Google Photos is changing on June 1, so is it better to stick or switch your snap backup?
Unlimited image storage for absolutely nothing: Google’s photo backup deal was quite the steal. It’s little wonder that the promise of limitless free capacity quickly caught the attention of serial snappers. Provided you were happy to accept a cap on quality – which, at 16MP, was hardly extreme – the search giant would safely stash copies of all your precious snaps online. Alas, all good things must come to an end – including generous complimentary cloud storage allowances. Unless you’re the proud owner of a Pixel handset, unlimited space for ‘high quality’ images will end on 1 June 2021. Any ‘high quality’ shots uploaded to Google Photos after that date will count towards your free 15GB account limit. Already uploaded your entire library? Don’t panic: any snaps backed up before 1 June 2021 will not count towards the total. But you’ll still face a problem if you’re close to the limit. Hit 15GB with future uploads of any quality and you’ll have to make a choice: create space by deleting superfluous shots or pay to upgrade your account capacity. If the new rules will have you reaching for your wallet, it might be time to ask whether you should stick with Google Photos or quit the service in favor of an alternative photo backup service. Which is exactly the question we’ll explore below. Let’s get one thing straight: 15GB of complimentary cloud photo storage is a fantastic offer. Sure, it’s not the same as unlimited capacity, but 15GB is still more than any other mainstream provider currently promises for free: OneDrive, iCloud and Amazon Photos all offer just 5GB of storage. So if you’re looking for the most generous image backup solution, Google Photos remains the top choice if you don’t want to spend a dime. Even if your shooting habits mean you do need to expand your account capacity, the cheapest Google One subscription tier compares favorably to the upgrade fees of rival backup providers. For the sum of $1.99 / £1.59 / AU$2.49 per month, you’ll get 100GB of storage capacity across all Google products, including Google Drive. That’s a good chunk of space at a pocket-money price. And that’s for image files of any quality, including uncompressed originals. By comparison, Apple’s iCloud backup offers a broadly equivalent 50GB for $0.99 / £0.79 / AU$1.49 or 200GB for $2.99 / £2.49 / AU$4.49. It’s a similar situation for higher capacities. The 2TB Google One plan will set you back $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$12.49 per month. That’s slightly more than the equivalent iCloud plan, but less than or comparable to most other cloud photo backup options on a monthly basis. There is cheaper cloud storage out there, but not with the same smart features and cross-platform accessibility offered by Google Photos. In short, if your image library is already stored on Google Photos – and it’s less than 2TB in size – you’ll struggle to find cheaper expansion options than the ones offered by Google. More to the point, any marginal saving is unlikely to justify the significant time, effort and bandwidth that will probably be involved in downloading and transferring all of your uploaded shots to an alternative backup provider – unless they’re supported by Google’s Takeout service (which iCloud and Amazon Photos are not). That all changes if your library is bigger. Above 2TB, the next Google One tier is 10TB, which carries a significant cost increase. And that’s where Amazon Photos enters the equation. For the single monthly fee of US$12.99 / £7.99, an Amazon Prime subscription bags you free fast delivery and access to Amazon’s library of video content.
