Name: Tinybeans Private Family Album
Rating: 4.86786 (104039 reviews)

User Reviews for Tinybeans Private Family Album

4.87 out of 5

104K Ratings

4 years ago, Turner0327

So far I’m loving this app

I have grown tiresome of social media. And since my first child was born in 2015, I have been posting every baby memory on my social media. I wanted to delete all social media but I couldn’t because all my memories were there. So I started searching for something that could help me get everything organized and safe! Enter, TinyBeans! It has been very easy to navigate. I usually go to my social media page and search through my timeline. When I see a memory I copy it, check the date, and go input it into my TinyBeans app. I love that you can adjust the date yourself for older memories you forgot to put in. All of my children’s memories are now organized and safely saved. And I love that I can also share with family, especially those who don’t have social media. I do wish for some adjustments though. I wish that family could add to the calendar as well. My kids grandparents take lots of photos of them and I would love for them to go in and add them in. And if that is possible, maybe have a “share with parents only, or share with everyone” option. That way not everyone can see those memories? Not sure if that makes sense but my kids grandparents fight and I’d rather them not see each other’s photos 😅 but would still like for them to be all added. I also wish there was a newsfeed page option where you can just see new things added vs a calendar look. That way you can be updated on what is new. Other than that, it’s a great app and I highly recommend it

1 year ago, MindfulMunching

So great for photo journaling, finding photos, and sharing with family!

Update in July 2023: a feature I’ve longed for has been added—the ability to search for photos by caption. There is no better way to save photos and share with close family and friends. Original review: We were introduced to this app by my in laws who used it when my nephews were born (now eight years ago). We loved watching our nephews grow from afar and get a sense of what they were up to day to day. When our daughter arrived three years ago, we knew we wanted to use the same app and had no trouble updating our acct so we could continue to follow our nephews while posting about our daughter (the grandparents also have no trouble following the accts of the cousins). It’s an easy way to share updates with family around the world without using social media and without flooding group text chains. I love seeing the flashbacks and reminders of what we were doing. [NOW OBSOLETE: I wish there was a way to back up the photos with the captions and a way to search photos by caption or description; right now you have to kind of remember the timeframe and scroll to the right place…three years and probably thousands of photos in, this isn’t the most efficient way to ID old favorites.] But I still love the app and it works well for at prime purposes, ie photo journaling and sharing.

6 years ago, Jimram

So perfect, but a couple small caveats.

It’s all truly excellent. My main recommendations so far would be to make it easier to correct errors entered into height and weight measures (as I learned from a very prompt and clear customer service person named Toni, this can be done by swiping left on a given measurement, but this is not intuitive, so some kind of indication on that page would be helpful). Secondly, I recommend adding a similar measurement system for head circumference, since most doctor’s visits include that anyway, and is of higher importance in the age of Zika. Another, more challenging, issue is this: the statistics should be calibrated to take account of where children are relative to due date, not actual date of birth, so as to take into account preemies (and ‘posties’). There is a publicly available set of alternate statistics for preterm babies that can be used, as well as variant benchmarks used by CDC and WHO (the app Growth+ includes two variants for each organization, plus the preterm variant). By using the actual date of birth rather than the estimated due date, the measurement percentiles used by the Tinybeans app end up being highly skewed toward babies born exactly at their due dates. This would seem a major area of opportunity in an otherwise highly evolved, sophisticated, and delightful app!

10 months ago, POB0482

So disappointed

We love the functionality of this app, we have been using it for 6 years. It’s meant the world to us. It was a little frustrating when we had to move from the free version to a forced paid version to stay on the app, but we live far from all of our family and it allowed them to get to know our kids from afar with daily photos and videos, in a safe place. So we paid. Now, another price increase that I only found out about through word of mouth - no big announcement that I have seen. And it’s $75 a month to be able to share daily photos of our children. Apparently there is a free version with ads, but they allow 20 photos a month? That’s not even one photo a day. Our family looks forward to these emails daily, it’s a bright spot in an sometimes very gloomy world, and due to this greed and someone’s idea that suddenly tiny beans has to be more than it was so perfectly before, we suffer and our families lose out. We stayed and paid before because we had invested so much into the app with our memories from 4-5 years, but this feels like emotional extortion - they feel that they can continue to drive prices up for families who are already stretched so thin because we are invested so we will stay. Sadly, I think it’s time to find a way to transfer these memories to another program and move on. I hope TB reconsiders and puts the families who have been so loyal to this app first again.

5 years ago, King's Victory

Secure, easy to use, favorite app!

I’ve had Tinybeans for almost 2 1/2 years and it is my absolute favorite app! I use it almost every day! I don’t like to upload photos of my kids on social media and Tinybeans is the absolute perfect way to get to share photos with family (or anyone else you invite!). Everything is secure and it’s easy for everyone to use. Even my kids’ great-grandma figured out how to use it! Whenever I meet another mom, Tinybeans is something I mention as a fantastic way to save memories and share pictures and stories about our kids. My sister-in-law just had her first baby and sent me this text the other day: “It’s late, and I’m just being sappy, but thank you so much for finding Tinybeans. I’m so glad there’s a place I can store all of these priceless photos of E and any subsequent children! I just love it ❤️” If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is! I highly recommend investing in Premium—being able to download all your moments is a fantastic backup and I also love being able to share videos longer than one minute! Right now Tinybeans is a great way to show my family what my kids are like; in the future, it will be a great way to show my kids what they were like when they were little!

