Tinybeans Private Family Album Reviews

by TempusFugit86

I hare this update. We have paid for the last two years for premium and we're so disappointed. Not sure we'll pay for this upcoming year with this new format. I HATE the new Home Screen. It never loads and when it does it's all crap advertisements and articles. I don't pay for TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum for a home screen of ads. We pay for it to see nothing other than our son. We use this for our own curation of photos of our son, and share them with his grandparents. I have ZERO interest in your crap articles. 75% of the time, the page doesn't even load. We loved the homepage that was a stream of recent photos and videos. This was helpful because we don't upload everyday, so you could see newly posted photos and videos... now it's nearly impossible to find recently posted items that are from several days back. Family members don't know to go back to look through previous days/weeks to find new content.

We don't care about your "ideas tab" and refuse to read any of it. Fix this or you're losing another family as subscribers. Judging by your recent reviews you'll be losing the bulk of your membership along with us.

by Reviewer Doe

After entering captions to go with your photos, TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum erases your caption completely or just half the words. It'll happen at random, so you don't know you need to type the caption back in unless you're looking right at that moment on the calendar, and by the time you notice it, so much time may have passed that you might have forgotten what you had typed. If you do manage to restore the caption manually, they'll erase it again without notice. VERY BAD considering you may need captions to explain to family what is going on in the photos, or simply want to remember details for the future. I've contacted customer service for help with this issue FOUR TIMES. Each time they reply with a canned response about how they typically take 48-72 hours to get back to you, but nothing else. IT'S BEEN MONTHS. I've yet to hear back from customer service. You're better off trying a competitor app. Some of them even make free movies of your child so you can see them grow up before your eyes, or compile quality photo books ready for purchase. They definitely don't erase your content without notice and then leave you hanging without support.

by Q44623

Check out their website to see who the real customer is. They say the information is yours, but they sell your trust on their website. TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum also communicates with more websites than my browser! Why? Likely because it gives personal information about you to whoever is willing to take it. They also don’t bother to actually deliver the features they promise paying customers. Worst app on my phone. Looking to get rid of this crap and replacing them with simple folder to share pictures. More reliable, not as disgusting. Everything that’s wrong with apps.

Update: Tinybeans claim they don’t sell personal information they collect, but don’t say anything about all the communications their apps has with third party servers. Presumably, these collect personal information (at least activity the lets them track users). Or is Tinybeans claiming they don’t use any SDK that track users or produces targeted ads? Would love to know. Would love to hear all these communications between TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum and third parties explained.
Also, they don’t say anything about how they offer on their website to push crap based on the “trust” uses have in them (why would anyone trust them??).
And Tinybeans: fix your download feature (mass download of everything from your closed garden, not single picture).

by Belawrence12

Update::: I have now had TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum for 4 years. 4 years of memories, laughter, sharing with friends and family for them to decide to start charging a monthly subscription fee. I started using TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum because it was free, not because it was bug free or exceptionally easy to use. You can only download 20 pictures at a time and half the time it stalls and I have to restart. The videos are on 30 seconds long and can only add one at a time. The filters, stickers and add one have never been updated or improved to where I externally edit my pictures then add them in. But it was a great place to gather my pictures and videos I didn’t want on social media but still wanted to share. You had me for 4 years and I have promoted them to everyone! But you have now lost me. Will not pay for TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum!!! I have truly enjoying TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum to be able to share pictures of my child without putting it all out on the internet! Only thing is it is very slow about uploading new pictures and especially videos, I wish this could be worked out! I never used to have a problem but in recent months is has gotten slower! Other than that, I still use and enjoy TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum !

by Fghvjjtd

I have been using the platform for about 2 years now. I am a premium subscriber for the benefits of extended video uploads and no ads. So I was disappointed to see the most recent update with the “Today” home page. When opening TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum now, one is inundated with blog posts rather than viewing the calendar of photos. I pay extra for the premium membership specifically to avoid the bloat. If I wanted to read arbitrary opinion pieces, which are usually thinly veiled (or, in some cases, blatant) product placements, I could go to Facebook. It is disappointing. I wish updates would focus on more relevant features of TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum . I have appreciated the new search feature. An area of improvement I am still waiting to see is the ability to easily view photos in succession/as a stream. Currently you have to click through each individual calendar day, whether it has photos posted to it or not, to view them all. It is clunky, and a waste of time to click through blank calendar days. Hoping this will be addressed in the near future.

by SeaMobster

We used LifeCake for years and loved it, but switched to TinyBeans when it was discontinued. So far, we like TinyBeans a lot. It's easy to upload photos and the calendar is cool.

