FamilyAlbum - Photo Sharing Reviews

by Okay80

I hate apps that ask you to give them a review until you do. Nothing special about FamilyAlbum. I’m happy to be able to view pictures of my nephew but I don’t need FamilyAlbum to do that. Cut out the middle man. Nothing special about FamilyAlbum. Just reminds me of MySpace 15 years ago. Only difference is Tom is not my friend. I think a 10 year old can come up with a better app. FamilyAlbum makes me hate my life. I hate FamilyAlbum so much I might smash my phone with a hammer. Stuff the shards of glass in my underpants and walk a county mile! I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump created FamilyAlbum. Look what I did, I took someone’s idea from long ago and failed at copying it. It’s gone a be a UGE! Really I don’t hate FamilyAlbum...I just think it’s stupid and if people buy things off it they are dumb! I wonder if someone will read this whole review? If you do, I’ve had a long week and can’t fall asleep. I’ve been awake for about 30 hours now. The only good thing about FamilyAlbum is that I can write this long review, that is it. Other then that I’d like to kick senior management in the head like Walker Texas Ranger.

by Evs24

I love being able to upload photos and it automatically puts it into order of date taken. And I can easily search through the months. We’ve been using this with immediate and extended family for awhile. It would be nice to have more categories than just share with partner or with entire family. I would love to be able to share FamilyAlbum with family but let them name themselves rather than having to assign that. We have so many aunts and uncles and grandparents I can’t tell who is who unless it’s a comment.

My biggest issue is actually that you cannot upload photos in the background. FamilyAlbum HAS to be open and it is SLOW. I don’t always have access to great internet but even on fast internet it’s slow and I don’t have time to sit with FamilyAlbum open and not be able to do other things or even just turn off the screen. Anyone with a toddler knows this is near impossible and when I do have time I don’t have time to just stare at FamilyAlbum. You can’t even really look at other photos while you upload photos. Please let me upload in the background!

I wish the “baby book” feature of being able to put stories with photos had come out earlier. I was already committed to an app that I don’t love but don’t want to switch now.

by ShellME7

There are a lot of great things about FamilyAlbum (it auto sorts the photos in a timeline; shows the kids age, allows for comments, creates a private way to share with family, and it’s free!), but there is also room for improvement. I used LifeCake (now BackThen) for years until they decided to change their name so they could start charging $5/month to use it which I personally think is excessive. When I decided to switch to avoid the cost, Family Album checked a lot of the boxes as to what I was looking for, however once I got into using it, there were features of LifeCake that I assumed this would have but it doesn’t. The two biggest to my family and me were (1) the ability to add captions to the photos, and (2) the ability for people to add “likes”. The captions gave family members more insight into what was going on and I wrote the captions from our kids’ perspective which gave the photos and videos “personality” and an opportunity for humor. The likes just made everyone feel a little more connected because you could see people were viewing the photos together even if they didn’t have a comment. I do really appreciate that the free version of FamilyAlbum is still functional in a lot of ways but it has definitely been a step back from the experience my family had using LifeCake. Hope there is room for these improvements soon!

by Sisabeth

FamilyAlbum is great for sharing photos of my baby with my family, since we are not in the same state as any of them right now! I love that I can privately share all of my photos of her with them. Sometimes, I don’t want to share certain photos of her on social media.

