Your photos & ownership
Are my photos locked in? Can I get them out?
Your photos are never held hostage. Every photo in your gallery is downloadable at full resolution, by any family member, at any time. One click per photo, no export fees, no waiting period, no 'contact support to request your data.' The photos are yours. We're the shelf they sit on, not the owner of what's on it.
What happens to my photos if I cancel?
Your photos are preserved for 6 months after cancellation. During that window you can reactivate and find everything exactly as you left it, or download anything you need. We will never delete your family's photos the day a payment stops, and canceling never requires a phone call, a retention offer, or an explanation.
What happens if KinPhotos ever shuts down?
If we ever wound down the service, every family would get at least 90 days' notice with downloads fully open, and we would provide a complete export of your archive, full-resolution photos and your tags and captions. Building a family archive means being straight about this question, and that's our commitment in writing.
Do you own or use my photos?
No. You retain all rights to your photos. We don't use them for advertising, we don't train AI models on them, and we don't sell or share data about them. Your photos exist on KinPhotos to be seen by the people you invite. Nobody else, including us, except as needed to run the service (like generating thumbnails).
Privacy & security
Who can see my family's gallery?
Only the people you invite. Galleries are private and invitation-only. They're not public, not searchable on Google, and not visible to other KinPhotos families. Photos are stored in private cloud storage and served through time-limited access links, so there's no permanent public URL to your photos floating around.
Can I control what family members can do?
Yes. Everyone you invite can browse, search, download, comment, upload their own photos, put names and dates on photos, and organize albums. That's the point of a family archive. Admins can also delete photos, invite and remove members, change roles, and manage the subscription. From the dashboard an admin can make anyone else an admin, and we recommend having at least two, so the archive never depends on a single person.
Family & membership
How many family members can I invite?
Unlimited, at no extra cost. One $49/year subscription covers the whole family, siblings, cousins, grandkids, the aunt who only checks email on Sundays. There are no per-seat charges and no member limits, ever. Everyone gets their own sign-in.
Do family members have to pay anything?
No. One subscription covers everyone. Invited members browse, search, comment, tag, and download at no cost. They just click the invitation and sign in.
What happens to the gallery as generations change?
The gallery belongs to the family, not to one person's account. Because multiple members can be admins, the archive carries on when the person who set it up steps back, which is the point. We built KinPhotos because photo collections kept dying with the one relative who managed them.
How we compare
Is KinPhotos an alternative to Google Photos?
For the family archive, yes. For camera-roll backup, no. Google Photos is built to automatically back up one person's phone, and it's excellent at that; keep using it. KinPhotos is built for the collection that belongs to the whole family: unlimited members co-own it, everyone can upload and tag, and the archive doesn't live or die with one person's account. Many families use both, Google Photos for the daily stream, KinPhotos for the photos that matter across generations.
How is a family archive different from a shared album?
A shared album is a window into one person's library. Invitees can look, and sometimes add, but the owner's account holds everything. A family archive is co-owned: every member has their own sign-in, uploads and tagging come from every branch of the family, and multiple admins mean the collection survives generational handoff. Ownership, not features, is the real difference.
What happens to photos stored in one person's cloud account when they die?
Usually, they're lost. Personal accounts at Google, Apple, and Amazon pass to family only if legacy settings were configured in advance (most people never do it), and content in inactive accounts is eventually deleted. That failure mode is the reason KinPhotos galleries support multiple admins and unlimited members: the archive belongs to the family, not to whoever set it up.
Pricing & billing
Can I see a gallery before I sign up?
Yes. The sample gallery at kinphotos.com/demo is a real family's archive of a few hundred scanned prints, open to anyone and read-only: search by person, year, or place, open any photo, flip a print over to read the back. It's exactly what your family would see, minus the ability to add or change anything.
What does KinPhotos cost?
$49 per year, flat, with a 30-day free trial. Cancel before day 30 and your card is never charged. That one subscription covers the whole family: unlimited members, unlimited invitations, no per-person fees.
Are there hidden fees?
No. Downloads are free. Inviting family is free. Full-resolution files are free. There are no per-member charges and nothing to upgrade to. One price, one family, one year.