The number one thing we (my husband and I, plus several people who view our family photos) miss from LifeCake is the photo stream/timeline. Please add this feature! There was a tab where all the photos you upload were visible in chronological order with no folders- just one long stream. There was a slider on the right side of the screen you could use to skip to a certain date. It was a great way to look back and find a specific photo if you knew roughly when it was taken but not the exact date. (the calendar feature is awesome if you know the exact date, but if not, you have to click through all the photos on multiple days which is cumbersome). Seriously, it was so great. It was really the only way I ever looked at photos. Please try to add something similar? Please?

by Jimram

It’s all truly excellent. My main recommendations so far would be to make it easier to correct errors entered into height and weight measures (as I learned from a very prompt and clear customer service person named Toni, this can be done by swiping left on a given measurement, but this is not intuitive, so some kind of indication on that page would be helpful). Secondly, I recommend adding a similar measurement system for head circumference, since most doctor’s visits include that anyway, and is of higher importance in the age of Zika. Another, more challenging, issue is this: the statistics should be calibrated to take account of where children are relative to due date, not actual date of birth, so as to take into account preemies (and ‘posties’). There is a publicly available set of alternate statistics for preterm babies that can be used, as well as variant benchmarks used by CDC and WHO (TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum Growth+ includes two variants for each organization, plus the preterm variant). By using the actual date of birth rather than the estimated due date, the measurement percentiles used by the Tinybeans app end up being highly skewed toward babies born exactly at their due dates. This would seem a major area of opportunity in an otherwise highly evolved, sophisticated, and delightful app!

by JillH63

I am leery of most social media outlets and overly cautious about my children’s’ photos being posted online. I don’t have Facebook or Instagram and neither does my mom nor some other family members. But I also want to share photos of my children with a select group of loved ones without inundating them with texts or emails. Tiny Beans was the perfect solution and allows me to safely and privately share my photos with my family. I can’t believe how much they like it too! Most of them tell me it’s the best part of their day waking up and checking TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum to see the kids’ pictures. It keeps us connected and current with minimal effort, no safety/privacy risks and it’s a lot of fun! Plus, then you have all your daily photos in one place. I’ve never written an app review before but just felt strongly enough about this one to take the time to recommend it and I do, very highly recommend it!

by King's Victory

I’ve had Tinybeans for almost 2 1/2 years and it is my absolute favorite app! I use it almost every day! I don’t like to upload photos of my kids on social media and Tinybeans is the absolute perfect way to get to share photos with family (or anyone else you invite!). Everything is secure and it’s easy for everyone to use. Even my kids’ great-grandma figured out how to use it!
Whenever I meet another mom, Tinybeans is something I mention as a fantastic way to save memories and share pictures and stories about our kids. My sister-in-law just had her first baby and sent me this text the other day: “It’s late, and I’m just being sappy, but thank you so much for finding Tinybeans. I’m so glad there’s a place I can store all of these priceless photos of E and any subsequent children! I just love it ❤️” If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is!
I highly recommend investing in Premium—being able to download all your moments is a fantastic backup and I also love being able to share videos longer than one minute!
Right now Tinybeans is a great way to show my family what my kids are like; in the future, it will be a great way to show my kids what they were like when they were little!

by Jyoung12

This is the only app I have ever written a review for, and I didn't think twice about it because it's that good. We just had our first baby and I can't think of an easier way to share pictures, videos, and notes with only those family and friends we have chosen. What we love is that our baby girl isn't all over social media, but we also don't have to spend our time sending pics or videos to people individually, or writing an email, etc. It takes no time at all to post something on TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum and then we can go right back to snuggling the little one. Our family and friends also love it because they can choose how often they want to go on to view what we've posted and similarity aren't bombarded with emails or texts that they feel the need to respond to. And lastly, it's already been great for us to look back on earlier pictures, and I know this online journal is something we will treasure for years!

by DalyMama

I’ve never left a review for any app before, but Tinybeans has become such an integral part of our family and our daily routine that I just had to share. We have been using Tinybeans since the day my daughter was born and we have shared pictures and videos with our family every single day since (she’s almost 6 months old now).