A couple of things I wish they would fix is the fact that it pauses my upload when you have to leave FamilyAlbum for any reason. I still have it open in the background, but it does not continue the upload. Also, I wish it would show more than just the first three letters of people’s nicknames. She has more than one aunt and uncle. I know it’s a premium feature, but I wish the video length was longer for non-premium. Maybe, make it up to 5 minutes.

by A.Kettering

I I absolutely love the concept of this. I upload my pictures frequently for my entire family. However there is one person in my family that I do want to see pictures but I do not want them to comment or have the ability to upload pictures. Unfortunately, developers have not developed a way to only have a feature in which I can turn off commenting and uploading for one person in my group. Also,I have three kids and the pictures in the special features where it shows my three kids are always wrong. I’d like to personally be able to add pictures to their accounts and select the pictures myself not have the computer automatically generate them because the computer is always wrong and it’s super annoying to see my daughters picture with my husbands pictures on her thumbnail or her brothers she does not like that. Otherwise I think this is a great concept I hope that the developers really do fix some of these glitches or things that might’ve not been thought of when they first develop FamilyAlbum I really do like it and hope to continue to use it.

by Jen98a

I love FamilyAlbum as it’s a closed group controlled by the parents.

Unlike one reviewer I do wish it was a little more like social media with something to allow us to see which pictures are seen by whom and their favorites.

The latter is important because it’d be nice to know which pictures they like so that I can get them printed on canvas as gifts or other gifts as a surprise.

Also instead of “other” for family invited it’s be nice to be able to write in their relations as some of us have nontraditional families.

On that note when seeing who’s viewed the album it’d be nice to customize the circles. I have step parents so in our family there are three sets of grandparents and all I see is “Gra”. Grandpa? Grandma? Which ones? Total my child has 3 grandfathers and 3 grandmothers so “Gra” isn’t specific enough. In the comments their full title comes up.

All and all I love FamilyAlbum including the little movie clips generated every few months although I wish they could be redone. I hadn’t added my pregnancy pictures or some early baby pics when my movie was generated so it’s missing those.

Also a plus is the browser version. Great grandparents that aren’t too phone savvy use this option.

EDIT: another request - allow adding captions to the pictures once selected to upload. Waiting to “comment” due to processing can take time & then sometimes I forget then having people asking me for info.

by Smashlie2015

Just got FamilyAlbum today and I’m really liking it so far. It’s nice to share photos and videos without having to blow up Instagram to do it. One thing I’m not loving is how specific it is. For instance, to create an album you choose an option to “create your own child’s album” and you have to select if you are the “mom” or “dad” to be able to make the album. I think that makes family without children feel excluded. I think you should be able to create “your family’s” album, not just “your child’s”. There are ways around it, you can name your ‘child’s’ album “Smith Family” and say you are the “mom” and put say your anniversary as the child’s birth date. But this was a very confusing process for my family members that are a little less tech savvy. I do have just the free version so maybe this is different on the paid version.

by SRES249

As a new mom who barely had the time to shower in the beginning FamilyAlbum was a wonderful find! Once you get the chance to dump your photos and videos in, it sorts them by month (it knows when they were taken) and creates a month by month album for you, that can be shared with and commented on by family and friends of your choosing. It also gives you a cute little montage video every three months. (And more if you pay but I have the free version). My parents live across the country and this album has meant the world to them. A daily peek into our little Ruby’s world, daily growth and changes. I can’t say enough good stuff about FamilyAlbum!!! And no, I wasn’t paid. 😂

by Katikatiii

All of our friends and family live across the country so when we had our newborn FamilyAlbum made it easy to post photos of her all in one place instead of sending out individual texts to everyone (this new mom was getting stressed with all the photo demands). FamilyAlbum makes it so no one feels left out and puts our little ones memories into chronological order. The memory book feature is pretty neat, I haven’t ordered one yet though but once I do I’ll update my review. I also have yet to see the 1s video but I’m excited to see that once it’s curated!

The only thing I wish you were able to do is caption the photo instead of it turning into a comment.

