It's a cloud much more than a dedicated photo backup solution. So, depending you specific needs it may not fit the bill (it does, for my limited needs).
What makes it great imho is that it's based in Germany and uses zero-knowledge E2EE. It's also available for Mac, Linux, Windows and mobile. And it has either sub-based plans or lifetime ones (BTW, right now they're on sale).
(if you want to know a little more why I picked up Filen and not the others available, feel free to check my blog, link in my profile)
Edit: it can be used as backup tool too, not just as a simple cloud, there is a setting for that.
They have a lifetime account promotion going on now, worth getting?
They have a lifetime account promotion going on now, worth getting?
Depends how you look at it.
What I can tell is that I already had their smaller lifetime and waited for that promo to get a larger one.
That plan is worth a little over 3 years sub... As a comparison, the previous cloud service I used (iCloud) I have been using it for a long time... since it was introduced (was it called MobileMe already, or was there another name before that? Can't recall). So, provided Filen does not go bankrupt, I worry not I will get my money worth after those 3 years. Seriously, though, Keep in mind that Filen is a very small and very young company and, unlike Apple, there is possibility the company won't last.
It's a risk I'm willing to take as it really was the closest to what I would call my 'perfect' cloud. Not quite there yet, but close enough for me to use it and closer than any other including Proton Drive, which I'm already paying for (I use their Mail+ plan, which comes with some cloud storage)
Also, note that you can get up to 50GB free storage: 1) by creating your user account using an affiliate link (you may want to check my blog, to use mine) you will get 20GB free instead of the base 10. 2) you then share your own affiliate link to get up to 30GB extra more free. That free storage is then added to whatever plan you decide to purchase and/or to subscribe to, if any. Also, all plans are stackable.
Edit: by all means, take some time to test their free account (there is no real restriction beside storage) so you can see by yourself how well Filen meets your expectations. My needs are really... simple.
ENTE!! Everything you store is e2e encrypted, their software is foss and you can share files easily, they even have a mid free plan. I've been using them for some time and they offer a great service.
It's https://www.ente.io
My referal code is SVZWEU, you can use it if you want to get an extra 10 gb for the both of us, free of charge, when signing up to a paid plan.
You don't have to use it, but thx if you do!
Immich. Kinda like Google photos but on your own system.
I use Synthing to sync b/w my phone and my system.
iCloud since I’ve been all in on the Apple ecosystem since … 2004ish (Tiger was a great OS).
Pros:
- Super fast
- Doesn’t need to backup system files
- No limit to # of devices, only storage size
- Reliable
- Restore process is arguably the easiest out of any solution
- Priced fairly (despite people complaining, yeah their free tier is useless)
Cons:
- Only backs up Apple devices.
- Relies on connection speed alone, no shipped hard drive option
If I had to pick a platform agnostic one it’d be Backblaze.
Pros:
- Solid
- Light on resources
- Fairly priced (last I checked) and unlimited is reasonable
- Can do shipped hard drive restores if needed.
Cons:
- Limited backup controls
- Must provide key to decrypt on restore
- Restore process sucks
self hosting is an option!
I have a 4 bay Synology, so let's say I'm an infant self-hoster. It's running Synology Hybrid Raid, which can protect against a single drive failure. Even if the whole thing goes belly up, I should (painfully) be able to recover my data.
...Unless I have a fire or some other catastrophic event happen. Is there a good strategy to mitigate these risks? I am an officer 365 subscriber (yeah yeah), so the truly important stuff on the NAS, like culled photos, are also on OneDrive.
I use Synology Drive to backup to my NAS at home.
Does it come with an android app?
Yep!
google photos with lower quality just as an offsite, also a local backup on a NAS
Ente.
iDrive is working out well for me.
I've been playing with idrive, and it looked pretty solid, and have great prices, but... They don't have a drive client (only backup) for Linux and they state they WONT have one, meaning that to get that functionality I would have to spend time configuring rclone. Having to jump through hoops to use a paid service is a no-go in my book.
I am using it with MacOS. I actually don’t use the drive system. I just use it to backup data because Apple’s iCloud Drive serves all my needs.
I can say that the few times I have had to restore data it was fast and reliable
I don’t really differentiate photos from other types of files.
I use restic to back up to Wasabi.
Edit: I'm actually considering changing this setup.
I'm thinking of using Wasabi as backend storage to hold my encrypted files using rclone compatible encryption. Use rclone on your desktop and then something like S3 Drive on mobile which can access rclone encrypted files.
S3 Drive has a nice photo auto-upload feature. I've only played with it on iOS which, as I understand it, is quite a bit less feature-full as compared to the Android version. Stuff like this might actually have me switching back to Android, TBH.
None, I live life on the edge. I don't recommend it tho.
So maybe Immich?