I’m very particular about what I put on Facebook and needed a safe place share baby pictures with family without the whole world seeing them... and Tinybeans is just that.

TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum is very user friendly and makes uploading both pictures and short video clips a breeze. I LOVE that the pictures are organized within a monthly calendar... I find myself looking back on old pictures almost every night and watching by little one grow by the day!

Thank you Tinybeans for your most recent update which got rid of the “cards” feature and replaced it with a great “flashback” homepage. Such an improvement!

If I had to make one suggestion, it would be to lower the premium package subscription costs. Even as a devoted Tinybeans user.. I cannot justify spending $7.99/mo, $50/year for this service (even if it would allow me to upload longer videos).
As a new parent on a tight budget, I feel as though $3/mo is a more reasonable price for the “premium package “ that new parents could afford.

All in all, Tinybeans is a MUST GET for all new parents (parents in general)!

5 stars!

by Jmo343

I have a friend who loves TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum . You can download to start documenting for pregnancy which is nice in concept. Once I did, I started to get notifications asking me what my child (unborn) did today, asking me what he was wearing today etc. His birthday is the expected due date in the future and it's set to negative -- telling me that they know he's not born yet, but this programming flaw has been very annoying. I contacted customer service and they advised me to just turn off the notifications and reminders... mmmmk. How about fix the programming?? My sister had a baby so I bought her the premium version so she would stopped being hounded 24/7 for pics while trying to tend to her newborn. She loves it but agreed that is very annoying to get notifications on your unborn child's whereabouts, milestones, and outfits. Hopefully it's a simple fix but it's enough for me to not really use it at present and definitely not pay to upgrade.

by Jodie And Michael

I love that TinyBeans has created a private social media where I own the pictures/videos/all my content, and can download anytime. I can share special moments with my family without having to do a massive private message/sms or compromise privacy via traditional social media.
I have been using TinyBeans since my son’s first year and, as a new mom, I found the easiest, safest, and least difficult way to share with my family. My Dad tells me he looks at my daily TinyBeans updates each morning as part of his routine to have a great start to his day. And I love how it keeps everyone in the loop based on how much I want to share all at the same time. And each member of my group can choose how much interaction to have. It’s a win-win-win in my life.
There is also all the milestone tracking, medical tracking, articles, activities, and I’m barely scratching the surface. It’s an awesome app. It’s worth the subscription. Period.

by Absentoccupier

Tinybeans was recommended to me, but I wanted to see what else was out there. After downloading a few options (including Tinybeans) it was easy to make a choice. I wanted to make sure it was easy enough for grandparents and non-savvy family. And it has been great. There was a little confusion with initial sign-ups for some people, but we got it figured out now. When I first started using it (2 months ago) a lot of the filters, stickers, etc. weren’t working. But seems fixed now.

Overall, it has been such a stress free way to share moments/photos with family across the country. We didn’t want to use Facebook and this allows everyone to feel a little bit like they are not so far away.

Highly recommend for new parents!

Just a couple little glitches...

1. As the main user, I can’t tell if a family member has accepted my invitation. The only way I know is when they comment on a photo. Not a huge deal, but I ended up sending multiple invitations to people because I wasn’t sure if they had received them or not.

2. Wish there were a few more image options for stickers. Not a must, but would also be cool if you could draw directly on the photo. Specifically, I was trying to draw an arrow.

3. When posting more than one photo per day, it’s not clear that it’s easy for family to tell there is more than one.

4. I’ve had a couple people mention they can only comment with emojis and it won’t let them leave a regular comment.

by T0NY V3G4S

My wife and I wanted to be considerate about not oversharing photos of our child to social media for various reasons. TinyBeans is the perfect platform for us to remain connected to family and friends that genuinely want to stay up to date with child photos. It’s an easy process to get family members added and TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum is never trying to push me to recruit more members, unlike platforms like LinkedIn. I never feel limited by a pay wall or inundated with micro transactions. It helps us stay connected without sacrificing our privacy to the larger worlds of Facebook and Instagram. It’s a handy app for quickly accessing and showing off recent photos to people I run into without having to dig for them in my camera images, sifting past and explaining stupid memes saved to my phone. TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum is all baby stuff and it’s nice to have so accessible and organized.
Was happy to upgrade to premium when they ran a special, largely just to support the work of a well designed and executed app. Great work TinyBeans Team!