4 years ago, 2020RT

Very pleased but questions about daily emails

I love this app! It’s been a wonderful way to share photos of my son in a secure fashion and allow users to comment on said pictures. I started using it for the security/privacy features, but actually love it for so much more! Just made my first photo book, and if I had wanted autopopulate, it would’ve taken me less than 5 minutes to put it together and order. Editing was quick and intuitive though. A few questions/suggestions: 1. The daily emails - some of my older relatives think this is all there is to the app, so that’s a little confusing. However, these older relatives then send the photos wherever they want without thinking of my son’s privacy. I wish there were a way as a parent to choose whether these emails go out or not - just a toggle where you can turn daily emails on or off or something. Also, if they go through gmail, does gmail then use the images sent via email for deep learning etc? 2. The photo books - it would be awesome to have more page templates so we don’t have to choose between just one or four photos per page. Overall, though, we’re really pleased with the app! Great idea, great work!

10 months ago, L!zbe

Originally great, but changes not so great

Update- I’ve used this for 2.5 years and it just keeps getting glitchier- more force quits, more problems with updating, more issues with order of photos changing, and more ads and unnecessary articles clogging things up. This worked best as a photo sharing app and is now just another glitchy, wannabe kid lifestyle app. I’ve used this for a year to share pics with family and friends and originally it was great- I paid for a membership and had no problems. The changeover to baby lifestyle platform has really decreased the value of the app, in my opinion. I came to Tinybeans for a safe place for picture sharing; I don’t need another parent network/lifestyle/article collection spot. I wish there was a way to separate the two. Plus, I miss the photo newsfeed. In addition, intrusive ads have taken over- the claim that they are “subtle” is not true- 2/3 of every email is ads. The fact that a paid subscription has so many ads is disappointing. If I’m paying for an app I’d hope that I’m doing so to remove ads. In the latest update photos no longer upload in the order in which you’ve selected them and instead it puts them in a random order, not time of pic or order selected. So now I have to go back and reorder after uploading. Overall, I miss the app being a great photo sharing platform before it was overtaken by ads and everything else.

5 years ago, Maggs36

Love Tinybeans!!

I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of photos and videos of my baby going on social media platforms and being shared with too broad of a network... friends of friends of friends... my concern was how quickly it snowballs and you can’t get things back. It’s my own personal feeling but I feel need to protect his privacy in a world that has grown comfortable sharing everything. At the same time I did want a way that I could share photos and videos of my baby with a smaller selected group of close family... when a friend told me about Tinybeans at my baby shower I knew it was right for what I needed. And I have LOVED it - we share pictures and photos with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and his great grandfather - it’s user friendly for everyone and the control stays with us. It’s also so organized which is great. I also like that I can track other milestones in Tinybeans - I usually forget but it’s nice to have the option. Having the daily photos helps me jog my memory when I try to fill in his baby book too. We just have the basic and I don’t mind the ads. Love it!

2 years ago, AshlitaMuchamas

Pay to use update broke some features

I love Tinybeans conceptually. Privately sharing photos with family and friends is awesome. I already had a paid subscription (for longer videos) prior to the business model changing, so wasn’t really bothered when they announced the shift to paid usage. That update really broke the apps functionality, though. Uploading photos takes significantly longer and the app becomes unstable and will sometimes crash while uploading. There are no notifications anymore; if they DO show up, it’s only after manually checking for them - then the badge will appear within the app. For a while, uploads processed out of order and uploading randomly, though that seems to have been resolved. Switching to a premium model should have allowed for more, enhanced features for customers, not breaking existing features for… what, advertising? Why am I seeing so many ads in a paid app? Even self referential ads, over and over? I’m torn at this point. I can see other reviews with similar issues, and I’m still experiencing these issues even after updating. I appreciate your devs and all that they do, and hope they can resolve the upload/notification issues soon!

7 years ago, AmyJSnelly

Mandatory for new baby and distant family

We have a brand new daughter and our family is spread out all over the States and this app is the perfect way to help them feel like they are a part of her life when they can't see her in person. The grandmothers love to "like" and comment, and I don't have to worry about clogging my social media with baby pictures. Though when it is time to post her monthly pic to Instagram it is super easy to go back through tiny beans and pick my favorites and see what her milestones were for the month. We were also fortunate enough to have several close friends have with little ones all born this year, and we are all on tiny beans. And while I see most of these gals weekly it is awesome to follow their little ones on the app as well. I like to go back and see what their babies were doing at the age my baby is, if that makes sense. So both as a parent and as a friend I adore this app. I am happily a premium member and I hope that it thrives for a long time so that I can always look back at these special moments.

5 years ago, T0NY V3G4S

Brilliant App

My wife and I wanted to be considerate about not oversharing photos of our child to social media for various reasons. TinyBeans is the perfect platform for us to remain connected to family and friends that genuinely want to stay up to date with child photos. It’s an easy process to get family members added and the app is never trying to push me to recruit more members, unlike platforms like LinkedIn. I never feel limited by a pay wall or inundated with micro transactions. It helps us stay connected without sacrificing our privacy to the larger worlds of Facebook and Instagram. It’s a handy app for quickly accessing and showing off recent photos to people I run into without having to dig for them in my camera images, sifting past and explaining stupid memes saved to my phone. This app is all baby stuff and it’s nice to have so accessible and organized. Was happy to upgrade to premium when they ran a special, largely just to support the work of a well designed and executed app. Great work TinyBeans Team!

2 years ago, KEF.87

Going downhill…

I’ve been using this app since 2019 to avoid posting pics of my kids on social media and it became a lifeline for my extended family during the pandemic. It was a way to stay close to our loved ones at a time when we all felt so isolated. It had a few quirks, but it was free and overall I loved it. When they switched to paid subscription only last year, I was annoyed but figured I was in too deep to back out (posting daily for the better part of 2 years) and was getting a lot of value out of the app so I ponied up the fee hoping the user experience would improve. It. Did. Not. Not only is the interface still clunky at times (something that bothers me way more now I’m paying real $$), but the uploading process itself has gotten noticeably WORSE— pictures uploading out of order, uploads getting hung up and never finishing, etc. And on top of everything, there are still ads! What am I paying for, again? Again, if I was still making do with a free app I wouldn’t be complaining. But I’m paying for something that is tangibly worse than the free version.