Overall, it’s a pretty solid app! 🤗

by M3o21x21

I don’t normally write reviews but I had to! I have been using this for the past 3 months, ever since my lil man was a few weeks old. I found myself sending the same photo to multiple people or taking multiple pictures and sending them to different people because I wanted everyone able to watch him grow and hit milestones whether they were big or small. I love FamilyAlbum because it allows me to share things but also the family members can add the albums so I get to see pictures that I’ve never seen! Either way, if you have a split family or even family far away and would like a place to put your photos I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!!

by Copperheadroadmomma

I was looking for a way to share photos of our newborn with the entire family- but let’s be honest who really has time to be texting the same picture over 10 times because no one likes being part of a group message? And not to mention EVERYONE asking for new pictures all the time!! FamilyAlbum makes it so easy to just upload your pictures and everyone gets the notification there’s new photos. I love how people can comment on them and even add their own pictures if you allow it! Such an awesome app I’m so happy it exists, we aren’t social media users and I didn’t want my baby to have a social media footprint before they are old enough to make the decision on their own. Thank you for making FamilyAlbum!!!!!

by Gnikeseigailemac

I gave birth during a pandemic. The moment my son was born I sent a Family Album invite to the entire family since no one was allowed to visit. Since then, the family has been obsessed! It’s so much nicer and easier to post pictures on FamilyAlbum than to send them via text. I love seeing the entire family interacting in the comments and love the fact that they can now PRINT PICTURES! I’ve got a lot of family members who are not very tech savvy, so it’s really cool that everything is right there in FamilyAlbum if they want to print pictures for themselves or make a book! I got an ad for this while playing a silly game and boy am I glad I checked it out. It seriously has been a game changer! Thank you for FamilyAlbum! I & my family LOVE IT!

by OhLookAChelsea

I don’t often write reviews for apps. It’s just not something I’ve taken to doing. But FamilyAlbum absolutely out-classes every single thing I’ve ever seen or tried to use. It’s intuitive, it’s functional, it’s amazing across devices, the whole nine yards. I LOVE taking pictures. We’re a two-family system with the boys’ Dad and I being married while their Mother is married to someone else. This lets us share pictures with everyone without having the added pressure of Facebook or some other site. I’ve used the free version of this since 2018, but now that the boys are older and I’m even more nostalgic I’ve gotten the paid portion and it’s AMAZING.

We love watching the 1-second movies. Uploading is super easy. Sharing is easy. I love that it separates by month and year and tells you how old they were. I love that it lets you comment on them. And I love that after you upload a picture it doesn’t show that same picture as an uploadable option anymore.

Long story short — you’ve made an AMAZING app. I love it. And I hope it’s around for a LONG time to come.

by Nan Cathie

We love FamilyAlbum! We use it to keep up with our twin granddaughters living in another country! FamilyAlbum is easy to use, there is a place to make comments, and you get to see the comments of others that have been invited to the album. An extra special feature of FamilyAlbum is that you can purchase albums, photos, and DVDs of the photos that are loaded onto the album! The DVD’s, photos, and albums can be custom made, or you can simply purchase an album that FamilyAlbum decides to build. We have decided to use the pre-chosen album, and they are fabulous!! The photos are clear, similar photos are next to each other in the album, the albums arrive quickly and are very affordable! Out of five stars I would give this a 5+ star :-).

by TheBumbliestBee

I’ve never taken the time to write a review for an app before, but this is hands down my favorite app. It’s wonderful having all the family photos in one place and it’s easy enough to use that all three generations of our family can do it. I really love that it stores good quality videos, whereas when we text them to our family they get distorted or pixelated. It also makes us feel closer to our family because we can share stuff daily so even our family states away know how our kids are growing up. It’s also nice to be able to share as much of our photo library without bombarding everyone with texts of them. My dad, who is not very tech savvy nor a big user of smart phones, constantly brings up how much he loves FamilyAlbum and how much joy it brings him daily. Honestly, I recommend it to anyone and everyone.

