I recently upgraded my google one subscription from free to the 100GB version for a couple of dollars a month. I realised after a year that I’ve nearly filled the 100GB limit, and was looking at the next tier up.
If I continue on this trajectory, I’ll be paying a fair amount for space at some point in the near future. It’s bloody convenient as opposed to chucking all my photos on an external drive, but damn I realise that at some point I’ll be paying so much to keep my photos in the cloud.
What are you guys all doing with google one at the moment and what are your thoughts?
EDIT: thanks so much for all the great info and resources guys!
The “buy a NAS” suggestions are economical and give you a lot of control, but I pay for Google storage because of the search and categorization features in Photos. A family member scanned three generations of photos, and I have them uploaded to my Google Photos account. I’m able to search any family member by name and get photos from infancy to old age. Plus being able to search by subject, like “pancakes” or “waterfront” is a big plus too.
I know I can get the storage other ways, but the features are what hooked me.
I have my phone, the wife’s, both my kids and another family member on mine and not hit 100gb yet. But I do the Google Rewards so I essentially don’t pay for it. When I get close to the limit I’m hoping the tiers will be adjusted with more storage for the price. If not it’ll be time to either pay up, or download it all, clear it and back it up elsewhere (might set up a mirror storage at my brother’s or mother’s home).
Just delete the photos and videos you don’t need and reduce the quality to 16MP (it’s more than enough). My gf takes tons of videos and photos, and 90% are basically the same thing, just she took 50 photos to get one that is good. But 49 throwaway photos get also backed up.
My wife and I each have a 2tb plan. It’s like $10 a month each, and worth every penny. It’ll be years before we need to worry about cloud storage space. We use it to back up all photos, and we use a LOT of Google Docs. Also there’s no shortage of space for emails.
If it’s just photos I think Amazon Prime is your best bet. You get unlimited photo storage with Prime. If you have a lot of video you’ll probably have to buy additional storage. As far as paid storage you probably won’t find anything cheaper than Google, Microsoft, Amazon. Cloud service providers like Backblaze are going to cost you more.
I’m in the same boat OP, babies amirite? I sure do wish there was an easy method to download a zip of all the albums/shared albums for cold storage, but I haven’t found it yet.
Was purchased under duress moving from Pixel 1 through to the P7P. I’ve always managed the 17GB cap well that I had, and well. If I didn’t upgrade to Google One then the stop all of the services if you exceed by 1 byte.
I use Microsoft as it comes with office and 1tb storage. I see much more value in that than google.
I do however have nest displays with slideshows of Google photos. So one day I’ll need to pony up for Microsoft and Google storage to cover my non tech savvy parents that take lots of videos…
I have a Nas too, but there is laziness on my side and also not wanting to deal with fan noise in my small room.
It gives me peace of mind. I have the 2 terabyte plan. I use the Smart Photo editing features weekly. I use the VPN daily. And the price is only about 10 bucks. And on top of that, I got $100 back when I got my P8P because of 10% back in the Google Store.
Just in general I wish there was a wider selection of features, like extra type stuff. I’m not sure what it would be though. Maybe like better customer service for paying customers. Or the ability to do more customization with your phone or Google Applications like Gmail (Being able to mute notifications from specific senders) More features from Assistant, a discount on YouTube premium. Things like that.
Seriously annoying to get the “almost out of space” warning on a 2TB plan when I’m at 76% usage. The remaining space will last me years and now I get a notification in every app.
I have a 2TB Google One subscription, a Synology NAS, and a co-located Cohesity cluster that I back my Synology NAS up to. Needless to say, I don’t want to risk losing any photos!
Er… I’ve got Google One because I thought it would be handy to have the VPN, I know it’s very rudimentary but it costs peanuts and it’s better than nothing. But I’ve got 200gb of storage and I’m currently using… 2%.
To say I’m not really a picture taker I would feel was an understatement.
Set autosync on phone taking pictures to upload to Google Drive when phone is charging and on wifi, delete photo(s) on phone after upload. Set autosync on Pixel 1 to download from Google Drive every hour, delete photos in Google Drive after download. Set auto backup on Google Photos on Pixel 1. Everything is automated, just gotta free up space on the Pixel 1 every once in a while.
I’ve used this for the past 3 years or so, I take a shit-ton of photos, and my photo storage on Google Drive is 0.
