In today’s age of smartphone and digital cameras, sharing photos is something many of us do almost every day—capturing precious moments and saving visual memories as much and as often as we like. No more sending away for processing and waiting only to discover they were out of focus or someone was blinking. 

There are even a multitude of easy-to-use editing and AI tools available to enhance your digital gems and make them more fun to share with friends and family—all at an ever-increasing resolution that would have made grandma’s wrinkles blush.

In fact, it’s tempting to say the sky’s the limit on how many digital photos we can take with our devices, but is it? While it’s easier than ever before to share our photos with family members, post them on social media platforms, and choose only the ones we want to print out, storing photos and videos can present a number of headaches—especially when it comes to security, photo management, and pricing. 

What is Google Photos? 

Among the plethora of cloud-based photo storage solutions available today, Google Photos is a photo storage service developed by Google and launched in May 2015. It’s part of Google’s suite of services and shares its 15 gigabytes of free storage space with those other account-based services. 

Although not available in all countries due to privacy issues, Google Photos uses machine learning to automatically analyze all the photos you upload. It then sorts them into categories: people, places, and things to make search easier and can recognize faces, landmarks, and topics, such as food, birthdays, and so on.

Today, more than 28 billion photos and videos are uploaded to Google Photos every week, but as you might expect, many people have privacy concerns due to the facial recognition technology and Google’s government relationships, and critics point to issues such as original photo data missing and original quality not available for download. For instance, free unlimited storage is no longer available for high-quality photos uploaded due to increasing demands for storage.

What to look for in a Google Photos alternative 

Photos and videos are not just data in a computer or ink on a piece of paper, but treasured guardians of memories, moments, and things in life that meant something. They may be deeply personal, inspirational, or artistic, but whatever they mean, losing them can be a heartbreaking experience. 

If you’re a professional photographer, losing your photos can mean losing your livelihood or at the very least, your reputation. And even if you’re simply an amateur, taking a long-haul, professional approach to photo storage can save you a lot of upset.

That’s why if you’re looking for an alternative to Google Photos, it’s important to consider the following:

• If you use a memory card in your camera, how often should you upload your photos to avoid a full card, and how easy is it to transfer to a cloud storage solution. Many devices now allow you to upload over BlueTooth or WiFi, saving time and effort.

• If you’re considering using external hard drives for your photos, you might want to think again. External hard drives can be fragile and susceptible to theft, spills, viruses, and physical damage. 

• Cloud storage services are simple to use, don’t need cables, and photos can be accessed from any device. However, most don’t offer unlimited free storage without some kind of caveat, so it’s important to shop around and find the right plan that suits your storage needs best.

• Other alternatives to Google Photos include burning CDs and DVDs or sending them to your email server. However, both of these solutions are clunky, time-consuming, and CDs and DVDs are also prone to scratches and other damage that can destroy the data on them.

What is the best alternative to Google Photos? 

If you’re looking for a dependable alternative to Google Photos from a company that understands the value and importance of every photo you capture, Kinscape offers a sound balance of versatility, affordability, security, and privacy. 

We’re not going to run your photos through the latest AI and machine learning technologies for facial recognition or anything else. Privacy and safety are at the very foundation of every feature and capability, and Kinscape gives you 100% control over who sees what and when, and how your photos and videos are organized.

Kinscape offers a number of benefits together with features that make photo sorting, storing, and sharing easy, including:

• Your own private vault: Kinscape provides a private Vault where you can safely store your photos for safe keeping or for sharing. Boxes in the Vault serve as folders, so you can organize your pictures and videos in the way that suits you best.

• All your photos remain accessible at all times, but safe and private, until you’re ready to share.

• Communities for sharing photos and videos: Kinscape lets you create Communities for sharing your photos and videos, or you can just keep them safely stored there for your own peace of mind. Communities can be as small or as large as you like, and you can have as many as you like—keeping them all distinct so you only share what you choose with who you choose—family, friends, club members, work colleagues, and so on.

• Upload and store other digital content together: Kinscape gives you the option to upload other precious digital items, such as PDFs and voice files that you can build into a Story and share with your Communities or simply store in your Vault.

• 100% control of your data: In Kinscape you share if, when, how, to whom, and where you choose. Your photos and videos belong solely to you and our platform is here to serve you rather than your data serving us.

• Access from desktop and mobile without losing features: The Kinscape experience can be enjoyed on your mobile device or on your laptop or computer. The experience is the same—no different and confusing views or limited features. Kinscape is easy to use and quick to access, and you don’t have to learn multiple apps to access, upload, or download your photos.

Free Google Photos alternative

While Kinscape offers the basic cloud-based photo-storage features you’d expect from this kind of social media platform, it also provides other networking features that help people stay connected, share precious moments with loved ones, and keep memories and treasured moments safe. 

Our basic plan is free and offers you a chance to experience and explore the Kinscape social media platform and its useful features, including:

• Ad-free social networking
• No targeting or newsfeed manipulation
• Members have 100% ownership and control of data
• Quick mobile and desktop access
• Easy-to-create communities and groups of specific contacts
• Private chat function
• Collaboration tools for storytelling and information sharing
• Safe, private, photo, video, voice, and document storage

Rather than simply offering photo storage as yet another competitor with similar limitations, we designed Kinscape to be a new and exciting kind of subscription-based social media network. Not only is privacy and data security at the heart of everything about Kinscape, but we took the kinds of features people were already enjoying and improved them.
If you’re looking for more photo storage without compromising on photo quality, original data, and privacy concerns, Kinscape offers additional tiers of our subscription pricing plan to suit your needs.