It sounds like you have the motivation and persistence figured out. That’s great! Have you read Lean Startup and done some customer research? Maybe I’m wrong, but gut reaction to this app is that very few people would be willing to pay for this. If someone is privacy conscious and anti-google, Apple has a much better track record for privacy. I get multiple gigabytes of cloud backup for free and can add on additional space very cheaply, and I trust them to keep my data replicated and safe. The photo apps are also very robust and have local AI and such. It seems like a hard sell, and that the people who understand and care about end to end encryption could just set up a NextCloud instance and get E2E encrypted backups in their native photo client, in addition to office tools, general data storage, etc.
I wish you luck, and I sincerely say this to try and help you, but I think you should stop adding features and start trying to convert people to paid to see if they will.
> people who understand and care about end to end encryption could just set up a NextCloud instance
This is the exact problem I'd like to solve. It worries me that currently only the tech savvy can afford privacy. I'd like to take a shot at making privacy accessible to a larger audience. Something along the lines of what ProtonMail is doing to GMail.
Of course I might fail at attracting enough attention for this to be a viable "startup", but I would have still built something me and my family can safely use. Also there would be learnings along the way, and I'll just move on to building something else. :)
I think this is a fantastic attitude. Build something that you personally care about. Worst that can happen is you lose a lot of money, but honestly what would be worse if you never tried.
Nextcloud is really not a photo management solution though. The e2e support is nextcloud is really not production quality. Do you use either of these for your setup because I am happy to change my mind.
I use emby these days for managing photos and auto uploads.
You can use nextcloud as the cloud backup and turn off backups within google photos, and then you have a photo manager with encrypted (and self hosted) backups. I have not used nextcloud myself. I use Apple products and pay for icloud. I use Emby as well for media management. What I was getting at is that I don’t want to switch my photo manager and photo workflow when all that the value here is is the fact that the photos are encrypted, there are many solutions to that. Why not sell a hosted end to end encrypted backend that is compatible with google photos and Apple photos?
Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. So, what you are suggesting is a privacy focused backup option for the existing cloud services. That is indeed an excellent idea. Before I went totally selfhosted, I had a tough time getting my pictures out of Flickr and Picasa web (now both dead!)
I wish you luck, and I sincerely say this to try and help you, but I think you should stop adding features and start trying to convert people to paid to see if they will.