NEED ADVICE: Cloud-based solution for sharing photos with family?

[angiekey]

A great big "hello" to the sweetest scrapbooking community online!

I'm looking for advice & recommendations for a cloud-based storage solution for sharing digitized photographs with extended family.

Details:
I'm our family's Official Image Archivist, if there is such a thing. (I think I need a shirt...) My parents handed me a dozen boxes of photo prints, negatives, and 35mm slides of images from the early 1900s through to about 2006, and I'm digitizing them.

After a bunch of research (including asking for advice here) I ended up investing in an Epson FF-680W for scanning photo prints and a PlusTek OpticFilm 8200i for scanning negatives and 35mm slides.

Now 3,000 images in and tens of thousands to go, I need to figure out a storage and sharing solution.

Just like my normal photo library, I'll have multiple redundant copies on external drives, but I desperately need an offsite cloud-based solution to share them with family members.

I've been using a professional photography service (Zenfolio) for sharing & distributing images to date, but since they raised their rates and I'm no longer doing shoots for pay, there's a bunch of features I don't need and I'll be cancelling my subscription when the year is up.

I'd like something where family can view and download the photos, but not edit or delete. I'll want to separate the content into albums or folders; bonus points if I can choose who I invite to each folder. And extra points if they're searchable by keyword.

I'm willing to pay a monthly storage fee.

And I would be ecstatic if people are able to add comments to the images that I can see - for example, to help identify the when, where, and who of the pics.

Let the suggestions begin!

[Kimberly27]

Amazon Photos will let you do this for free...you only have to pay extra for video storage...they allow 5gb for video and unlimited for photos. I am not sure on the deleting part though...You can create albums and select who you share each album with but editing/deleting not sure.

[bestcee]

I moved my photos to my own cloud storage. I have a Synology NAS. It's fairly easy to use, but there are easier ones I believe. But I chose Synology because they have a photo app that works for me and reminds me of Google Photos, without being Google. I can share photos with family and I can choose my family's permissions - view, view and download, or view, download, delete, add.

I can add tags to the photos, but I do not know if others can. I haven't tried it. If I add tags in Lightroom, and write them to the metadata, those tags show in Synology Photos too and are searchable.

I like having a NAS because I control it. The storage is mine, and I can upgrade it as desired. I also use one of the drives to backup the first one, so it's a bonus backup. It was more expensive to set up than some cloud storage, but I like it being mine. For me, I break even in like 3 years or something with the amount of photo storage I use. And they do store other things too. Anything you can put on a harddrive.

[Cheryl Ashcraft]

I just use Google Photos, and even then I'm not really using it to the full potential. For most of my family, it's an easy sharing platform.

[nesser1981]

Amazon Photo is what I'd use. You can invite them right there to a family library or send them direct album links. I used it for awhile, but recently I've been using shared albums on my iphone/MAC. It's very easy, I have them going back to 2018, use always use them for any family trip or holiday, the kids access them, my inlaws, sister inlaw, then they add to them as well.

I'm sure google photo is good too, I know there is a cap for their free storage now, but Amazon is unlimited photo storage.

[PictureMom]

we use photo circle. It's free and you can invite folks and share photos

[carrie1977]

I use my Amazon Prime account for all of my photos. The best part is they upload over wifi without me having to do anything (if from my phone).
Video storage is limited but I don't have too many videos.

[bcgal00]

I use smugmug for my photos (and layouts). You can set it for private or public, with password, it's customizable. I pay a yearly fee to host my photos with them. I have been using them for about 10 yrs and am happy.