How to make a shared photo album: the three options, and their limits

There are three practical ways to make a shared photo album, and the right one depends less on features than on a single question: what do the other people have to own before they can add a photo?

Below is how each is set up, what each one publishes as its limits, and where each quietly fails.

Option 1: iCloud Shared Albums

On an iPhone or iPad, open Photos, tap the plus button, choose New Shared Album, name it and invite people. Subscribers can add their own photos if you leave "Subscribers Can Post" on.

Apple publishes the limits, which is unusual and useful (Apple Support, retrieved 2026-08-06).

Option 2: Google Photos shared albums

In Google Photos, create an album, open it, tap Share, and either invite people directly or copy a link. Turn on collaboration if you want others to add rather than only view.

Google's own sharing documentation states that "anyone with the link can view the photos and add to the album", and mentions a 20,000 photo limit in the context of Conversations (Google Photos Help, retrieved 2026-08-06).

Option 3: a link or QR album with no platform attached

The third route drops the platform requirement. Guests open a web page, pick photos, and upload. Nothing to install, no account, and it does not matter which phone they brought.

This is the category Gathmo is in, so treat what follows accordingly. Our free tier caps an album at 20 items, which is fine for a small gathering and not enough for an event; Essential at EUR 29 removes the item cap and keeps the album for 90 days. I mention the cap because "free" is the part people remember and the limit is the part they discover later.

Choosing between them

For an ongoing family album, iCloud or Google is the sensible answer and costs nothing. The platform requirement only becomes a real problem when the contributors are people you cannot walk through a setup step -- which is exactly what a party or a wedding is.

Three things that catch people out

1. Viewing and contributing are different permissions. A link that lets someone see the album often does not let them add to it, and that setting is easy to miss.
2. Uploads usually count against the uploader's storage, not yours. A guest close to full will quietly fail rather than tell you.
3. Compression is the default on most platforms. If you want originals, check before the event rather than after.

None of that argues for one option over another. It argues for testing with one real guest, on their phone, before the day -- which takes two minutes and is the only check that actually settles it.