6 years ago, absentoccupier

Better than their competition

Tinybeans was recommended to me, but I wanted to see what else was out there. After downloading a few options (including Tinybeans) it was easy to make a choice. I wanted to make sure it was easy enough for grandparents and non-savvy family. And it has been great. There was a little confusion with initial sign-ups for some people, but we got it figured out now. When I first started using it (2 months ago) a lot of the filters, stickers, etc. weren’t working. But seems fixed now. Overall, it has been such a stress free way to share moments/photos with family across the country. We didn’t want to use Facebook and this allows everyone to feel a little bit like they are not so far away. Highly recommend for new parents! Just a couple little glitches... 1. As the main user, I can’t tell if a family member has accepted my invitation. The only way I know is when they comment on a photo. Not a huge deal, but I ended up sending multiple invitations to people because I wasn’t sure if they had received them or not. 2. Wish there were a few more image options for stickers. Not a must, but would also be cool if you could draw directly on the photo. Specifically, I was trying to draw an arrow. 3. When posting more than one photo per day, it’s not clear that it’s easy for family to tell there is more than one. 4. I’ve had a couple people mention they can only comment with emojis and it won’t let them leave a regular comment.

9 months ago, Booboopoo5689

VERY disappointed

I am VERY dissatisfied and disappointed with tiny beans. I have been using this app for the past 6 years and have now been forced to pay for the premium version. In The past three years the app has gone from free to $40 to $70 and now $75. This feels like extortion. It would have been very helpful to know Tinybeans intentions of these price increases before investing so much time and memories. l feel that they can continue to drive prices up for families who are already stretched so thin because we are invested so we will stay. Tinybeans needs to find a way to allow their current paid customers to download their already paid for content and leave!! Not to mention The app consistently has glitches and the load times are very slow. The Home Screen is filled with paid advertisements and articles and not user friendly. When I contacted the company their response was to drop down to the free version (20 pictures a month) and loose ALL of my already paid for photos. Hopefully they have a better solution this year. If you plan on joining the TB community be prepared for yearly price increases that you can’t get out of. I am so disappointed in what Tinybeans has become.

1 year ago, Hip_Fashion

Great private alternative

I am the one sending the updates, and I keep reading that there are very few settings to change for the recipients. I am not able to set them and the recipients can't either. I wish there were more controls, but the app is simple and easy and nobody has complained. There are few settings but I don't know about it because I just make my posts and move on. They get sent out automatically at some unknown time. I have questions like: if I edit a post the next day, do the recipients get the post again (and again and again) if I keep adding new info to it? I don't know and haven't found FAQs about it. The app is easy and clear to use. And most importantly, very quick to use. Another situation. I have a child who is dead. I set up her information about her birth because I want to include her, but the app has a tab about milestones and it asks me for updates on her - has she grown? Can she do new things? I wish I could turn those off. I really really wish I could turn those off.

3 years ago, TempusFugit86

HATE this new update- won't be subscribing again

I hare this update. We have paid for the last two years for premium and we're so disappointed. Not sure we'll pay for this upcoming year with this new format. I HATE the new Home Screen. It never loads and when it does it's all crap advertisements and articles. I don't pay for this app for a home screen of ads. We pay for it to see nothing other than our son. We use this for our own curation of photos of our son, and share them with his grandparents. I have ZERO interest in your crap articles. 75% of the time, the page doesn't even load. We loved the homepage that was a stream of recent photos and videos. This was helpful because we don't upload everyday, so you could see newly posted photos and videos... now it's nearly impossible to find recently posted items that are from several days back. Family members don't know to go back to look through previous days/weeks to find new content. We don't care about your "ideas tab" and refuse to read any of it. Fix this or you're losing another family as subscribers. Judging by your recent reviews you'll be losing the bulk of your membership along with us.

3 years ago, Belawrence12

Updated Review::

Update::: I have now had this app for 4 years. 4 years of memories, laughter, sharing with friends and family for them to decide to start charging a monthly subscription fee. I started using this app because it was free, not because it was bug free or exceptionally easy to use. You can only download 20 pictures at a time and half the time it stalls and I have to restart. The videos are on 30 seconds long and can only add one at a time. The filters, stickers and add one have never been updated or improved to where I externally edit my pictures then add them in. But it was a great place to gather my pictures and videos I didn’t want on social media but still wanted to share. You had me for 4 years and I have promoted them to everyone! But you have now lost me. Will not pay for this app!!! I have truly enjoying this app to be able to share pictures of my child without putting it all out on the internet! Only thing is it is very slow about uploading new pictures and especially videos, I wish this could be worked out! I never used to have a problem but in recent months is has gotten slower! Other than that, I still use and enjoy the app!

2 years ago, RyanVento

Good Direction, Imprecise Execution

We have been using Tiny Beans as a family for over three years and have appreciated many aspects of the app. Though it’s been a little buggy here-and-there, overall it’s met our expectations. With regards to the recent update that the app went through I can tell I’m going to like the changes to the platform, however at this time it’s a buggy mess. Uploaded photos are duplicated at random; the system doesn’t register a “Like” that someone gives a photo; some comments are posted while others never are; while scrolling a photo feed some pictures are compressed and cannot be fully viewed unless clicked on while other photos do not exhibit this technical hiccup. Again, I like that the recent update has arrived with some UI aesthetic changes and some more functionality, but the app is basically useless now in terms of user interaction. All we can do now is upload pictures/videos. Please fix these bugs.

