“iCloud Storage Full” has to rank up there as one of the least favorite notifications on Apple products, maybe of all products? For photographers, this message can be all the more frustrating, and eventually very expensive if you opt into the iCloud payment plans. That’s why we’re profiling Photos+ today. Photos+ is an application that leverages Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage to offer an easy and reasonable way to manage your data and put “Storage Full” notifications behind you.

Here’s the short story: If you’re storing 200GB or more of photos on iCloud, Photos+ and Backblaze B2 can save you upwards of $100 per year.

With high resolution iPhone cameras, six hours of 4K videos and a few thousand photos is all it takes to exceed 200GB of storage, meaning your photos will no longer be backed up unless you upgrade to the 2TB plan at a cost of $120 per year. This is a steep jump from the 200GB plan at $36 per year, and one that leads many to ponder what their options are.

Alternatives to iCloud Storage Upgrades

Well, for those of you looking, here are your options:

1. Turn off iCloud backup and don’t back up your phone? Not best practice—remember your 3-2-1 backup strategy!
2. Turn off iCloud backup but remember to frequently back up your phone to your computer? This often ends in tears.
3. Transfer photos to your computer when you run out of space? It works, but it’s time intensive and means you lose access to photos on the go.
4. Use Dropbox or Google Photos to offload photos? Unfortunately, they also feature a leap to 2TB of storage, so you might as well stick with upgrading iCloud.
5. Use a service that charges you for exactly the storage you use at $0.005/GB. In this scenario, storing 200GB would cost $1 per month.

How to Avoid iCloud Storage Upgrade Bills

The Photos+ Cloud Library app is an iOS and web app that allows you to manage photos from your iPhone or browser without incurring the costs typically associated with keeping photos on your phone. You can use Photos+ and pay for only what you store with no minimum fees and no upper limits on storage.

Test It for Free

The Photos+ Cloud Library app costs $6/year, and offers a free 14-day trial if you’d like to see how it works. Backblaze B2 costs $0.005/GB/month with the first 10GB free. So if you’d like to give this pairing a try, you’ve got some room to play around before you need to commit to the setup.

Storing 200GB using these two platforms will cost about $18/year instead of $120/year with iCloud.

To try both these platforms for free, download the Photos+ Cloud Library app and sign up for the Backblaze B2 service (no credit card required). For detailed instructions on setting this up, we’ve developed one here.

Once your photos and videos are safely stored in your own Backblaze B2 account (where you can always verify they have been stored and download them directly from Backblaze or the Photos+ app), you can delete some or all of your photos and videos from your iPhone to open up space, and allow iCloud to back up the rest of your items without exceeding your 50GB or 200GB iCloud storage plan.

No More Upgrade Notices

With the lack of upgrade notifications, you’ll have more time to spend paying attention to “Scam Likely” calls and discerning the meaning of the badge numbers accumulating on apps you haven’t opened in years. We wish we could help you with those annoyances too, but for now, here’s hoping Photos+ can ease your iCloud bill and give you some peace of mind.