
Show HN: Pixaver – Google Photos backups made super easy - shelkie
https://pixaver.com
======
shelkie
Hi YC friends—

We’re Eric and Eric (or @shelkie and @karj) and we built Pixaver. It’s an app
you’ll hopefully install—but never need to use.

Last summer, Google uncoupled Photos from Drive. When they did, I got a little
antsy. I didn’t like the idea of all my photos being in one basket.
(Admittedly, they already were, but this change broke any illusion of
redundancy.)

So, I went looking for a backup solution, but they all involved too much
admin. This led me to build something for my own use—and (of course) we
figured there might be a product in there.

Pixaver (pic + saver, get it?) is so easy to use, anyone can put it to work.

You create an account, link it to your Google account, and you’re done. It
does an initial backup of up all items, then automatically maintains an
external backup of your Google Photos library as new items are added.

It doesn’t replace Google Photos in any way. It’s just added peace-of-mind.
Let’s say you accidentally delete a bunch of images on Google Photos. Or, you
lost access to your Google account. In either of those situations, Pixaver
would offer a way to recover your images.

We soft-launched a few months ago. Then we applied to the Google Photos
Partner Program (in part for more API calls). That has now been approved and
we’re ready to accommodate more users.

If you have feedback, questions, or criticism, we’d love to hear it. :-)

~~~
mceachen
Where does this second backup live: cloud, or local? You might want to clarify
that on your website.

If it's local, I wouldn't make it tiered by library size.

I think you're being perhaps optimistic with your $15/mo tier. I'd love to be
wrong, but that money would pay for a new 10 TB HD every year. Maybe other
people won't think that way? Are you using s3? Your costs might be lower using
glacier or backblaze.

You should also take a look at
[https://github.com/mholt/timeliner](https://github.com/mholt/timeliner). Open
source, easy to install, runs locally for free. Worked perfectly on my very
large library.

However, both your service and timeliner have to deal with Google Photos and
the file mangling they do. Most tags are deleted, and several are modified
(!!?) when you fetch them via takeouts or timeliner. I don't think there's
anything you can do about it, because you're downstream of where the damage
happens.

Good luck! You should try PhotoStructure, BTW. Link in my profile.

~~~
shelkie
We're using Wasabi for storage (wasabi.com) They offer S3 compatible hot
storage at at fraction of the cost of AWS or any other cloud storage service.

Timeliner looks cool, but tools such as this are only suitable for the tech-
savy crowd. I think there certainly is a market for these sorts of things, and
PhotoStructure should be a good fit for those who want to keep thier data
local.

Pixaver is targeted toward the vast majority of Google Photos users who don't
have a technical background or the desire to maintain local physical backups.
Backups running with just a few clicks and they don't to think about buying
hard drives or fiddling with code.

As you mention, the data provided by the Google Photos API is sometimes not
ideal. Geolocation data and some other metadata are omitted. Currently, only
the "optimized" version of videos are provided. That said, our service is not
meant as a replacement for Google Photos. We just want to be a way to get your
images back if the unthinkable were to happen.

