pretty nifty usage of an “always free, unlimited service”.
iCloud Cloud storage for Apple users
If you own an Apple device, it’s a given that you should use iCloud storage, which is integrated with your device usage & offers a 5GB free tier. ICloud image & video storage frees up your device & costs $0.99/month or the equivalent in most countries for a generous 50GB.
Dropbox originated the idea of Cloud storage for files, images & videos. If you’ve been on the Internet for more than a few years, you’re bound to have a Dropbox account. Dropbox offers 2GB free of charge, but you can store much more than photos & videos on this platform, such as PDFs, zip & ordinary files in a variety of formats. Most developers have a Dropbox account, but then at less than $12/month for 2TB (2,000 GB), per user, it’s still a well priced service.
Amazon offers 5GB Cloud storage free of charge with various other options starting at $1.99/month. The platform has a web interface as well as apps for desktop, iOS, Fire-Tv & Android. For Prime members Amazon offers unlimited free storage for photos & a limit of 5GB for videos. The app has all the features you’d expect to find, such as album naming, photo sharing & a “memories” photo reminder setting.
The platform has apps for iOS, Android Mac, Linux & Windows as well as a Web interface. Therefore, all files on their Cloud storage are available to users on any device. They offer 5GB free of charge & charge around $50/year for 5TB, which is a lot of space at a very affordable price.
Degoo’s free account option offers 100GB Cloud storage for 1 device. Thereafter, they charge $99 per annum for 3 devices & 2TB storage. The service has apps for all devices, which you can download from their website, & offers an instant image & video upload setting so that you can install & forget about backing up your files.
In conclusion: it’s worth noting that Google still offers 15GB free & 100GB for around $2/month with 200GB at $2.99 / month, 2TB at $9.99 / month, & 30TB at $149.99 / month, which is really not too bad considering all other options available on the market.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