3 years ago, Jodie and Michael

Best Nontraditional Social Media and so much more

I love that TinyBeans has created a private social media where I own the pictures/videos/all my content, and can download anytime. I can share special moments with my family without having to do a massive private message/sms or compromise privacy via traditional social media. I have been using TinyBeans since my son’s first year and, as a new mom, I found the easiest, safest, and least difficult way to share with my family. My Dad tells me he looks at my daily TinyBeans updates each morning as part of his routine to have a great start to his day. And I love how it keeps everyone in the loop based on how much I want to share all at the same time. And each member of my group can choose how much interaction to have. It’s a win-win-win in my life. There is also all the milestone tracking, medical tracking, articles, activities, and I’m barely scratching the surface. It’s an awesome app. It’s worth the subscription. Period.

9 months ago, sarahh205

Was The Best until Price Increases

I have used tiny beans for over 4 years. My daughters entire lives are documented on tiny beans. I struggled with paying for the actual membership last year because it was completely free up into that point. This year it’s $75/year or it limits what you can upload?? I can handle ads but limit my uploads? We have grandparents who have reached out on multiple occasions about how nice it is to see daily pictures but you can’t even do that any more unless you pay almost $100 a year?!?! That’s crazy!! I’m on the hunt for another, more affordable app and hope the grandparents are able to move over to the new app since now they are almost 5 years older. I truly would have never started using this app if it wasn’t free to begin with and now I’m frustrated I have so much documented on an app that I will no longer use. Don’t even bother downloading!!! If the last two years are any indication of what is to come it’s going to continue to raise their prices and limit what you can do on the app. Here’s to hoping FamilyAlbum app doesn’t cause me this frustration. Way to ruin a beautiful thing. Truly don’t understand why the price has to be so outrageous.

4 years ago, anna2016banana

It just keeps going

With family spread all over the world I didn’t know how we would keep people posted on our littles ones birth and development. Who has time to email that many people all the time. We didn’t want to use other, more open platforms or hinder our elder tech-struggling family members. I thought after the first year we probably would slow down if not stop uploading pictures. Turns out we keep posting. Family and friends near and far love their daily dose of Tinybeans with their morning coffee. I hear it every time I’m on the phone with someone in our loop. They feel so much more connected to us this way since we can’t always be visiting. And now with an international move and covid lockdowns, our family can still keep up with us. It’s really been a great tool for us. We Love the app and seeing the flashbacks you can jump to makes us smile. It’s been over four years now with TinyBeans and we are just so thankful for the connection they have provided.

6 years ago, DalyMama

A MUST GET FOR ALL PARENTS!

I’ve never left a review for any app before, but Tinybeans has become such an integral part of our family and our daily routine that I just had to share. We have been using Tinybeans since the day my daughter was born and we have shared pictures and videos with our family every single day since (she’s almost 6 months old now). I’m very particular about what I put on Facebook and needed a safe place share baby pictures with family without the whole world seeing them... and Tinybeans is just that. The app is very user friendly and makes uploading both pictures and short video clips a breeze. I LOVE that the pictures are organized within a monthly calendar... I find myself looking back on old pictures almost every night and watching by little one grow by the day! Thank you Tinybeans for your most recent update which got rid of the “cards” feature and replaced it with a great “flashback” homepage. Such an improvement! If I had to make one suggestion, it would be to lower the premium package subscription costs. Even as a devoted Tinybeans user.. I cannot justify spending $7.99/mo, $50/year for this service (even if it would allow me to upload longer videos). As a new parent on a tight budget, I feel as though $3/mo is a more reasonable price for the “premium package “ that new parents could afford. All in all, Tinybeans is a MUST GET for all new parents (parents in general)! 5 stars!

2 years ago, book.worm.123

Long time user, annoyed with new features

I just want a private way to share pictures with family members. I don’t like using social media to for photos of my children. I started using this app when it was free, loved it so much I upgraded to the subscription option, so I would have unlimited options for photos and video length uploads. Then tinybeans expanded. They added “ideas” full of articles for parenting, cooking, travel. I think they are wanting to add a store as well. I do not need or want any of these features. With every new update recently, there are more bugs. On any given day I have to log out and log back in several times to see new comments from family. Scrolling through pictures is glitchy. Tonight I can’t see anything, at all. Nothing will load. We have 5 years worth of memories on this app, comments from great-grandparents I would hate to lose. I would encourage Tinybeans to reconsider their move and simplify back to their original intent— a private option for sharing family photos. If they can’t get that most simple goal right anymore, then what am I paying for?

3 months ago, Jeseaca

Uploading is painfully slow

I would like to be able to recommend Tinybeans again. I think it has great features- not requiring accounts/apps for all family members, and the calendar view especially. but the uploading on iOS just has a lot of friction (I’m here writing this after battling for the third time this week and now being way behind on uploading our photos). - Scrolling back more than a couple days in photos in upload view shows the same pictures over and over. This has been an issue for years. I was told it’s because I have a lot of photos on my device. (yes, I take a lot of pictures, as many people using a photo album sharing app probably do). - Can’t choose personal iOS albums to upload from (I would love to have a “Tinybeans” album and be able to upload from there unless/until native upload via share sheet is possible). Favorites is the workaround, but it’s still not great due to the issue above and many other items in the favorites album. - Native upload via share sheet shows Tinybeans, but is not functional. It does nothing most of the time. I have referred many friends and family members to the app over the last nearly 7 years. I’ve uploaded daily. We have 4 other in our extended family still using it after the subscription model changed. In the last 6 months or so, I don’t recommend it so much. People I referred more recently are not impressed and end up choosing other options because of missing basic functionality.

