Amazon Prime Photos
amazon.com
amazon.com
- Box: $180/year for unlimited (https://www.box.com/pricing/)
- Google: $120/year for 1TB (https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?hl=en)
- Dropbox: $100/year for 1TB (https://www.dropbox.com/pro)
- Amazon: $60/year for unlimited (https://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/landing/everything/)
- Microsoft: $60/year for 1TB (https://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-office-36...)
They all offer approximately the same service, but from cheapest to priciest is almost 3x. I wonder how much sand is left in the hourglass for companies like Box & Dropbox? Also, how much longer will Google keep their price at $120/year for 1TB when Amazon is half that for unlimited storage? Also, does your average Joe even care when you get 15GB for free from Google?
Even the providers that are selling N terabytes for $Q are counting on a certain percentage of those users not utilizing that much. This is why the prices vary so wildly, because each provider is doing different math and hedging different bets.
More specifically, they each have their own unique business model which they believe will perform best in the market. You can "oversell" future storage successfully if you know the usage growth rates.
Also "offer approximately the same service" is a bit off. Amazon doesn't have any kind of SLA for Cloud Drive and while Box, Microsoft and Google provide SLAs. In addition, while the older competitors provide essentially a full office suite and a bunch of features like OCR, Amazon provides nothing but a very basic web interface that allows you to see previews.
Also the business plans are theoretically limited to 1TB per users for organizations with less than 5 users. I'm not sure if that's still the case since I seem to have actual unlimited (2TB use now) with a single user organization.
https://www.dropbox.com/business/pricing
(nb: used to work there)
All of these have different retrieval rules and rates, so it's not just the annual.
And it doesn't have Glacier-like restrictions, at least in terms of retrieval delay. Nor does Backblaze. The difference with Backblaze is that it's only replicated within a single datacenter. If anything happens to that DC you're out of luck.
With these patterns, you can make a system that puts everything on S3 at first, makes thumbnails and starts moving most things to glacier based on access patterns.
Unfortunately, no such system yet exists and the complexities of dealing with many people's libraries (particularly regarding RAW files) make it more difficult than it seems (I've looked at doing this myself in the past).
I am pretty sure cloud drive is available outside the US.
So no desktop sync, only manual uploads and downloads.
However, there are 3rd-party options for this:
• Arq: https://www.arqbackup.com/
• odrive: https://www.odrive.com/amazon
• Synology Cloud Sync: http://www.macdrifter.com/2015/06/synology-cloud-sync-adds-a...
Not sure what you mean there, but for me, 15G is plenty (but then, it's mostly just going to email storage).
So I guess both try to attract pro users with low cost.
I'm ok with that for things I don't care too much about losing, but my photos are precious to me, so I'll keep them with a company whose main business is not losing my stuff. Dropbox has one job, and so far they have consistently acted like they know it.
http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/cloud-storage/amazon-pr...
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9662414/microsoft-reduces-...
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/19/bitcasa-infinite-cloud-st...
The sad thing is apparently they're partnered with larger companies like Samsung, Intel and Huawei, so their product is being spread to people who likely don't know any better.
Every single time I click "check out" and in several other places I get these Prime popovers or full page ads with a very small "No thanks" or "Cancel" link. There are now even normal non-Amazon products that are sold only to Prime members. Is this how Amazon.com cares about loyal 15+ year consumers?
I DO NOT WANT PRIME, GOT IT? Not now, not tomorrow, not next months, never. Why should I pay a premium membership for a virtual shopping center?!? Are there any "Prime"-nag-screen blocker browser plugins?...
After months of this, I said yes just to get it to shut up, which meant that any attempt to listen to my music would it involve displaying lots of things that they could give me for free, none of which I wanted. Eventually I just stopped using the Amazon Music app.
It amazes me how much large company product design becomes about what companies want the users to do, with so little attention paid to what users actually want. I already had to uninstall the Amazon app and block notifications from the Kindle app because they insisted on chirpily notifying me of exciting special offers. By which they meant their various attempts to get me to buy crap I don't want.
The movies, photo storage, tv shows, music etc. are just icing on the cake.
I got several downvotes for my comment, but in the end more upvotes.
Btw. shipping is free for my check outs too. Maybe I just don't want and need their streaming services? Maybe I already use something that fits my needs? Maybe I live in an area where they tested Prime and therefor made the delivery time worse (from 2 days to 4-5 days)?
Ask yourself: would you like to pay a membership fee for Walmart/etc and for shopping centers? Nevertheless, Amazon.com is first and foremost an digital shopping center. It's my right as a customer to say "no thanks", and Amazon should acknowledge my decision.
- It's FREE for Prime Members
- It's $11.99 a year for non-prime members
The other caveat is that it's unlimited for photos, but only 5gig of video.
