Google Photos shared albums
Free, already installed, and almost enough.
This is the first thing most teams try, and for good reason. It costs nothing, everyone has an account, and IT already approved it. It is worth saying where it holds up, because for some teams it genuinely does.
Being fair about it
For a small, willing team, it works.
Four people who all remember to upload will get a usable shared album out of Google Photos, at original quality if their settings are right. If that is your situation, do not buy anything.
The problem is not the pixels. It is the uploading.
A shared album is a place to put photos. Somebody still has to open the app later, at home, and add them. Most people do not, and nobody finds out until the content is due. The photos that do arrive sit in one album that somebody has to go through by hand.
Side by side
The differences that actually change your week.
| Google Photos | Team Capture | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free with a Google account | $99 a month per workspace, or $199 with the AI filing, and a 14-day trial |
| Getting photos in | Each person uploads, deliberately, later | Shared straight from the camera roll at the event, then it handles itself |
| No signal at the venue | The upload waits on the app being open | Queues on the phone and survives a restart and the drive home |
| Filing | Albums you name and fill by hand | On Team, the AI files each photo by when, where and what is in it |
| Your own names for things | Visual search and face groups you can name, in each person's own library | On Team, you teach it your product names, people and places once, in plain English, and every photo is labelled that way |
| Duplicates | Land twice if two people add the same file | Fingerprinted, so the same file lands once |
| Who can see what | Anyone with the album link | Album photos are shared with the whole workspace. Anything outside an album stays with the sender and the admins |
| When someone leaves | Their photos leave with their account | Photos stay with the workspace, access does not |
Checked against public information on 20 August 2026.
Where it stops working
Staff turnover takes the photos with it.
Contributions live in personal accounts. When someone moves on and their account goes, so does what they contributed.
There is no such thing as an admin.
A shared album has a link, not roles. You cannot say that this person runs the workspace and that person only sends photos.
Nobody is sorting anything.
The collection problem is a behaviour problem, and so is the filing that comes after it. The fix is not more storage. It is removing every step where a person has to remember to do something.
Which one you want
Four organised people? Use a shared album and keep your money.
If four organised people are taking photos at one event, use a shared album and keep your money. When it is a dozen people, several of them part-time, across a season, what breaks is not storage. Half of them never upload, and the half who do leave you with a pile nobody has time to sort.
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Who asks this question
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