Free sounds great, but you have to be prepared to make a few compromises. Most services limit the amount of storage available at no cost.
Some services may allow you to store photos but not video or other files. And they often shrink the size of your image files, which can be a problem if you want to have those images printed, edited, or displayed on a tablet or TV screen at a later time.
Even plans billed as unlimited may shrink the image size, so be sure to ask for clarification on that before moving your entire photo library onto the cloud.
For the casual social photo sharer, whose snapshots won’t make it further than the occasional Instagram or Twitter post, down scaling isn’t that big of a problem.
But if you want to print gallery-sized images or store pictures captured with a powerful, dedicated camera, look for services that offer a large storage allotment and won’t lower your image quality.
Being able to save all your images in the original size is what makes the paid options appealing—especially if you’re serious about photography.
If you’re looking for a mountain of storage, Dropbox will grant you 2 terabytes worth for $120 per year. But most shutterbugs will get along just fine with 100 gigabytes for $20 per year with Google Drive.
Once you have a sense of which plans suit your storage needs and budget, consider the devices you own, how you’d like to access your images, and what you intend to do with them.
For instance, Amazon offers 100GB for $20 per year. Apple’s iCloud offers 50GB for $12 per year or 200GB for $36 per year. If you own a Mac Book, an iPad, or an iPhone, you may prefer to remain within the Apple ecosystem for access to apps such as Pages and Sheets. The same holds true for fans of the Microsoft and Google ecosystems. In the end, paying a bit of a premium might be worth it to keep things simple.
If you need help with routinely backing up your work, consider a service that does that for you. All the apps we looked at, except for Nikon’s Image Space service, support automatic backup, but Dropbox requires a paid subscription to unlock this feature.
Stay tuned for the next blog, where we fully evaluate each service, and how much photo storage space each one offers, free of charge.