Very Quick Thoughts on Mylio
When looking at hard disk options I noticed that with the Seagate One Touch Hub they offer six months with Mylio so I decided to try the app, without buying that app. My first thought is that it claims to replace Google Photos and iCloud and yet the cost is similar per month. If you compare it to self-hosting solutions like Immich, PhotoPrism and NextCloud then it’s not that interesting, especially since it is for windows and mac but not Linux.
The Downside
After a few minutes of playing with the app on Windows, two iPhones and a Mac Book Pro I find the app confusing to use. It doesn’t align with what I expect. We can tell it where to find photos and tell it to keep them there, but I don’t see an option to tell it to use an external drive as the storage space. I also find navigation confusing. It’s not as intuitive as I would like.
The Upside
The best feature that I have seen with this app is the ability to download photos from instagram and Facebook but also frame.io and flickr. I especially want to be able to download my photos from Flickr because I have decades of memories, especially from 2005 onwards which I want to verify that I have saved elsewhere before dumping the service. Once I download the photos I can dump the paid account and forget about flickr.
For this option to work I need to be able to tell it to copy files to an external drive as I have gigabytes of files to rescue, dedupe and store.
Photo Dedupe
As you take photos and export them to a hard drive or laptop you sometimes keep them on the card as a backup, in case the laptop or other device fails. The issue is that you may import the same photo three or more times. If you organise your files by year-month-day then it’s easy to spot duplicates and delete them.
Mylio, Immich and PhotoPrism all have duplicate detection. PhotoPrism detects them when ingesting. I think Mylio detects them later, when you run the app.
Similar to Immich and PhotoPrism
Some of the features are similar to PhotoPrism and Immich. It has facial recognition, tagging, sorting by various EXIF data and more. It also allows you to sync between your phone, ipad and laptop as well as mark which images to keep private for you, semi-private for a group of friends, or public.
It also provides you with Spaces. Spaces are photo galleries where you can choose to sort photos by activity, or group. You could have a hiking space, a diving space, a via ferrata space and more. You could also have a space for a conference, or for photos with university friends, and more.
Cost Comparison
Flickr is 80 dollars per year for unlimited storage. iCloud is 120 dollars per year for 2 terabytes. Infomaniak kDrive is 67 CHF per year for two terabytes. Mylio is 99 USD per year for unlimited storage but the question is how many gigabytes or terabytes of storage do you need. I’m not a light user and I don’t hit the two terabytes of photos limit. I do hit that limit with videos.
The second question is whether you use this as your offsite backup, or your primary backup. If you use it as your primary backup then you are trapped, until you can export your files.
And Finally
In writing this article I looked around and found that in order to use an external drive you need to commit to a subscription. You can test it for free for thirty days, but you need to pay to backup your own photos to your own external drives and this is a fatal flaw, for me. I am happy to pay for apps, with a one off. I paid for Final Cut Pro X a few years ago, and most recently I paid to have all features of the PhotoSync app. I was fiddling with the app one day and saw a promotion to get lifetime premium for 15 CHF and took it. Now I can sync my phone to plenty of apps automatically, including PhotoPrism.
More than a decade ago I paid about 1600 CHF for Final Cut Studo because I wanted to own it, for professional projects, after using university copies during my studies. I refuse to pay for Adobe Creative Cloud and other monthly subscription plans because I want to own an app, and use it when I need it. I don’t want to pay monthly for an app that I may not use for weeks or months at a time.
Adobe Creative Cloud costs 40 CHF per month and 480 per year. FCP X cost me 300 CHF and I have owned it for years. Every four years you would have paid for Final Cut Studio with the subscription model.
Back on Topic
The reason for using PhotoPrism, Immich and NextCloud is to stop paying monthly fees. Mylio goes the other way. “Backup your phone and your laptop, but once the internal hard drives are too large start paying 99 USD per year, or 149 USD every two years. In theory it’s unlimited, but normal people probably don’t have eight terabytes of photos, they have as many as fit on their phones, and not much more.
Conclusion
Carbon Copy Clone charges 44 CHF for the use of their product. OpenAudible charges about 30 CHF for the use of theirs. PhotoSync costs about 21 CHF once for all functionality. Mylio costs 90 USD to sync your files to your own external hard drive. That functionality should be 20 CHF, once, I do not want to be charged a monthly fee to use my own hardware.