7 years ago, Jyoung12

Best app I've ever had

This is the only app I have ever written a review for, and I didn't think twice about it because it's that good. We just had our first baby and I can't think of an easier way to share pictures, videos, and notes with only those family and friends we have chosen. What we love is that our baby girl isn't all over social media, but we also don't have to spend our time sending pics or videos to people individually, or writing an email, etc. It takes no time at all to post something on the app and then we can go right back to snuggling the little one. Our family and friends also love it because they can choose how often they want to go on to view what we've posted and similarity aren't bombarded with emails or texts that they feel the need to respond to. And lastly, it's already been great for us to look back on earlier pictures, and I know this online journal is something we will treasure for years!

4 years ago, fghvjjtd

Disappointing recent update

I have been using the platform for about 2 years now. I am a premium subscriber for the benefits of extended video uploads and no ads. So I was disappointed to see the most recent update with the “Today” home page. When opening the app now, one is inundated with blog posts rather than viewing the calendar of photos. I pay extra for the premium membership specifically to avoid the bloat. If I wanted to read arbitrary opinion pieces, which are usually thinly veiled (or, in some cases, blatant) product placements, I could go to Facebook. It is disappointing. I wish updates would focus on more relevant features of the app. I have appreciated the new search feature. An area of improvement I am still waiting to see is the ability to easily view photos in succession/as a stream. Currently you have to click through each individual calendar day, whether it has photos posted to it or not, to view them all. It is clunky, and a waste of time to click through blank calendar days. Hoping this will be addressed in the near future.

7 years ago, Jmo343

Doesn't work as well for pregnancy

I have a friend who loves the app. You can download to start documenting for pregnancy which is nice in concept. Once I did, I started to get notifications asking me what my child (unborn) did today, asking me what he was wearing today etc. His birthday is the expected due date in the future and it's set to negative -- telling me that they know he's not born yet, but this programming flaw has been very annoying. I contacted customer service and they advised me to just turn off the notifications and reminders... mmmmk. How about fix the programming?? My sister had a baby so I bought her the premium version so she would stopped being hounded 24/7 for pics while trying to tend to her newborn. She loves it but agreed that is very annoying to get notifications on your unborn child's whereabouts, milestones, and outfits. Hopefully it's a simple fix but it's enough for me to not really use it at present and definitely not pay to upgrade.

12 months ago, pkingdesign

Build deeper connections with family

I was initially skeptical, but Tiny Beans has been an unbelievably valuable way to share photos of our little one with our family (and a few friends) all over the world. We don’t have to worry about privacy issues of other social networks, and the daily email to older family members is exactly what they need. Our parents absolutely Tiny Beans, regularly telling us that the email with new photos is the highlight of their morning. We’ve shared photos every single day for over 18 months and I doubt we’ll stop any time soon. We have a great virtual album of her development as a side benefit of all of that sharing. I designed Flickr and worked worked on it for over 5 years, so I’m picky about photo sharing apps. Tiny Beans has gotten better over the past 18 months and is easily our favorite way to share photos of our kiddo with family.

6 years ago, poet muse

Daily Treasures! The best idea ever! A must!

If you love taking pictures of your family you have to have this app. I can’t find the words to sum it up but this app is AMAZING. Being a new mom, I post photos and videos of my baby almost daily. It is no more effort than to snap a picture as life happens and it captures our life in a organized easy to use way. It is so easy and so special to have and look back on. Our extended family- baby’ grandparents, aunts, uncles, & cousins- all live far away but here they are able to see our son every day and feel like they know him. If I can’t remember the exact date he first ate solid food, hey I can check Tiny Beans! I could go on and on... I recommended this app to about 7 other expecting moms and they are all crazy about it too! The premium membership price is pretty high, but there is a free version. I only wish I had known about it from day one, but we started when our guy was 2 months old. He’s now turning ONE YEAR OLD! What a GIFT to be able to look back over (almost) each day of his first year! THANK YOU, Tiny Beans! 💕

3 years ago, kbowen1005

Great app with even better potential

We really love this app for keeping our family in touch and involved without having to post our babe all over social media. Some of our biggest issues are just in the format of how the images are displayed. The calendar view is helpful to find pictures based on date but they really need another view option that is gallery like how it looks on our iPhones. The calendar view is especially confusing for our older relatives using the app. I wish we could view all the photos in a gallery and would also love to be able to filter photos and videos to see all videos at once. Also, when uploading photos I wish images that have already been uploaded from your phone would be greyed out to keep from uploading duplicates by accident. Overall we really do love the app but these features would help so much

5 years ago, Reviewer Doe

BEWARE. Erases captions. Customer service nonexistent

After entering captions to go with your photos, the app erases your caption completely or just half the words. It'll happen at random, so you don't know you need to type the caption back in unless you're looking right at that moment on the calendar, and by the time you notice it, so much time may have passed that you might have forgotten what you had typed. If you do manage to restore the caption manually, they'll erase it again without notice. VERY BAD considering you may need captions to explain to family what is going on in the photos, or simply want to remember details for the future. I've contacted customer service for help with this issue FOUR TIMES. Each time they reply with a canned response about how they typically take 48-72 hours to get back to you, but nothing else. IT'S BEEN MONTHS. I've yet to hear back from customer service. You're better off trying a competitor app. Some of them even make free movies of your child so you can see them grow up before your eyes, or compile quality photo books ready for purchase. They definitely don't erase your content without notice and then leave you hanging without support.

4 years ago, Feydirwyr

The service is good, but the iOS and especially iPadOS app could be better.

