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. But most shutterbugs will get along just fine with 100 gigabytes for $20 per year with Google Drive. If you’re looking for a mountain of storage, Dropbox will grant you 2 terabytes’ worth for $120 per year. And they often shrink the size of your image files, which can be a problem if you later want to have those images printed, edited, or displayed on a tablet or TV screen.Įven plans billed as unlimited may shrink image size, so be sure to ask for clarification on that before moving your entire photo library onto the cloud.įor the casual, social photo sharer whose snapshots won’t make it further than the occasional Instagram or Twitter post, downscaling isn’t that big of a problem.īut 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.īeing able to save all your images in the original size is what makes the paid options appealing-especially if you’re serious about photography. Some services may allow you to store photos but not video or other files. As the chart below shows, most services limit the amount of storage available at no cost.
Free sounds great, but you have to be prepared to make a few compromises.
