I wanted a photo sharing app where I could share pictures with my family and only my family. I also wanted something with online albums for easy sorting and some way to write down notes. I wasn’t interested in something that I would constantly have to update privacy settings or pick and choose which groups could see which pictures. This app has everything I wanted and it doesn’t have anything I didn’t want (hope that makes sense). I love that it is by invite only. I love that everything is well organized. I have consistently used this app for many years and it is still relevant and useful to me.

I’ve used this app for over a year now. It has two glaring flaws. 1. The news feed is not in chronological order by the dates user indicates. It’s chronological by the day the user input them into the feed. The user can put in entries after an event happened, set the date it happened, but the app will not reorder the timeline of events to match the date the user set. 2. The printed books the app can generate from the general newsfeed are missing any text the user puts into the app to tell the story behind the pictures. If the user is trying to utilize the app as a journal, it’s pointless to print a hard copy book of the general newsfeed as it will not contain any written information.The pros: Yes, it does allow the user to limit access to whoever they want to see their content. Its is fairly simple to use. Viewers of the user’s content can make comments about the entries.

I absolutely loved 23snaps and have been a beta tester since I downloaded 3 years ago. It had a great free plan and my immediate and extended family used it daily to share and comment on family videos and photos (the 2 stars are for what 23snaps once offered and a few things they still offer). But then 23snaps severely hacked access to key basic features available in the free plan and are forcing a very poorly thought out premium plan to regain access. With their new free plan, they chopped the already limited video length from 60 secs to 10 secs (what is this, Vine??). They also now limit you to uploading only 1 photo at a time, so goodbye uploads from family trips. There's also reduced resolution in your uploads. Two things that are really frustrating about a move like this: 1) Rather than increase value in their premium plan to actually draw customers to it voluntarily, they are instead inflicting pain on their existing customers to coerce them into paying for premium. Not a great way to retain users or increase paying customers. 2) This is a family photo/video app but they don't have family premium plans. This means that every single user in your family has to buy their own premium plan to be able to get the basic features that they used to have - if I buy a premium plan, I'll be able to upload 2 or more photos at a time but my wife cannot.Now I'm trying to figure out what to do for family photo and video sharing and management. I've discovered a number of great alternatives out there that are free or really understand how to offer real additional value that makes premium plans worth it, but all of my memories of the past three years (since my first child was born) are now trapped in 23snaps. I'd much rather stick with 23snaps rather than migrate my whole extended family to another app, and I would've even become a paying customer if the value was worth it and the plans were family-oriented, but this move to squeeze their free users is probably going to push me to find a better, long-term solution.

This app allows you to have a private platform with select family and friends to share photos with it, however I agree with previous commenters saying that it has not been innovative in keeping up with technology like other photo apps. I think the $3.99/month upgrade to have HD videos at 3 minutes in length should be a given with this app- especially considering this is standard now with most other tech platforms. I like the app, I just don’t love it. Sadly I think if another app came to my attention that was similar but was more up-to-date in bug fixes and had more of these features built in, I would switch. For now, I’ll keep using this one, and will have hope the developers of the app will make some adjustments as I do feel the app has great potential.