by Anna2016banana

With family spread all over the world I didn’t know how we would keep people posted on our littles ones birth and development. Who has time to email that many people all the time. We didn’t want to use other, more open platforms or hinder our elder tech-struggling family members. I thought after the first year we probably would slow down if not stop uploading pictures. Turns out we keep posting. Family and friends near and far love their daily dose of Tinybeans with their morning coffee. I hear it every time I’m on the phone with someone in our loop. They feel so much more connected to us this way since we can’t always be visiting. And now with an international move and covid lockdowns, our family can still keep up with us. It’s really been a great tool for us. We Love TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum and seeing the flashbacks you can jump to makes us smile. It’s been over four years now with TinyBeans and we are just so thankful for the connection they have provided.

by AmyJSnelly

We have a brand new daughter and our family is spread out all over the States and TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum is the perfect way to help them feel like they are a part of her life when they can't see her in person. The grandmothers love to "like" and comment, and I don't have to worry about clogging my social media with baby pictures. Though when it is time to post her monthly pic to Instagram it is super easy to go back through tiny beans and pick my favorites and see what her milestones were for the month.

We were also fortunate enough to have several close friends have with little ones all born this year, and we are all on tiny beans. And while I see most of these gals weekly it is awesome to follow their little ones on TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum as well. I like to go back and see what their babies were doing at the age my baby is, if that makes sense.

So both as a parent and as a friend I adore TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum. I am happily a premium member and I hope that it thrives for a long time so that I can always look back at these special moments.

by Poet Muse

If you love taking pictures of your family you have to have TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum. I can’t find the words to sum it up but TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum is AMAZING. Being a new mom, I post photos and videos of my baby almost daily. It is no more effort than to snap a picture as life happens and it captures our life in a organized easy to use way. It is so easy and so special to have and look back on. Our extended family- baby’ grandparents, aunts, uncles, & cousins- all live far away but here they are able to see our son every day and feel like they know him. If I can’t remember the exact date he first ate solid food, hey I can check Tiny Beans! I could go on and on... I recommended TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum to about 7 other expecting moms and they are all crazy about it too! The premium membership price is pretty high, but there is a free version. I only wish I had known about it from day one, but we started when our guy was 2 months old. He’s now turning ONE YEAR OLD! What a GIFT to be able to look back over (almost) each day of his first year! THANK YOU, Tiny Beans! 💕

by Maggs36

I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of photos and videos of my baby going on social media platforms and being shared with too broad of a network... friends of friends of friends... my concern was how quickly it snowballs and you can’t get things back. It’s my own personal feeling but I feel need to protect his privacy in a world that has grown comfortable sharing everything. At the same time I did want a way that I could share photos and videos of my baby with a smaller selected group of close family... when a friend told me about Tinybeans at my baby shower I knew it was right for what I needed. And I have LOVED it - we share pictures and photos with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and his great grandfather - it’s user friendly for everyone and the control stays with us. It’s also so organized which is great. I also like that I can track other milestones in Tinybeans - I usually forget but it’s nice to have the option. Having the daily photos helps me jog my memory when I try to fill in his baby book too. We just have the basic and I don’t mind the ads. Love it!

by 2020RT

I love TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum! It’s been a wonderful way to share photos of my son in a secure fashion and allow users to comment on said pictures. I started using it for the security/privacy features, but actually love it for so much more! Just made my first photo book, and if I had wanted autopopulate, it would’ve taken me less than 5 minutes to put it together and order. Editing was quick and intuitive though.
A few questions/suggestions:
1. The daily emails - some of my older relatives think this is all there is to TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum , so that’s a little confusing. However, these older relatives then send the photos wherever they want without thinking of my son’s privacy. I wish there were a way as a parent to choose whether these emails go out or not - just a toggle where you can turn daily emails on or off or something. Also, if they go through gmail, does gmail then use the images sent via email for deep learning etc?
2. The photo books - it would be awesome to have more page templates so we don’t have to choose between just one or four photos per page.
Overall, though, we’re really pleased with TinybeansPrivateFamilyAlbum ! Great idea, great work!