Losing all your photos is a lot easier than it should be. If they're only on your phone and you lose your phone, they're gone.
If they're only on your computer and your hard drive fails, they're gone. Even if you do have them on your phone and computer, that's no guarantee. That's why we need the cloud. It's not a failsafe, but it is much better than trusting in physical storage alone.
The problem is how annoying it can be to store photos on the cloud. Honestly, you'd think there'd be better options by now. But most of what's out there is a drag to use, especially when it comes to interface and pricing. Take Apple's iCloud Photo Sharing: It seems great until you realize that it comes with a paltry 5 GB of space for free, meaning you'll almost certainly have to buy more storage to use it. You already bought the phone, the computer, and the data plan, so shouldn't the default system be free?
Annoyances like this abound in the cloud. So the choice comes down to price and what kinds of phone and computer you have.
Let's start with the cloud options that are built into the phone you're already carrying. Apple has Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing built into its desktop and mobile OS, and Android has Google Photos (which can also be used on an iPhone).
Both Google's and Apple's built-in services automatically upload photos on your phone to the cloud and require little setup, but Apple's almost certainly requires paying for more storage (though Google's may, too). With Apple's iCloud Photo Library, you get just 5 GB, some of which will be taken up with phone backups and other cloud apps. With your Google account you start with 15 GB, some of which also will be taken up with data from other sources, like Gmail and Google Drive. If you don't mind uploading lower-quality images, however, your photo storage on Google is unlimited. (The limits are 16 megabytes for photos and 1080p quality for video.)
No matter what kind of phone you use, there's another option you should consider if you're already an Amazon Prime member: Amazon Prime Photos, which is part of Amazon Cloud Drive. Users with Prime membership get unlimited photo storage; nonmembers pay $12 per year. The app, which is among the ugliest of the bunch, can run in the background, uploading any new photos soon after you take them. Or you can set uploads to manual.
For those without Amazon Prime who are unwilling to pay extra for cloud storage, there are still options. The two most familiar are Flickr and Dropbox, though they are far from equal. While Flickr offers a free terabyte of storage, a deal topped only by Google Photos' unlimited-with-strings-attached offer, Dropbox provides only 2 GB free. Flickr's service is super straightforward to set up and use: After the app is installed on your phone, it automatically uploads all your existing photos plus any new photos almost as soon as they're shot, just as Apple's iCloud Photo Library would. Flickr's app also sorts photos into smart albums, which are amazingly accurate, even distinguishing among types of animal. Dropbox relies on a somewhat bizarre app, called Carousel, for uploads from the phone.
All in all, Google Photos and Flickr come out on top. They're both free, easy to set up, run in the background smoothly, and provide enough storage for most users.
The one problem with the cloud, of course, is that it's not your cloud—it's a company's. Privacy varies from service to service, with Apple, Dropbox, and Amazon giving the user exclusive rights to the photos she sets as private, but also retaining to right to do what they want with photos you set as public. Google, on the other hand, isn't so great, claiming a "worldwide license" to your uploads that lets the company "use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works,...communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."
Whatever the pros and cons, any of these options is better than none. Don't end up losing memories because your phone got lost or your hard drive crashed.
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