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If you take a lot of pictures, you probably have image and video files dispersed across various storage devices, phones, and computers. The best online photo storage services give you a place to consolidate all your files. You can install their apps on your mobile devices and computers to automatically upload your disparate images to the same online location. Online photo storage services also provide backup for your photos should your computer crash or phone get stolen. Some include bonus features, too, like image editing and effects.
Some of of the best online photo storage services can detect objects in your photos, making it a snap to find, for example, all your pictures of dogs, a particular person, or the beach. Some have tools that help you clean up your photo collection. The best online photo storage services also make it easy to share your photography, and in some cases they either have or tie in with photo social networking apps. They typically come with a little free cloud storage, but for a collection of any size, expect to pay at least a few dollars a month.
With that in mind, these are the best places you can store and easily access all your photo memories.
Recommended by Our Editors
Best for Serious Amateur Photographers
Pros have long used Adobe Lightroom Classic, but the app’s younger sibling Lightroom (sans Classic) appeals more to amateur photographers. It does so by evolving the older software to the online and mobile worlds. It shines for automatically uploading photos you choose to the cloud and syncing any edits you make. The Lightroom interface has a simpler and slicker design than Classic but includes nearly all of Adobe’s advanced editing tools. However, it lacks support for plug-ins and tethered shooting.
Lightroom has loads of help and tutorials, as well as social features, including Share to Community, which lets others edit your photos. Users can share their step-by-step editing processes as well. You can also share photos so that only people you approve can edit them, or simply get a link to share an online-hosted view of the photo.
Lightroom’s search function lets you look for things and people that the program’s AI has detected. You can also filter your search based on camera, lens, or settings. The software supports raw camera files and now can output to new HDR formats like AVIF and JXL. Lightroom costs $9.99 per month for 1TB of online storage; there’s no free account, but you can get a seven-day trial.
Best for iPhone Users
Using iCloud to store your photos makes a lot of sense if you use all Apple devices. It reliably uploads all photos shot on an iPhone to the cloud and gives editing access to them on the Photos app on Macs. And it isn’t exclusively for people who use Macs either—there’s an iCloud app for Windows 11, where it integrates with Microsoft Photos.
iCloud Photos automatically curates so-called Memories—event- and date-based albums it thinks you want to revisit. You can easily share photos and albums with web links, and you can filter by iPhone-specific photo types such as Portrait and Live Photos. The web interface, however, is lacking compared with most other online photo storage services. For example, you can’t search for photos, and you don’t get online editing tools.
To store more than 5GB of photos you need to pay, and prices are on par with other services. You get 50GB of iCloud+ for 99 cents per month, 200GB for $2.99, 2TB for $9.99, and 6TB for $29.99. If you have a free account and use up all 5GB, you get constant nags to upgrade, but I’ve found that after canceling my subscription, any old photos that I uploaded while I was paying are still accessible.
Best for Photo Sharing Community
Though it may seem like a blast from the past, Flickr is still going strong, especially since its acquisition by pro photo storage service SmugMug. It’s the best service for people who want to be part of a photography community.
Flickr is loaded with features that let you organize and share your photo collection. You don’t have to make your photos public when uploading to Flickr, and as with most services here, it can automatically upload any photos shot on your smartphone or added to a folder on your computer. Unlike Instagram, Flickr is all about photos—not memes, selfies, or political ads. It does, however, let you scroll a feed of photographers, groups, and topics that you’ve chosen to follow. Also, unlike Instagram, Flickr lets you view full-size images, and if the photographer allows it, even download them.
You can join interest groups, such as bird photography, where you can submit your photos for more views, and people can like or comment on your pictures and even send you direct messages. A longtime favorite feature in Flickr is Explore, where you might have your photo highlighted as one of the top-liked images on the site.
You get 1,000 photo uploads for free, but to store a collection of any size, you need a Pro account. Pro gives you unlimited online photo storage at full resolution; no banner ads; the ability to upload NSFW images; more account traffic stats; priority support; photo sale links; and discounts on book printing, SmugMug, Phlearn, and other photo services. Pro costs $72.99 per year or $132.99 for two years. There’s also a $9.49-per-month option, but that doesn’t make much sense if the idea is to store your photo collection over the long term.
Best for Auto Effects and AI Search
When I’m searching for a photo of a person, place, or animal, Google Photos and Adobe Lightroom give me the most reliable tools. Google’s AI photo identification lets you find photos of dogs, cows, beaches, portraits, and more. It organizes your photo collection by date and includes impressive editing and photo-effect tools. But you only get some of its best effects if you use a Google One paid account. Google One subscriptions cost $19.99 per year (which works out to $1.66 per month) for 100GB or $9.99 a month for a generous 2TB. If you stick with the free account, you get a generous 15GB of space.
