My uncle has a 500 GB iPad with over 100GB+ of photos on it. He doesn’t pay for iCloud, and frankly I don’t think he should. I want to recommend him a cross-platform E2EE cloud service that’s not too expensive, and I’m hesitating between Ente Photos and Filen.
Both Ente Photos and Filen are having a Black Friday sales. Filen offers lifetime accounts for up to 10TB and Ente has multi-year plans for up to 2TB.
I don’t think my uncle needs more than 500GB right now. Filen offers that for a one time lifetime payment for €90. With Ente Photos, it’s €300 for 5 years (expensive!). That or 200 GB at €150 for 3 years.
Here are the pros and cons as I see it.
Filen Pros:
affordable
one time fee
File Cons:
new company
average UX (no globals search and other bugs)
not recommended by PG
Ente Pros:
Amazing UI & UX
Open source
Ente Cons:
a bit expensive
no lifetime plan (understandable)
can only back up photos
If money were no object, I’d recommend both to my uncle. If he gets Ente, he can only back up photos and nothing else, and I know he’s got multiple hards drives with files that could use a cloud back up.
I personally think Ente is far more promising service and company, but admittedly, I’m leading toward recommending Filen, and maybe in the future add Ente on top.
He’s doing ok, but I don’t think he’d be down for spending 300 euros just for a cloud photo backup service. He’s got other expenses. Why are you recommending iCloud? They suck as a stand-alone cloud service.
iCloud Photos are E2EE and cheap, he is also already trusting Apple by using their OS, and iCloud Photos have the best integration, which will give him the best UX.
I would be skeptical of Filen. It is one thing for a company like Proton, which is well established and clearly has some money in the bank, to temporarily offer a lifetime Pass purchase. It is quite another for a brand-new company to offer lifetime storage at a price that frankly is too good to be true. More likely than not, they will be bankrupt and out of business in a few years, and your uncle will be out of luck.
I would generally agree that iCloud photos is probably the best option so long as he doesn’t need it cross-platform and enabled ADP.
Your criticism of Filen is not unfounded. But Ente is also a new company, I believe they are newer than Filen, yet you’re not saying that about them. I too, am more confident about Ente’s future, than Filen’s. I also understand the risks of using Filen. I would also tell my uncle to back up his photos on an External hard drive.
I was going to turn on E2EE on my uncle’s iPad the last time I visited him, but then I saw that enabling it has a big warning. I personally think it’s good that there is this warning, because people need to know that using certain security measure, can remove the possible to retrieving data back if they forget their password.
I don’t know if my uncle is ready for that possibility. He would be annoyed if he forgot his password, and couldn’t retrieve his data because I advised him to enable E2EE. I signed him up to Proton Pass, he’s got a few logins in it, but he doesn’t use it. He regularly asks me for his passwords, which I obviously don’t know.
Because they [ente] have a sustainable business model. A one time payment to cover recurring costs is not that.
You can always make a passkey using your password manager for his account so you can help him recover it. Obviously this requires him trusting you but that goes without saying.
Yes! We can afford to offer lifetime plans at reasonable prices in a limited quantity. That’s why we aren’t offering them all year around. The lifetime plans will never pose a financial risk for us, as we have implemented sufficient measures to ensure our financial stability.
Will we ever remove lifetime plans permanently?
To be honest… maybe. The lifetime plans have been a great tool for gathering resources during the early stages of the company. However, as many of you have noticed, we have gradually reduced their availability. Normally our algorithm regularly monitors the ratio between subscription-based customers and sold lifetime plans to determine how many lifetime plans can be offered. The small Starter Lifetime Plan is almost always available because we designed the algorithm with a buffer, ensuring there is enough capacity to continue offering the smaller plan for now. We would rather give 20 customers the opportunity to purchase a 100GB Lifetime Plan than sell a single 2TB plan.
As we continue to grow, our running costs also increase, including expenses like energy, hardware, and new employees. With rising and fluctuating costs in these areas, it becomes challenging to predict the future contribution margin over the next 10 years when setting a price for a lifetime plan today. Unlike a physical product, where a one-time price can be calculated and then forgotten after the sale—sometimes with the possibility of aftermarket sales or maintenance—a lifetime software or cloud service plan requires ongoing support. A sold lifetime plan must continue to function indefinitely or as long as the user chooses to use it. Therefore, the price of a lifetime plan needs to account for the ongoing operational costs, including energy, hardware repairs, business expenses, and everything else—from the energy drinks we have in the morning to the network switches in our servers.
But let’s get to the point: For investments like our servers and infrastructure aswell as our customers satisfaction, we will continue offering lifetime sales in the near future. However, only our long-term empirical data and calculations will determine whether we will keep offering lifetime plans, and if so, in what quantity and capacity. Currently, everything is going according to plan, allowing us to proceed with our Black Friday lifetime sale without concern, as the planned capacity for this sale will not impact our future calculations in a detrimental way.
