Event Photos Backed Up to a Cloud You Own
Galeira collects guest photos in a private event gallery, then mirrors approved originals to storage you control. See backup status, retry failures, and export while your archive is active.
- ✓One QR collects from every guest, no app install
- ✓Approved originals mirror to a cloud account you own
- ✓Per-event backup receipt shows counts and destination
- ✓Automatic retry with exponential backoff on failures
- ✓ZIP export available while your archive is active
- ✓Files remain in your connected cloud account
Why event photo apps are not enough
Most event photo apps store every upload in their own cloud and hand you a viewer. The originals sit on infrastructure you do not control, behind credentials you do not hold, governed by a roadmap you cannot see. When the app is healthy this looks fine. When the company changes pricing, gets acquired, sunsets a free tier, or quietly shuts down, your event archive moves with their decision rather than yours.
The wedding and family-event space has a long memory of this pattern. Capsule, Wedshoots, WedPics, Veri, and similar guest-photo services have come and gone over the past decade, each taking their hosted galleries with them. Hosts who treated the app as the archive were left with screenshots and whatever guests happened to re-share on chat. The lesson is not that hosted galleries are bad. The lesson is that a hosted gallery alone is not a backup.
Galeira treats the gallery as a working surface and the host's own cloud as the archive of record. The viewer is convenient. The mirrored originals in your own account are durable.
- ✓Hosted-only galleries depend entirely on the vendor staying online
- ✓Past guest-photo apps have shut down with little notice
- ✓Screenshots from a viewer are not a backup of originals
- ✓You cannot audit what you cannot access
What own-cloud backup means
Own-cloud backup means the originals land in a cloud account you already own and control, not in a vendor-managed pool you rent access to. In Galeira, you connect a destination once during event setup. Guests upload through the gallery as usual. The moderation queue runs, you approve what belongs in the archive, and approved originals are copied to a folder inside your connected account.
The distinction matters for three reasons. First, access does not depend on Galeira staying online indefinitely; the files live in your Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, S3 bucket, or WebDAV server under your credentials. Second, retention follows your policy, not ours; you can move, copy, or archive the folder using the tools you already use. Third, recovery is straightforward; if you ever lose your Galeira login, your originals are still where you put them.
Galeira keeps a working copy to power the gallery, search, thumbnails, and downloads. Your connected cloud holds the canonical originals. The two stay in sync through the mirror queue described below.
- ✓Originals copied into a folder inside your own account
- ✓Access governed by your cloud credentials, not ours
- ✓Retention and sharing follow your existing policy
- ✓Galeira keeps a working copy; your cloud holds the canonical originals
Supported destinations
Galeira supports five categories of destination today, covering the cloud accounts most hosts already pay for. You connect a destination from the event settings page using the provider's standard authorization flow, choose a parent folder, and Galeira creates a per-event subfolder for the mirrored originals.
Google Drive places the event subfolder under a parent you pick in My Drive or a Shared Drive. Dropbox uses an app folder or a chosen parent path inside your account. OneDrive supports both personal and Microsoft 365 work or school accounts and mirrors into a chosen folder. S3-compatible storage works with AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, and any provider that speaks the S3 API; you supply a bucket and prefix. WebDAV covers Nextcloud, ownCloud, Synology, and similar self-hosted servers; you supply the endpoint URL and credentials.
The per-event folder layout is identical across destinations: one folder per event, photos named with their original filename plus a short identifier to prevent collisions, and a small manifest file recording counts and timestamps for the backup receipt.
- ✓Google Drive (My Drive or Shared Drive parent)
- ✓Dropbox (app folder or chosen path)
- ✓OneDrive (personal, work, or school)
- ✓S3-compatible (AWS S3, R2, B2, Wasabi)
- ✓WebDAV (Nextcloud, ownCloud, Synology)
What gets mirrored
Only approved originals are mirrored. Guest uploads first land in a pending queue inside the gallery. Each upload must complete the multi-part finalize step (so the file is whole, not a partial transfer), pass virus and format checks, and then be approved by a host or co-host. Approval is the trigger that enqueues the mirror job.