by Emily Amason

I’m loving FamilyAlbum so far. I love how it makes videos every few months that highlight certain pictures. I personally like that it doesn’t have the typical social media feel since I downloaded FamilyAlbum to get away from social media. It’s wonderful to not worry about which family members have been sent a picture or not, it’s all right there! I wish the pictures would stay where the are are not rotate through every time you open FamilyAlbum . Would also be nice to choose your own photo that stays at the top of the month. I don’t find it frustrating finding which pictures to upload since I don’t wait to load a bunch at one time. I like how you can see the relationship to the people who are commenting. Would be nice to have other family titles instead of “other”. Overall a great app and I’m super happy with it! I hope it stays away from social media feel because I love how it is now.

by Briannac33

The #1 issue I have with Family Album is not being able to turn off notifications for one album without turning them off for all albums. Having multiple family members’ kids’ albums is great, except when their relatives that you don’t even know comment multiple times per day on everything posted. It is so frustrating. It would be great to be able to mute more distant family’s albums and check them periodically while still being notified about activity on my own children’s albums. I also wish I could caption photos and videos I upload rather than it being a regular comment.
That being said, family album is essentially a private photo sharing app that works by invitation. It’s very handy for keeping your kids’ photos private but still sharing them with family members near or far.

by Bmast39

I spent several hours trying a bunch of different types of these family sharing apps when our girl was born and this is the one I settled on. Although it has a cap of 3 min on videos (biggest con), it checks every other box better than all the competitors. I also love the “partner only” option, for those adorable pics that perhaps shouldn’t be circulated too widely. We’ve all been using it for four months and it’s excellent.

My one suggestion (for now): When uploading pictures, i should be able to look at different folders within the photo app on my phone. For example, I often take 10 pics at a time and then favorite the one that is best. Then when I go to upload, I should be able to go to my “favorites” folder and select from there. As of now, all I can do is see my whole camera roll, which means that I have to curate the photos all over again. This should be an easy fix. Apps like Instagram have this feature.

by MCV345

Okay I just had 13 reasons listed out as to why this is the best app and then my review just closed out (don’t worry FamilyAlbum has never crashed!) so instead of rewriting them all I’ll just say we live hours away from all family and they love FamilyAlbum as much as we do because they said they don’t feel like they’re missing out on our baby growing up and that’s pretty priceless (but FamilyAlbum is free (and no ads?!) so like … it really is priceless). So instead of me rewriting all 13 reasons just trust me you will love FamilyAlbum if you have kids and family/friends that want to see pictures/videos of them 😁 also just in case you’re considering using google photos, I like this better because people can comment and idk if google photos does this but once you upload a picture to FamilyAlbum , it won’t show up as an option to upload in the future so you’re not sitting there trying to remember the last thing you uploaded if you only upload every couple days like we do.

by Rebekah_Patterson

I LOVE FamilyAlbum!! I don’t like to post a lot of pictures of my baby on Facebook because of the weirdos out there. But I still want to be able to share pictures of her with our family so I downloaded FamilyAlbum. You have to have an invitation from me to view the pictures so it’s very secure. It’s so much easier than sending pictures to each family member separately and I’m able to choose who sees which pictures. Each family member is able to comment on the pics and they can add pics to if I allow it. I also love that it creates videos every month to look back at the month before. I haven’t ordered a photo book yet but plan to soon. I would definitely recommend FamilyAlbum, especially for new parents!! It’s more than worth the $5 in my opinion.

by Pdkcooks

Great app, allows our family to stay up to date with each other’s kids. Really comes in handy when making sure the grandparents get to see all the photos! No more hearing “I never saw that photo, why didn’t I get to see it!” which is a good thing I’m told. My wife and I just added our first album and thus far we’re liking it, up to know we’d only been family members. Overall a good app and easy to use maybe some minor adjustments would help it improve over time.