In short: The lifetime plans will never pose a financial risk for us, as we have implemented sufficient measures to ensure our financial stability. Nonetheless, we don’t rule out the possibility that the lifetime era may come to an end in the future.
And a small disclaimer to add: We have conducted extensive research on this topic, including how the broader cloud market approaches it. Lifetime plans are, of course, priced based on the anticipated usage patterns of the average customer. These plans must be designed to cover all associated costs over the estimated period, because if they don’t, a company might enjoy a short-term profit but will soon begin to lose money as ongoing expenses outstrip revenue, eventually leading to financial strain. If you come across a company offering large lifetime plans with substantial discounts year-round, there is a good chance they may be attempting to extract the last bit of value from a struggling business, were set up as a scam from the beginning, or are relying on a Ponzi-like model (ponzi scheme) ,where they remain solvent only as long as new purchases keep coming in. We’re not trying to criticize anyone specifically—just offering a word of caution.
It’s an option that’s not included, but what about ProtonDrive?
They are already on PG’s recommended list and, like Filen, can store more than just photos; Proton Photos currently offers a minimal UX, but their roadmap suggests that they will focus on expanding Proton Photos’ functionality in the future.
If you are comfortable with Ente.io’s price, I would consider Proton as an option, albeit at a higher price.
Are you suggesting that any online service that offers one time lifetime plans is probably not sustainable? Even if it’s just temporarily ?
I have paid for the lifetime plans of various services, that are still around years later. One of them is the iOS app Infuse. I think I paid like $50 for a lifetime plan of the premium version. I never have to pay for it again. That was at least 5 years ago. Infuse is a very popular iOS app. The lifetime plan still exists and is available all year round. However, they have continued to increase the price.
My understanding is that any new online service that, often lifetime plans for relatively cheap, is a risky investment. I understand that they may shut down, and I take the necessary precautions. I got burned one time, and I never let it happen again.
If your uncle only has that iPad, then I also (unfortunately) would recommend iCloud Photos properly secured with Advanced Data Protection in this case, because all other cloud services are second-class citizens on iOS and simply will not be as reliable no matter what you or the service does.
The best service is the one that you(r uncle) will actually use and will find reliable, and it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me to use a good cross-platform solution like Ente over a nearly-as-good solution that is purpose-built for the operating system you’re using, if you only have the one device anyways.
However, if cross-platform compatibility would actually be useful to your uncle, like if he has other non-Apple devices already, then I would go with Ente Photos 100%.
I am personally skeptical that Filen will still be around for the next couple of years, because apart from their affordable cost, they are not groundbreaking compared to other E2EE cloud services, and they are missing a lot of basic features like global search.
Moreover, although Filen is a small company like Ente, they don’t communicate as often as Ente does. Ente is active on social media every week and people in the privacy community talk about them. Ente makes a post once every 4-5 months, and their updates are not that major.
People might then wonder, then why are you leaning so hard on Filen. I think it’s because I’m comfortable with the idea of it being a temporary solution, even if it only buys a year’s time. And I think my uncle would be ok with that, as long as I explain the risk. I will have to ask him.
Ente says this is their last Black Friday sale. I believe in their company, and therefore, I don’t believe that’s actually true.
IMO, Proton Drive is not great as a stand-alone service. I signed up my uncle for a free Proton Mail address years ago, but he doesn’t use it. I also signed him up to Proton Pass Plus with the $12/year lifetime discount.
I’ll have to look at the price of Proton Unlimited, the real price, not the Black Friday price, and see if it’s reasonable for him. It might be. This is not necessarily a bad suggestion given the context.
That said, I need Proton to confirm that upgrading to Proton Unlimited doesn’t remove acquired lifetime discounts. If, at any point, my uncle decides to downgrade, he should still have his Proton Pass lifetime discounts. Otherwise, it’s a no-go.
My uncle has an almost 10-year-old MacBook Pro and an iPhone SE. His iPhone only has 64 GB of storage. The MacBook Pro works perfectly fine, but my uncle barely uses it. He does everything on his iPad.
This may sound stupid for some people, but although there are Apple users in my family, we all find their products extremely expensive. By this we mean that every time we buy an Apple product, we are not confident that in however many years, when that Apple product dies, we will be able to afford another Apple product to replace it. This is why we consider the importance of cross platforms.
After my first Mac and my first iPhone, I was never able to afford another Apple product again. My family are of the firm believe that if we can’t buy a device with all the cash upfront, we cannot afford it. And if I only have $5000 in life’s savings, I’m not going to spend it to replace an Apple device. Ideally, every time you buy an Apple product, you should immediately have to start saving for the next one, little by little, but of course life gets in the way.
That said, maybe you’re right, it might be best for him to go with iCloud.