The mirror job copies the full-resolution file as the guest sent it, preserving the original filename, EXIF metadata, and capture timestamp. Galeira does not strip metadata, does not re-encode, and does not downscale the file before sending it to your cloud. The thumbnails and previews used by the gallery viewer are generated separately and stay inside Galeira; only the canonical original is copied to your destination.
Things that are deliberately not mirrored: rejected uploads, duplicates flagged by the dedupe check, uploads still in the pending queue, and videos above the per-plan size cap if your plan does not include them. Comments, reactions, and gallery metadata stay inside Galeira because they are gallery features, not archive contents.
- ✓Full-resolution original bytes, no re-encode
- ✓Original filename, EXIF, and capture timestamp preserved
- ✓Triggered by host approval, not raw upload
- ✓Rejected, duplicate, and pending items are not mirrored
Backup status and failure handling
Each approved photo carries a backup status that you can see in the event dashboard. The states are queued (waiting for a worker), running (currently uploading to your destination), success (confirmed write with the provider's returned file identifier), failed (last attempt did not succeed, will retry), and permanent-failed (retries exhausted, needs host attention).
Failures are retried automatically on an exponential backoff schedule. The first retry happens within minutes; subsequent retries spread out over hours so that transient provider outages, expired tokens, or temporary quota errors resolve themselves without flooding the destination. After a fixed retry budget the item moves to permanent-failed and you receive an alert in the dashboard and by email.
Common failure causes are surfaced with plain-English remediation: token expired (reconnect the destination), folder deleted (pick a new parent), quota exceeded (free space or upgrade), and credentials revoked (re-authorize). Once you act, you can retry permanent-failed items in bulk from the backup tab, and the queue picks up where it left off.
- ✓Five states: queued, running, success, failed, permanent-failed
- ✓Exponential backoff retry on transient errors
- ✓Alerts on permanent failures and token expiry
- ✓Bulk retry available after you fix the root cause
Backup receipt
Every event has a backup receipt page. It is a single view that answers the question a host actually asks at the end of the night: did everything make it to my cloud, and where is it. The receipt shows the connected destination (provider, account email, and folder path), the count of approved photos, the count successfully mirrored, the count in flight, the count failed, and the timestamp of the last successful verification check.
The verification check runs on a schedule. It re-reads the file listing from your destination via the provider's API and compares it against Galeira's record of what should be there. If a file in the record is missing from the destination, the receipt flags it and the mirror queue re-uploads. If a file is in the destination but not in Galeira's record (for example, you added a folder yourself), it is left alone.
The receipt is shareable with a co-host or partner so they can see backup health without needing access to the gallery moderation tools. It is also exportable as a PDF for hosts who want a paper record alongside the event archive.
- ✓Destination, folder path, and account shown clearly
- ✓Live counts: approved, mirrored, in flight, failed
- ✓Timestamp of last verification against your cloud
- ✓Shareable view and PDF export
Export and shutdown protection
There are two independent paths to your photos at any time. The first is ZIP export from inside Galeira: while your archive is active you can request a ZIP of the full-resolution originals for any event, and Galeira builds it on demand and emails a download link. This works whether or not you have connected a cloud destination, and it is the simplest way to make a one-off offline copy.
The second path is the connected cloud destination itself. Because approved originals are mirrored to a folder inside your own account, you already have a usable copy outside Galeira. You can open Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, your S3 bucket, or your WebDAV server, navigate to the event folder, and the originals are there under your credentials.
If Galeira itself were ever to wind down, the planned operator policy is to give advance notice, freeze new uploads, and keep the ZIP export and the mirror queue running through a defined wind-down window so hosts can finalize their archives. The files already mirrored to your connected cloud account are not affected by anything that happens to Galeira because they live in your account.