TinyBeans as a service is easy to use, easy to share (especially with older family members), and generally better than Facebook for sharing baby pictures among family. Daily emails are especially nice for sending updates to older members. The calendar based views are excellent. Printing books that are automatically generated from your year each holiday season is also great, and makes an excellent gift. The iOS and iPadOS apps are not quite up to standard in 2020. The iPhone app lacks any way to upload pictures without opening the app itself, and errors in uploading have been common over the past year. Support was helpful somewhat in fixing these errors. The iPad app is very lacking. It does not even support landscape mode. If you use your iPad as your primary computer with a keyboard, you are out of luck. I am hoping the apps themselves improve. My wife still uses TinyBeans but I have moved on to using the built in iOS Photos app for sharing among family.

2 years ago, Alliayha

Great app- love the email features.

In an effort to escape the social media drive and creepiness I asked a friend for ideas- and she shared TinyBeans… I really do enjoy it! Pros: 1. Easy to post to the right days etc. 2. Sends emails to family members with updates. 3. Super easy to work with! 4. Ability to tag kids and pets! This is cool cause then I can look for photos of the kids with the cats etc. Cons/enhancement requests: 1. Sometimes my memory has a LOT of photos- I have 2 kids and we do a lot of fun stuff throughout the day. I would like the ability to upload more than 20 photos at a time. 2. I’d like to bulk create one blurb with a bunch of photos and be able to also do individual descriptions if possible. Like a “parent” memory with snap shots of it- such as “Disney world” - and she met Minnie Mouse! That type of ability. 3. Tagging more ppl. I’d like to be able to showcase photos w the kids AND grandma- so tagging them would be nice. Maybe allow everyone who is added to be tagged? Or just have an account or add a “person” vs child. 4. Uploading videos. This is a tricky one I know! But I’d like to do more than 1 at a time if possible! 5. It claims to tie into Chat Books - but I have yet to make that work. I have “updated” my password numerous times to no avail. So… I’m gonna guess this feature may have a bug.

4 years ago, SeaMobster

Lots of good parts

We used LifeCake for years and loved it, but switched to TinyBeans when it was discontinued. So far, we like TinyBeans a lot. It's easy to upload photos and the calendar is cool. The number one thing we (my husband and I, plus several people who view our family photos) miss from LifeCake is the photo stream/timeline. Please add this feature! There was a tab where all the photos you upload were visible in chronological order with no folders- just one long stream. There was a slider on the right side of the screen you could use to skip to a certain date. It was a great way to look back and find a specific photo if you knew roughly when it was taken but not the exact date. (the calendar feature is awesome if you know the exact date, but if not, you have to click through all the photos on multiple days which is cumbersome). Seriously, it was so great. It was really the only way I ever looked at photos. Please try to add something similar? Please?

1 year ago, Starzy272

Price Increase to include LESS services available. Bogus.

We have been avid users of this app for over a year and a half. Didn’t even mind when the price increased from ~$20 to $40 annually. We have a lot of out of town family that truly appreciates being able to watch our children grow. This price jump to $80 is Ludacris. I can totally understand cost of business going up. I wouldn’t even mind the jump if it didn’t mean a DECREASE in services available. You mean I’m now expected to pay DOUBLE so that only two people can post unlimited photos? Our child has two parents and a set of grandparents who provide care for us. Everyone likes to share photos of our child for others to enjoy. It seems ridiculous that I would pay $80 for the use of this album and am STILL limited in the number of photos that can be posted. This rollout came with zero warning from the company either. Terrible business practice and will DEFINITELY be looking for another app. If you want me to pay double the price you better be providing double the service, or even the same service but NOT LESS.

1 year ago, lk1637

Price has doubled..too much for me

I’ve used this app just about every day for 2 years to help our extended family feel close to our son when he was born and as he grows up. We don’t live near any of his grandparents and many friends and family members tell us they look forward to their daily photos. When the app went from free to $40/yr I was frustrated but was willing to pay to keep my family members happy. To now go and DOUBLE this price is crazy to me and I’m going to be the cheap grinch telling my family why they won’t be getting their daily photos anymore. I’ve seen the response about the rising costs of doing business and providing the best service blah blah blah but what it comes down to is none of these new “features” improve upon my experience to come anywhere close to justifying this cost. This feels like a rip off in a time where everyone is feeling the squeeze as it is. I’d happily keep ads all over the place to keep a free subscription and the lack of warning to this change is the icing on top of the cake. I’ll be started a shared iPhoto album with my family tomorrow.

3 years ago, formerlybrooklyn

Not great when free, then they force to pay

our elderly friends and family love this app for one reason and that is they get an email every morning with pictures of our daughter. as far as i've seen theres no other app or service that can do that. unfortunately tinybeans always seems glitchy. the videos upload improperly and my family often says they dont see them or they dont work. i dont even know if anyone sees half the pictures i upload. the email service might be sending less photos than we are uploading? the worst part is that the app just informed me that i either start paying or hit the road! thats pretty frustrating as i wasn't even warned. im not sure what to do. we cant really afford another subscription service right now as we have house repairs, car repairs, took a pay cut, and we have another baby on the way. we are so invested in this unattractive not user friendly app. too bad the elderly relatives and friends are impossible to train otherwise it would be a no brainer to just switch apps.

6 years ago, j+g

So great, but an improvement suggestion..

i just discovered Tinybeans and I love it so much. Such an awesome resource for our family! My baby is now almost 9 months old, but I would love to populate the months I’ve missed. In order to back-populate the last few months I have to manually scroll back through my 10,000+ pictures. This takes a long time to do and proves cumbersome for the user experience. I think it would be a huge improvement for the camera roll pictures to automatically snap to the date I select on the calendar (or at least provide this as an option in settings). I barely got through the last month and it took me hours to do this. The thought of having to go back and do the first 8 months is feeling pretty daunting, but I love it so much that I don’t want to quit — however, I don’t know that I have the time to complete it. If I am doing something wrong, please let me know! Thanks for making this app. It is wonderful. :)

5 years ago, JillH63

Love Tiny Beans!

