[darknavi]

I'm surprised more people here don't pay for iCloud for at least the bottom tier storage (50GB). The free 5GB is almost worthless in 2025 for doing nightly backups. I don't back up with Apple Photos but even with "just" app data my nightly auto backups are like 10-15GB.

[crossroadsguy]

Even on iPhone there are much better and much cheaper solutions out there (not to mention cross platform) and those have everything a couple of times better than Photos.app and then a bit more. Maybe except Apple's troupe of privacy claims.

[scarface_74]

Can I use these more and better alternatives to back up everything on all of my iOS devices?

[willseth]

Like what? I use Backblaze B2 to backup all my non-Apple stuff and that's $6/TB/mo. iCloud's 2TB plan is $10/mo, so actually cheaper per TB, but with Backblaze you only pay for what you use so it may be cheaper. But pricing is pretty comparable, and I can't even imagine what a PITA it would be to use B2 for Apple stuff, so certainly seems like a good value. Are you saying there are even cheaper solutions that also have good Apple integration?