- ✓On-demand ZIP export while the archive is active
- ✓Mirrored copies remain accessible in your own cloud
- ✓Two independent recovery paths by design
- ✓Wind-down policy preserves export and mirror during notice window
Back up originals to a cloud you already own.
Galeira stores the event gallery so guests can view and download it, but the important part is ownership. When you connect a cloud destination, approved originals mirror to a place you control: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, S3, or WebDAV. The backup-status page shows what copied, what is pending, and what needs attention.
External cloud-provider outages and account deletions are outside Galeira's control — which is exactly why the receipt matters. You can verify, retry, and export while your archive is active.
How Galeira compares to the methods people try
Each method gets photos somewhere. The differences are in friction, quality, privacy, and what you can recover afterward.
Questions hosts ask before they create the QR
What does "own cloud" mean?
Own cloud means the cloud account is yours, not Galeira's. You sign in to your Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, S3, or WebDAV provider, authorize Galeira to write to a folder you choose, and approved originals are copied there under your credentials.
Which cloud destinations does Galeira support?
Today Galeira supports Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive (personal, work, and school), any S3-compatible bucket (AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi), and WebDAV servers including Nextcloud, ownCloud, and Synology. You can connect one destination per event.
Why isn't Google Photos in the list?
The Google Photos API does not return original-quality bytes for files uploaded by third-party apps, which conflicts with our goal of mirroring true originals. We are also pending Google's OAuth verification for Photos scopes. For now, Google Drive is the recommended Google destination.
What's the difference between uploaded and backed up?
Uploaded means the file reached Galeira and is visible in the moderation queue. Backed up means the file has been approved by you and successfully mirrored to your connected cloud account, with the provider's returned identifier on record. The backup receipt shows both counts.
What happens if my cloud is full?
The mirror job fails with a quota-exceeded error and the affected files move into the retry queue. You will see an alert on the backup receipt and in your dashboard. Once you free space or upgrade your plan, you can bulk-retry the failed items and the queue resumes.
Can I connect more than one cloud?
Each event connects to one destination at a time, which keeps the backup receipt and verification logic simple. If you want a second copy, the most reliable approach is to run a periodic ZIP export or use your cloud provider's own copy or sync features to a secondary location.
Does Galeira keep my photos forever?
Galeira retains your gallery and originals while your archive is active under your plan, but the durable copy is the one in your connected cloud account. We do not promise indefinite hosting on our side; the design is that your own cloud is the long-term home and Galeira is the working surface.
What if a backup fails?
Failed mirror jobs are retried automatically on an exponential backoff schedule. Persistent failures move to a permanent-failed state and you receive an alert with the likely cause, such as an expired token or a deleted folder. After you address the cause, you can retry the affected items in bulk.
Can I get a receipt of what was backed up?
Yes. Each event has a backup receipt page showing the destination, folder path, account, current counts by state, and the timestamp of the last verification against your cloud. The receipt is shareable and can be exported as a PDF.
What happens if Galeira shuts down?
Photos already mirrored to your connected cloud account stay where they are because they live under your credentials, not ours. The planned wind-down policy is to give advance notice and keep the ZIP export and mirror queue running through the notice window so any remaining approved originals can finish copying.
Can I export my photos?
You can request a ZIP of full-resolution originals for any event while the archive is active. Galeira builds the archive on demand and emails you a download link. This works independently of whether you have a cloud destination connected.
Is the backup encrypted?
Transfers to your destination use HTTPS, and the files are stored using the encryption-at-rest provided by your chosen cloud (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, S3, WebDAV server). Galeira does not add a separate encryption layer on top, because doing so would prevent you from opening the files directly in your own cloud.
Keep reading
Create your event QR in about 60 seconds
Guests scan, upload, and view the gallery. You keep full-resolution originals backed up to your own cloud.