Google Photos can store and display raw camera file formats, but for other photos, you choose whether you want full resolution or Storage Saver format, a slightly reduced quality version (most people won’t notice the difference). As with most of the best online photo storage services, you can set up Google Photo to automatically upload any photos shot on your smartphone or added to a folder on your desktop computer.
Among its unique, distinguishing features, Google Photos finds pictures of things you may want to remember from years past, or photos related to a theme, and shows them at the top in the Memories section. Other services do that too, but Google Photos also does Creations—making collages, panoramas, and animations out of multiple shots.
Best for Windows and Office Users
Most people probably don’t think of Microsoft OneDrive as an online photo storage service, but it is and even has photo editing capabilities, down to sliders for highlights, shadows, color saturation, and effect filters. It lets you find images based on objects or people in them and automatically applies editable keyword tags. OneDrive shows a small map for photos that include location metadata (most smartphone photos do), and as with Google Photos and Apple iCloud Photos, it shows you highlights from past years, lets you build albums, and sort by image type.
Google Photos and OneDrive are better choices than Apple iCloud Photo if you need online photo editing or the ability to search for particular photos on the web interface, though iCloud’s integration in iOS could make it a preferable option for some iPhone users. OneDrive integrates with the Windows File Explorer and the Microsoft Photos app included with Windows, but clients that automatically upload photos to the cloud are available for Android, iOS, and macOS, too. Free users get 5GB storage; a $19.99-per-year Microsoft 365 Basic account gets you 100GB; and for $69.99 per year, you get 1TB of storage along with the desktop Microsoft Office apps.
Best for Privately Storing Photos on Your Own Devices
Unlike the other best online photo storage services, Mylio is a photo organization and syncing application that doesn’t require you to upload your pictures to its servers. The base (and free) Mylio Photos product works on only one device at a time with no syncing, but Mylio Photos+ ($99 per year or $179 for two years) syncs up all the devices you install it on. So for example, if a photo is on your phone, you can download it to the desktop Mylio app without the need for central servers from the company; the photos stay on your devices. This configuration is good for your privacy since you’re not putting your photos up on a big company’s servers.
The Plus version also adds a DeDupe tool, automatic local backups, shared albums, and a SpaceSaver feature that lets you fit more photos on devices with limited storage. Mylio lets you import your social media photos, though it’s also intended to work with scans of printed photos or negatives, letting you edit them and apply people and place information.
The free and Plus versions let you do non-destructive photo editing, meaning the original images are preserved. You also get organizing tools like face recognition, ratings, and color coding. Mylio intakes and organizes photos impressively quickly, giving you a map view and fast search. It works with raw camera files as well as most other common image formats. A Mylio photo collection can be divided into Spaces, for things like Family, Work, Private, and Guest. Mylio’s busy interface isn’t as slick as those of Google Photos and Lightroom. But if you don’t want to have to store your photos on a company’s servers and need lots of organization tools, Mylio is worth a look.
Best for Pro Photographers
SmugMug is one of the best online storage services for professional photographers. It lets you store photos online with all your metadata, as well as present your portfolios, sell photos, and advertise your services. Subscribers get unlimited photo storage at full resolution, even for raw camera files, though raw support comes with an extra charge (starting at $3 per month for 500MB).
SmugMug also gives you custom portfolio templates to showcase your work. You can add your logo and social media links to your portfolio page. Separate private galleries let you share photos from jobs, such as wedding shoots. SmugMug displays and lets you search by full EXIF metadata, and you can add titles, captions, and keywords to image pages, but there’s no AI-based auto-keyword tagging. You can, however, add watermarks to your pictures, control whether they appear in web searches, and limit the download size. If you allow it, you can see a small map for photos’ geodata like that recorded by smartphones and cameras with GPS.
Like most of the best online photo storage services, SmugMug has mobile and desktop apps, as well as plug-ins that work with Adobe Lightroom Classic and Capture One.
Subscription prices are steeper than most online photo storage services, though you can get a 15-day free trial. The base plan for personal use is called Power, and it costs $15 per month or $120 per year. The Portfolio account ($31 per month or $246 per year) lets you sell prints and digital downloads, and use watermark and theft protection tools. The highest-level account, Pro, costs $45 per month or $384 per year, and it adds several more selling tools such as custom price lists for photos and galleries, marketing coupons, and client favoriting and customer download limits.
(Credit: René Ramos/Shutterstock/Diego Thomazini)
Do More With Your Photos
Now that you know where to keep your pictures safely, you may be interested in the best software for editing photos. And be sure to read our guide to taking better smartphone photos. For more advanced info, read 10 beyond-basic digital photography tips.
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