I am leery of most social media outlets and overly cautious about my children’s’ photos being posted online. I don’t have Facebook or Instagram and neither does my mom nor some other family members. But I also want to share photos of my children with a select group of loved ones without inundating them with texts or emails. Tiny Beans was the perfect solution and allows me to safely and privately share my photos with my family. I can’t believe how much they like it too! Most of them tell me it’s the best part of their day waking up and checking the app to see the kids’ pictures. It keeps us connected and current with minimal effort, no safety/privacy risks and it’s a lot of fun! Plus, then you have all your daily photos in one place. I’ve never written an app review before but just felt strongly enough about this one to take the time to recommend it and I do, very highly recommend it!

4 years ago, Melleydelcast

Updated review

We have been using this app since our twins were born and they’re now 2.5. They’re identical. I have asked repeatedly if they’d create some kind of function to actually identify the kid in the photo. There are some pics where I really can’t tell which is which anymore, especially where they are really small. Would also help with the “which one is that” questions. Also there are lots of bugs. I paid the lifetime fee which wasn’t cheap but I felt it would be worthwhile since I use it. One of the bugs is that if you try to go back a few days (life gets in the way and sometimes I don’t remember to post daily) the the photos in your camera roll start to repeat. It’s super annoying and can take three or four times to shut down and restart before it will work properly. I’ve written about this before, and it’s been going on for probably a year now. Still not fixed. Another thing that would be nice and make a lot of sense for this app, is making it to where when you are adding a photo or video for a specific date, the photos or videos from that date appear as your first options. This is how 1 second everyday works and makes it SO much easier if you get behind. The app also crashes from time to time, and I’ve had it happen to me when I’ve been trying to upload 20 images at once (the max) and have written captions etc etc. If you’re using the free version it’s good for what it is. I just feel that having paid $200 something bucks it should work a lot better.

6 years ago, CU<3Mac

Makes it Easy

My whole family is hooked. They bug me now if I’ve gone a few days without posting. I upgraded to lifetime membership immediately when I realize the perks and having to have only one archiving space. I like all of the other feedback about preemies and overdue babies. I feel like the last few updates have been more about the look of the app other than functionality. I wish the developers would create more updates on functionality than looks. More stickers, more milestone related art. Sounds petty but this app is near perfect to meet my needs. 😂 But mostly for the moment. I wish for the ability to manage users. I wish there were some analytics on who is active and not. With big families you’re required to invite everyone but I don’t want anyone to have unnecessary access if they haven’t looked at any of the photos in a year. 🤷🏻‍♀️

2 years ago, specialko1217

Love this

This is a great app that I use daily to update family about my baby; however, with the removal of premium, I’m not able to use this solely as the journal for private notes and pictures/videos. I’m having to use multiple apps to journal. Additionally, it’s a tad clunky without the use of phone/text delivery and the bed to only upload one video at a time. I also don’t like that you can’t comment as a reply or like a comment. You have to reply to all. So it really depends on how heavily you use the product given it’s easy to use for elders, but less hip for younger generations. I love it for this, but there are many opportunities to collaborate with other apps and introduce things like delayed notification, etc. All in all, this is a wonderful way to keep in touch with your loved ones. I just wish there were more levels like there used to be to monitor content and use as your sole baby journaling app.

6 years ago, elliesach

Great App!!!

This is an excellent app for storing photos, milestones and videos of you child. I am 18 months strong at capturing a photo of my son a day. My family can be added and view the photos as well. I was so excited to start journaling photos for my newborn daughter but was disappointed that it doesn’t allow you to have a separate calendar to add photos for additional children. I realize that most of the photos may duplicate for both kids on particular days and eventually down the road that might be what I switch to but having the choice of deciding between one calendar for each child would be a nice addition. I would pay for the yearly subscription if given the opportunity to do so. I love scrolling back and taking a trip down memory lane looking at how much my son has grown. I’m sad if I have to switch to another app to document my daughters year!!

1 year ago, Jekko12

Love the concept but so many privacy issues

I’ve been using Tinybeans for 4 years. We love it and use it daily to keep our families up to date on what we get about. It’s great for that. I’ve had family members remind me how grateful they are that we share memories daily. Now the bad stuff…like many others, I’m sensing a decline in the app and the service ever since they started charging. I get marketing emails from Tinybeans (for some partners they are funded by, I presume) despite turning off all marketing emails. It’s like every 3 months they reset my settings. The other thing that is starting to bother me more and more is the loose privacy…I’ve seen a few instances where I unexpectedly could see the email addresses and names of people who are subscribed to a friends journal (not ours!). I was shocked to see this and honestly worried now that our photos and data isn’t all that safe? I’ve had a few strikes and I’m willing to give it another shot but I’m on my last life line with them before I take my memories elsewhere.

5 years ago, daisypunk

Best app ever!!

I have never written a review for an app before. But this one deserves my support. We downloaded this app (after the suggestion by a friend) the day our daughter was born. It has been a lifesaver!! All of our family live a thousand miles away and this has allowed them to be actively involved in her life since day one! My grandmother has only gotten to meet our little one once but she feels like she has been there every day! We simply upload pictures and videos from our day each evening and the app sends an email update to our family and friends daily. My dad looks for those updates every morning! My husband and I love looking back on our calendar and seeing a picture or video of our baby girl for every day she has been in our lives. Believe me - you will have one from every day 😆. Can’t say enough good things about this app!

