Ente wants to take on Google Photos with its privacy-first photo storage service
Ente wants to take on Google Photos with its privacy-first photo storage service | TechCrunch
I appreciate the privacy-first model, but I don't think I can ever go back to paid subscriptions for my photo and video storage. Not only does it cost a fortune over time, but when the company eventually folds or changes their policy for the worst, it's a nightmare to get your photos and videos to another platform.
Self-hosting is what I prefer, although, I can appreciate that it's not an option for everyone.
In the case of ente, they have gone above and beyond to give full control to their users of their backing up process and backed up media:
To me, it really shows they care about the users and do their best to avoid vendor lock-in.
And I personally feel much more confident in a company when their business model is a paid one. I'm a very happy customer, I have also convinced multiple people who seem happy too.
I don't mean to talk negatively at all, and their product looks amazing (especially with the added context you've provided).
For me, based on my own experience and the huge amount of storage needed to keep my photos/videos safe, it's not cost-effective for me personally. If the choice was any of the other paid services or Ente, I think Ente would be the clear winner from the sound of it.
Ente is self-hostable
Edit: nvm, somebody already pointed that out
when the company eventually folds or changes their policy for the worst, it's a nightmare to get your photos and videos to another platform.
That's why "portability" is important. Ente matches this bar for me.
But yeah, when it comes to one-off products like this you need 1 subscriptions for photos, one subscription for files, one subscription for docs, etc. Honestly that's the reason I use Proton.
Have you tried/are you using Immich?
I may have tried the demo at some point (along with other Self-hosted solutions for photo backup), but Synology Photos does what I want without any real setup.
For search, I use a paid software called Excire Foto (German origin) that uses local-AI. I point it to my network folder, and it creates its own database away from my originals. Expensive software, but it's been worth it. Synology photos also has searching by subject, but Excire is far more contextual and easily beats out anything that Google Photos offered.
their service is very cheap, though. but yeah if you can selfhost it, and expose it to family that's good
Like with all other online services, it's cheap until your collection grows. I basically outpaced Google Drive (at the time), and it would have been significantly more expensive to continue with their paid plans. So, I invested in hardware. LOL
But realistically, if you have a smaller photo/video collection, then I think it would be just as easy to spend $5-10 a month and forget about it. I was working with decades worth of images, so I would quickly outgrow any 1, 2, 3TB plans.
How do you back up your media?
My Synology NAS is set up as RAID, so there's redundancy built in.
Then I have daily backups to an external drive (automatic, so there's no intervention).
In addition to (automatic) daily encrypted cloud backup (which I'm looking for an alternative due to rising costs). Ideally, I'd love to set up a second, smaller NAS somewhere else to offset the cloud backup costs.
Then I have a monthly backup on physical media kept secured outside of my home.
But my NAS handles way more than just photos and video, so this low effort is really covering all kinds of data.
I made the switch to self-hosting in part to reduce subscription costs of various services, and I'm sure that by now my setup has paid for itself.
For the selfhosters, come jump into Immich - it's google photos at home, full control of your data.
Why? Does it offer a better experience than self-hosting Ente?
I only used Ente so I'm genuinely asking. When I open the Immich website, I am met with a big warning:
Expect bugs and changes. Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos!
Which doesn't look to me like something I'd want to rely on, compared to Ente which is stable and feature complete.
Once they release workflows I'll rollout to my family (main thing missing for new is auto add photos from my son in shared album).
I'm using Ente. It's nice but their apps are still buggy. Also Ente is better used when using tags for your photos instead of folders. Sucks if you have everything in folders
Is there any Immich / Ente comparison?
I switched to Ente recently and like it a lot! It’s been a good experience. There is still some work to be done here and there, but there’s a very strong core there. Devs are open about plans and definitely listen to her feedback.