If this is how they treat they $10-20k per year customers, I'm sure no one will think twice about threatening and shutting down others' accounts (there are plenty of stories all over the Internet about this if you'd like to search). I'm almost sure this is an automated email, of course, but that doesn't change things one bit, as their human representative who responded to my email wasn't much more helpful and tried to downplay the original email without assuring me that this was a mistake and that they would not shut down my account for extremely normal activity. There's absolutely nothing abnormal about any of the returns I had then or at any other time in the past. A lot of their merchandise is just pure shite.
--- ---
Hello,
We have noticed that you have returned a large number of your orders. While we expect occasional problems with orders, such large numbers of returns can suggest that customers are unaware of our return policies.
We want to call your attention to our returns policies because repeated misuse can result in the closure of your Amazon account. To learn more about our policies, search “About Our Returns Policies” in the Help section of Amazon.com.
If there is something we can do to help solve any recurring problems you are having with your orders, please reply to this email to reach an Account Specialist.
Sincerely,
Account Specialist
On a side note, I was led to believe your shutdown threat revolved around using Amazon's Cloud Drive in an unintended way.
$1/month for image hosting is dirt cheap though if you can do public url access to images.
3.3 Our Use of Your Files to Provide the Service. We may use, access, and retain Your Files in order to provide the Service to you and enforce the terms of the Agreement, and you give us all permissions we need to do so. These permissions include, for example, the rights to copy Your Files for backup purposes, modify Your Files to enable access in different formats, use information about Your Files to organize them on your behalf, and access Your Files to provide technical support. Amazon respects your privacy and Your Files are subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice located at www.amazon.com/privacy.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?ie=UTF...
1.2 Using Your Files with the Service. You may use the Service only to store, retrieve, manage, and access Your Files for personal, non-commercial purposes using the features and functionality we make available. You may not use the Service to store, transfer or distribute content of or on behalf of third parties, to operate your own file storage application or service, to operate a photography business or other commercial service, or to resell any part of the Service. You are solely responsible for Your Files and for complying with all applicable copyright and other laws, including import and export control laws and regulations, and with the terms of any licenses or agreements to which you are bound. You must ensure that Your Files are free from any malware, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, worms, or other malicious or harmful code.
1.3 Sharing Your Files. The Service may provide features that allow you to share Your Files with others. You may only share Your Files in which you have all necessary copyright and other rights. If you share a file, anyone with access to that file may view and download copies of the file. You are solely responsible for how you share Your Files and who may access Your Files that you share. You may not share files (a) that contain defamatory, threatening, abusive, pornographic, or otherwise objectionable material, (b) that advocate bigotry, hatred, or illegal discrimination, or (c) if sharing those files violates any law, any intellectual property, publicity, privacy, or other right of others, or any license or other agreement by which you are bound.
IMHO, Dropbox got this right. Simple to install, simple to configure, simple to use. Apple's solution is a confusing mess of Family members, devices, Apple iCloud accounts, etc. Every time I share something with my wife's iPad I have to physically touch it to make sure I did it correctly and it is syncing like it should. sigh
Getting this from, go into your Amazon Cloud Drive, then click Manage Storage on the right side.
Two plans listed, Unlimited Photos and Unlimited Everything.
Edit: looks like it is 11.99 for non-prime members. Also the unlimited everything option looks pretty cool. Really trumps dropbox and google drive.
Ideally you wouldn't have to keep them all on your local drive, only the ones you're working with. I know S3 would be a fit, but I'm thinking something equally cheap, but with a nicer web interface specific to photography and similar affordable pricing.
2 formats
1 offsite
Local computer has photos you're working with currently, move RAW + JPG to a Synology when you're done, set up a job to sync the synology with Amazon Photos.
This covers my photos and videos on OSX.
I saw in another comment that backblaze is only one datacenter.
If Amazon included video even if it was only 1 TB I would dump backblaze.
I may still use the prime photos for my iphone as apple cannot backup the amount of photos I take to their cloud.
Transferring them to the iMac for backblaze is a pain.
If Prime Photos had a print service where we could do Christmas cards etc that would be even cooler.
[0]https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/backblaze/id628638330?mt=8
This makes it superior to Google Photos for backup in my opinion. Amazon provides free (with Prime) backup with no limits, RAW support and no recompression. Google Photos provides it for free but with lossy compression and without the possibility of retaining the range of RAW.
on the other hand I hope they support client-side encryption so someone can only view the pictures after they're decrypted
Although the intent with Steganography is (weak) cryptography, the method should work for your purposes; only way to know is to test it! Admittedly until you've tested this thoroughly, I would not RELY on this for anything other than a fun test. Enjoy! :-)
For that, it may actually be better than flickr in that it apparently supports the major raw file formats including DNG.
However, it doesn't seem to be designed for any sort of photo sharing (although you can access photos remotely yourself).
Bottom line is that, if you're just using flickr for backup then, yes, something like this is probably a better match. On the other hand, if you use flickr as a photo sharing site and the backup is at least partially incidental, then I'd probably stay with flickr and maybe use both.
I have a flickr Pro subscription but I don't really view it as a backup system although having an additional set of (JPEG) backups of my favorite photos is a nice side benefit.