Frequently asked questions

Photo Fort is a small, family-owned business — not a venture-backed startup chasing user growth. It was started by parents who had made a simple decision about their own children: their photos would never go on social media, where they could end up in advertising or in front of strangers. We couldn't find a service we trusted with that, so we built one.

Because we read the fine print. Across the industry — including small, friendly-looking family photo apps — privacy policies commonly reserve the right to share user data with third parties for analytics, advertising, and increasingly for AI training. Photos of our children were not something we were willing to hand over on those terms. So Photo Fort is built the other way round: your photos live in private storage, they're visible only to the people you invite, and they are never fed to advertisers or AI models.

By giving our customers something genuinely worth paying for — not by selling their data. Today that means subscriptions, and in future it may include other things people actually want, like photo prints. What we will never do is earn money from your information: no ads, no selling or sharing your data, and no licensing your photos for AI training. That line doesn't move. When a service is free and sells you nothing, its users are usually the product — our incentive is to make Photo Fort better for you, because that's the only thing that keeps you here.

Deliberately not. There's no public feed, no algorithm deciding what you see, no follower counts, no endless scroll, and nothing engineered to keep you on your phone longer. Photo Fort is meant to supplement real-world relationships, not replace them. You drop in, see what the people you love have shared, and get on with your day.

No. Every group is invitation-only: a leader invites someone by email, and that person has to accept before anything is shared. There are no public profiles, no discovery, no friend requests, and no way for anyone outside your group to see you or message you.

A private, invite-only space where a small group — a family, a team, a club, a circle of friends — can share photos, keep a shared calendar, and have a group chat. There is no public feed, no algorithm, and no strangers. Only people invited to your group can see anything in it.

No. Photo Fort is passwordless. You enter your email, we email you a short one-time code, and you type it in. That's it. You stay signed in on that device for 30 days of inactivity, so day to day you rarely sign in again.

A group leader opens the group's Roster and adds the person's email. Nothing about your group is shared with them until they agree: if they already have an account, the invitation waits on their dashboard to Accept or Decline. If they're new, they get an email and join automatically when they sign up with that address.

Yes — you can belong to as many groups as you're invited to. Each group is completely separate: members of one group can never see that you're in another, or see anything you've shared elsewhere.

A one-time sign-in code when you log in, an invite email if someone adds you to a group, and — once a week — a short digest of what's new across your groups (new photos, new members), so you don't have to keep checking. The digest is on by default, but you can turn it off anytime from Account settings, or the link at the bottom of the email itself. No marketing emails, no newsletters, nobody renting out your inbox.

Only the members of the group you shared them into. Photos are kept in private storage — they have no public web address. When a member opens the album, the app checks they belong to that group and then creates a temporary link that expires shortly after. A link can't be forwarded to someone outside the group and keep working.

No, no, and no. There are no ads, we don't sell or share your information, and your photos are not used to train AI — there's no automatic photo tagging or facial recognition anywhere in Photo Fort. Paying customers are what keep the service running.

Sharing your own birthday with a group is opt-in per group, and by default it shares the day and month only — not the year, so nobody can work out your age. If you'd rather people knew, there's a separate “Show my age” setting that you control and that is off unless you turn it on.

A group can also keep its own list of annual dates — relatives' birthdays, anniversaries — which any member can add to. Those aren't your personal profile, and a year on one of them is optional too.

Yes. You can remove a photo you shared and delete your own chat messages. Group leaders can also remove any photo or message in their group, so there's always someone able to take something down.

Yes — anytime. On a group's Photos tab, click Download to get the album as a .zip file, along with a list of captions and who added each photo. Your memories are never locked in. For a very large album, use the date filters and download it in a few batches.

Yes. On a group's Photos tab you can filter by who added a photo and by date. You can also put #tags in a caption — like #beach or #christmas2025 — then tap a tag to see just those photos. Tags stay inside your group: they aren't public hashtags, and nothing outside the group can see or search them. Whoever added a photo, or a group leader, can edit its caption and tags.

From Account settings, under Delete account. It's permanent, and it removes your photos from every group. If you own a group that still has other members, you'll hand it to one of them first. Step by step, and exactly what's kept.

Anytime, from the group's Roster. Leaving never deletes the group for everyone else. If you're the only leader, you'll need to make someone else a leader first, so the group is never left without anyone in charge.

When you leave, the photos and messages you shared into that group are deleted. Your things go with you rather than staying behind in a group you're no longer part of. It only affects that group — photos you shared into your other groups aren't touched. If you want to keep a copy, download the album from the Photos tab before you go.

Yes, to start. Every group begins on the Free plan: up to 8 members and 1 GB of photo storage, at no cost and with no card required. You can host one free group of your own, and join any number of other people's groups. See all the plans.

Plans are per group, paid by that group's owner:

• Core Group — $5/month or $45/year · 15 members · 10 GB
• Extended Group — $10/month or $90/year · 35 members · 50 GB

Paying yearly works out cheaper — 3 months free. Payments are handled by Stripe; we never see or store your card details. Compare the plans side by side.

Nothing is ever deleted. Your photos, messages, calendar, and members all stay exactly as they are — the group simply returns to the Free limits, so you can't add new members or upload beyond those limits until you upgrade again. You're never at risk of losing memories by letting a plan lapse.

Open the group's Roster and find Plan & billing, then click Manage billing. That opens Stripe's secure portal where you can switch between monthly and yearly, change plan, update your card, or cancel. Only the group's owner can do this.

Give it a minute, then check your spam or junk folder (and mark it “not spam” so future ones arrive cleanly). The code only lasts a few minutes, and if you asked for more than one, only the newest code works — so if a code is refused, tap Send a new code and use the latest email. If it still doesn't show up, get in touch.

An Android app is being tested now. Until it's available — and on iPhone — Photo Fort works well in your phone's web browser, and you can add it to your home screen for quick access.

We'd genuinely like to hear it — contact us and we'll get back to you.