Here are some thoughts:

add a night mode, kind of like Twitter, it’s a really nice feature.
Make it easier to switch between albums, it shouldn’t involve going to settings and I’m sure that is complicated for some less tech savvy users. Maybe make a drop down menu from the top of the screen like Instagram has added for multiple accounts.
Allow users to organize photos from newest to oldest, scrolling down to see the newest photos in an album, especially in larger albums is annoying.
Make the photo the largest part of the recents list, I don’t need to see a huge bubble explaining who commented what or who added it, make that information secondary to the most important part which is the photo itself.

by EckandMick

Why is FamilyAlbum limited to families with new children? I have adult children scattered and we would love to be able to create an album where each person can add pictures to it and have our own adult family photo album. While I am sure I can make it work, to create an album it says “create own child’s album”. When my children were young (more than one child), we didn’t manage a photo album for each one, we had a -
family album - just as your app suggests. How about a second option that says “create a family album”. It seems like if I want to create a shared family album, but do not have small children, I am not welcomed to use FamilyAlbum the way it’s branded.

by Thisisdorothy

This is a wonderful app! I love that I can easily share pictures with my family who don’t often get to see our new baby since they live far away. I also love that I can share photos with them without having to post pictures of our daughter all over the Internet.

One thing I don’t like is that in the “Visits” section it’s hard to see who the person actually is when they all have similar nicknames (more than one “Aunt” or “Grandma” for example), since it just abbreviates to the first 3 letters of the name.

I would also like it if you could “like” or react to people’s comments as well as posts. (A lot of my family puts a “❤️” comment on EVERY picture.) And maybe be able to reply to specific comments. Other than that, it’s a great app!

by Kay_kay777

Love, love, LOVE FamilyAlbum!!! I just had my first baby this year and I tried out a couple of different photo album apps so I could share photos with my family without posting all over social media and keep them all together in an album that’ll stay organized and I won’t lose. This one is by far the best out of all the ones I tried! It’s so easy to use and automatically saves the date and puts your photos in order so I can go back and visit specific months. And if you’re sent photos from someone else’s phone and the dates get all messed up it’s super easy to fix, keeping everything in order. I just love FamilyAlbum and am so thankful for it! ❤️

by Awesome1234itsgreat

I never leave reviews, but my baby just turned one and I’m so grateful for FamilyAlbum. My favorite thing about FamilyAlbum is that I can so easily go back month by month to the very first pictures we took of him in the hospital. It’s also perfect for sharing with family members that aren’t on social media and for people like me who need to take breaks from social media. I love taking pictures of him and want family to see, so this helps keep it in the family. My only critique is the inability to tag family members in the comment section. I wish I could easily respond to comments by tagging to keep the conversation going. Still worth the five stars!

by Jewllllls

I love the layout of FamilyAlbum!! I tried out a few apps like this, but Family Album is by far the best. The uploads are quick, the format is so easy to use, and my family loves commenting on the pictures. FamilyAlbum is so cute!!!

I’ve only thought about one thing I would change... I use FamilyAlbum for my side of the family, but my husband and I want to be able to share it with his side as well. Since our sides of the family are drastically different, we don’t want to add members of both sides, because no one would comment or there might be competition between the grandmas... I wish there was a way to have the same pictures and videos shared with specific groups of people, to where they can’t see each other’s comments. This might be a weird request, but for families who have contrasting personalities between in-laws, this would be very helpful!

by AwkwardlyKali

I discovered FamilyAlbum a while ago before I even considered having a baby and put it in the back of my mind. When we finally got pregnant I downloaded it and updated it with ultrasounds of the baby as well as my pregnancy bump.

Once he was finally born I added family who is scattered all over the US and it has been so helpful considering they only get to visit once every couple of years or so! Not to mention it is so much easier than sending individually, or if there’s something you didn’t want to put on Facebook but wanted to share with family it’s a great way to share them. I also love how family members can comment, save, and favorite the photos they love! It’s so helpful to them and a very easy to use interface.

I am so happy that an app like this exists and I found it, I hope so many other people find it and enjoy it too!

The only thing I wish it had was the ability to put a caption as well as a reply button so you can reply to a certain comment. Otherwise it’s a fantastic app!

Highly recommend.