3 years ago, sky baby

Great app but horrible technical issues runs so slow

I used to be a raving fan of Tiny Beans but I had to write a review to express my frustration with how slow the app runs for me. It lags so much and what used to take me 2 minutes to upload my photos for the day now takes almost 20. Whenever I click a button in the app it’s so slow to recognize that I clicked it and my photos take forever to upload. I’ve written customer service multiple times and each time they suggested I delete the app and reinstall which does in fast help it to run quicker again but then after a few days it’s back to running slow again. It’s extremely inconvenient to have to constantly be deleting and reinstalling the app. I wonder if the app runs slow because of how many photos I have. But either way if I plan to use it forever it would obviously be pretty awful if the technical side of the app gets worse the more photos you have. Pretty frustrated at this point.

5 years ago, deenrniyn

Perfect for families near and far.

I was recommended this app by our neighbor who is a veteran grandfather and not overly tech savy. He explained that it has allowed him to keep tabs on his grandkids who leave 5 states away and how easy it is for him to navigate. I downloaded it when our baby was born and immediately started using it. Tinybeans has been incredible for us living in NC and 90% of our family is in NY. We have all sorts of people and generations authorized to see the pictures and each one loves it and uses it differently. Some use just the email alert sent every night and most others use the app. Family and friends enjoy downloading what photos they want and being given the privilege to add photos when they can. I love waking up every morning and seeing the comments from some of of our family and I enjoy using the album as though our baby is posting and controlling it. I have a lot of fun posting silly comments as though he is talking, and being a tiny adult. Also, I love looking back and now that our guy is a year old I love spending time looking back at the pictures. Gets me a little choked up to see my little baby, but I love swiping from the one date to the next and watching him progress and grow. I have and will always recommend tinybeans to anyone. ☺️

3 years ago, BeChased

So Very Disappointing

I’ve never written a review about an app before (despite having nearly 100 on my phone) but I’m so disappointed I feel compelled to warn others. After 2.5 years of adding my sons’ pictures daily, like everyone else I was shocked to discover that, without warning, I would be required to pay in order to keep uploading pictures. I was happy enough with the app, and was afraid making a switch would be too difficult for my older relatives, so I decided to pay for the year. Unfortunately, the app has gotten drastically worse since I’ve submitted my payment! It takes extremely long to load old pictures and to upload new ones; there are more ads and irrelevant articles than before; my relatives have complained about the new format for viewing our pictures; and it force closes a lot more than it used to. I am actively looking for another option with which to share pictures of my kids and will be abandoning TinyBeans as soon as I do, despite having paid for the whole year.

4 years ago, Staciae13

Fun Family Based Social Media

TinyBeans has been a wonderful way to share pictures of my child with my family, but not having to post pictures for the world to see on platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Not all pictures are made for everyone. Some photos are more personal and just for a select few people. I have heard wonderful things from the family members how use the TonyBeans app as well. It allows our family, near and far, to feel apart of his life more than only getting to see him from time to time. I personally enjoy seeing the likes and comments. The only things I would add to this app would be (1) a slideshow feature maybe based on a month that you could watch all the pictures you posted that month to see how much your child has learned and grown. (2) And I would also like to comment back on comments so people know I saw them and acknowledge some of their comments.

6 years ago, Jsoda

Great app!!

This was recommended to me before the birth of my first child. We were not excited about posting all our baby photos on Facebook for several reasons - we didn't want to share such personal info with acquaintances (esp during the 2016 election drama) and the other reason was because Grandpa, cousins and great grandma weren't on Facebook! All of our family being so far away, we needed a way to make them feel connected to our family. This was PERFECT. I spent my maternity leave just constantly documenting every moment for the family and now it's here forever. We love this app and highly recommend it! There is no reason to pay for use, but if you want to upload longer videos then it might be worth it. We haven't ordered any products so I don't know the quality, but it's something we have thought about.

Description

Join millions of parents who use Tinybeans to share photos of precious moments and track baby milestones and development privately and securely. Tinybeans makes it easy for parents and caregivers to share photos, get parenting ideas, and track growth over the years. Created by parents for parents, Tinybeans is a free space to store and share special memories. **Over 150,000 Five Star Reviews! Featured as App of the Day and seen in the New York Times, MSN, Parents, Fatherly, US Weekly, Forbes, and more!** Tinybeans Features: ►MILESTONE TRACKER: track your baby’s growth, milestones, and development. Have access to track over 300 milestones including baby’s firsts, cognition, communication, motor skills, social, and reading- from your baby’s first weeks over the next six years. ►PRIVATE PHOTO SHARING: securely share your precious memories with family, friends, and caregivers through pictures and video. Followers can view, react, and comment on their favorite photos. ►EDIT PHOTOS: add text, filters, and effects. Find something for every moment with stickers for dates, holidays, and more! ►CALENDAR VIEW: switch up your feed and see every moment, baby milestone, and photo by date. ►SMART ALBUMS: keep track and create slideshows of your favorite daily, monthly, and yearly photos. We organize your photos and videos for easy sharing! ►JOURNAL PROMPTS: add meaningful memories through the fun journal and photo prompts to reflect on your baby’s journey. ►SHARE RECAPS: loved ones receive daily or weekly email updates to share your baby’s milestones, development, and growth. ►PHOTO BOOK: save your photos and precious memories in a beautiful baby photo book or family album delivered straight to your door. ►PARENTING IDEAS: discover local things to do, fun activities, and articles for parenting news and advice. Tinybeans isn’t just a baby milestone tracker, it’s a place to safely share photos and reflect on your baby’s growth over time to celebrate all their special moments. Relive memories and share them with your loved ones with personalized albums for specific events or occasions, like family vacations or holidays. Tinybeans’ photo sharing feature, milestone tracker, and personalized album creator make it easy for families to stay connected and celebrate their tiny bean’s growth and development. Questions/feedback? Please reach us at [email protected]. We read them all. Loving the app? Please leave a quick review on the App Store. We appreciate the love! Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest @TinybeansKid.