With smartphone cameras getting better and better, we prefer capturing photos with a mobile over a regular camera. And especially during vacations, festivals and celebrations we tend to go overboard with capturing pictures. But soon we realize that the phone memory is running out of space. If you’re someone who enjoys clicking pictures but is still unsure where to store them later on. Keep reading; in this article, we will compare two cloud photo storage options: Amazon Photos and Google Photos.
Amazon Photos is a secure online storage service for photos and videos. The platform is different from Amazon drive in terms of features and its use. You can integrate the photos with other Amazon devices like Fire TV, Echo Show, and Fire Tablets.
Initially, Google Photos was coupled with the Social networking service Google+. But soon, Google Photos disintegrated from Google+, as the social networking service could not manage to attain a user base. However, the storage platform got quite popular for its novel features like recognition technology, search, apps, and loading times. So much so that Google discontinued Picasa (web album service) from its products.
Let’s discuss the following attributes to make a clear distinction between the two:
- Storage Space
- Pricing
- Features
- Security
- Final Verdict
Storage
The phone memory has limited space and it can store a few GBs of data. So, what is the solution to expand the storage space? By opting for a cloud storage platform you can expand the storage and get a secure backup option.
Every Google Account comes with 15 GB of free storage that’s shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. Buyers can get additional space for photo storage by signing up for a Google One subscription. But, if you have a Google Pixel phone, you are exempt from any Google Photos limits.
Google Photos has 3 Storage settings namely:
Storage Saver: Includes photo and video storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution.
Original Quality: This storage category preserves the original resolution and quality of the photos and videos.
Express Quality: Includes photo and video storage for photos up to 3 megapixels and videos up to 480p resolution
Amazon Photos: provides a 5 GB storage space for Prime members and you can also share one account with up to 5 friends and family members. Also, it offers unlimited, full-resolution photo storage, plus 5 GB of video storage for Prime members. All other customers get 5 GB of photo and video storage.
Verdict: Both the platforms are equally good from the storage aspect. But opting for a platform largely depends on how much data you currently have and the ecosystem you are comfortable with.
Pricing
But does it fit my budget? This is the most commonly asked question. Well, let’s find out the answer to this question.
Google One Subscription tariff:
- 100GB: $2 a month or $20 annually
- 200GB: $2.99 a month or $30 annually
- 2TB: $10 a month or $100 annually
Apart from that, you can also opt for monthly subscriptions of plans of 10 TB, 20 TB, and 30 TB.
- 10TB: $100 a month
- 20TB: $200 a month
- 30TB: $300 a month
Amazon Photos Subscription tariff:
- 100 GB: $20 a year
- 1 TB: $60 a year
- 2 TB: $120 a year
With Prime Membership you get unlimited free storage.
Verdict: It’s a tie Going by the numbers, Google Photos is relatively pocket-friendly as compared to Amazon Photos. Consider Amazon, if you are a prime user, you free get unlimited photo storage and full-resolution photo storage.
Features
Apart from Storage and Pricing, we always look out for that one particular attribute that attracts us or a feature that fulfills the requirements. Both the platforms are extremely rich in features and include many benefits. In this section, we will analyze the most sought-after attributes of both platforms and try to reach the conclusion individually.
Upload, Download, Sync
These parameters are quite comparable and there are hardly any differences. You can access either platform through the web application or can go for a mobile application. The latter allows you to automatically backup pictures from the device on which the app is installed.
Another point of similarity with syncing of data is that both services allow you to upload the mobile’s snaps only on Wi-Fi, to save the data usage. Another common point is that both make download the synced files to your device’s camera roll for offline storage.
Now talking about the differences in the feature, with some changes in the settings you can Google Photos can backup directly from Facebook. You don’t get this option with Amazon Photos.
On the other hand, Amazon Photo blends easily with Alexa-powered devices.
Verdict: It’s a tie.
Editing Tools
Both the services offer decent tools for editing pictures. Although they do not offer a range of sophisticated options but guarantee a quick fix to any image.
Amazon Photos offers various range of editing options. You can play around with factors like brightness, contrast, exposures, shadows, and highlights. You can also alter image focus, add text, crop and rotate the image and apply over 70 filters. Moreover, if you’ve clicked 20 photos and with the location on, Amazon Photos will create a story based on those photos.
With Google Photos you can crop the picture, tweak light and color, and can also apply filters. It also allows doing small fixes on images once they’ve been uploaded. A pro tip, if you have back up & sync turned on, your edits will sync to your Google Photos account.
Verdict: Amazon Photos
Searching and Tagging
We all have faced a hard time while searching for a specific image. Both Google Photos and Amazon Photos have very smart searching features. Google Photos allows you to segregate pictures by face, Place, and Thing. It categorizes people based on facial recognition technology to club the pictures. But if you have a painful memory associated with a person, you can always disable the facial recognition feature.
Amazon Photos have a unique feature “Family Vault” that allows you to share specific pictures among family members. Another feature called “Groups” lets you arrange pictures together and share them with a larger group of people for e.g. a wedding or a party.
Apart from that Google Photos performs well at classifying snaps on based the content like trees, similar buildings, or architecture styles grouped together for efficient searching.
Verdict: It’s a tie
Security
You might be thinking reading both offers cool features but– How secure are they? How will my photos be handled? Who’s looking at your photos? What can they do with them etc, etc.? Let’s check the policies of each service.
Well, Google Photos skims through the photos that you upload to their service, runs algorithms to analyze them, and based on the findings begins to tweak the ads you see to items that may be more likely to interest you based on the extracted data.
While Amazon service still scans your photos, they use the data to make your albums searchable and your data is not given to third parties. You can always go ahead and opt-out of the scan the photos option to disable the search function.
Final Verdict
Selecting the service depends on the type of storage solution you currently have and what plans you have in the future. This article summarizes Amazon Photos vs. Google Photos in terms of prices, features, and Security. We have tried to provide you with a few checkpoints based on needs and affordability. We hope you can make an informed decision based on this!