Review Insights · App Store
Tinybeans Private Family Album
Tinybeans USA Ltd. · 104,226 ratings · ★ 4.9
4.9
★★★★★
104,226 ratings
🎯 Build a better version
Top complaints - extracted from 56 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"photos"
29 negative reviews mention this · 52% of all complaints
★★★★★ "iPad App is Unusable with Keyboards. Hello! Just checking in to see when landscape mode may be available on the TB iPad app. I would really like to use my iPad Pro keyboard. Thanks! Still waiting on landscape mode on iPad, and it would be nice to be able to scroll faster when…" - jb1102
2
"years"
19 negative reviews mention this · 34% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Glorified safari skin. It’s no secret most apps are basically modded browsers. TinyBeans implementation is about as lazily average as you can get. Like when you click on support it brings you to their site support pages, but then you aren’t logged in and so the a…" - godanm
3
"free"
15 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "No longer free. No notice to my email or on the app it would no longer be free. Log in today and have to pay. So disappointed. Edit: My MIL paid for a year and repaid when it was up a few months ago and there must have been an upgrade and bumped me down t…" - Xkelsx09
4
"been"
15 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "No longer free. No notice to my email or on the app it would no longer be free. Log in today and have to pay. So disappointed. Edit: My MIL paid for a year and repaid when it was up a few months ago and there must have been an upgrade and bumped me down t…" - Xkelsx09
5
"upload"
15 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "THIS IS A SCAM. We've been using Tiny Beans for a few years. It is a service that allows us to upload photos of our kids, and it then organizes them by date. It also allows us to share photos with our extended family like a private social media page. We ha…" - Songbirdjla
6
"family"
14 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Glorified safari skin. It’s no secret most apps are basically modded browsers. TinyBeans implementation is about as lazily average as you can get. Like when you click on support it brings you to their site support pages, but then you aren’t logged in and so the a…" - godanm
7
"tinybeans"
12 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Glorified safari skin. It’s no secret most apps are basically modded browsers. TinyBeans implementation is about as lazily average as you can get. Like when you click on support it brings you to their site support pages, but then you aren’t logged in and so the a…" - godanm
8
"every"
11 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Glorified safari skin. It’s no secret most apps are basically modded browsers. TinyBeans implementation is about as lazily average as you can get. Like when you click on support it brings you to their site support pages, but then you aren’t logged in and so the a…" - godanm
9
"started"
11 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Product is useful; business practices are disappointing. The product is fine. It's not great, it does the bare minimum. The frustrating part is that the price will increase without any added benefit. And you receive ads in the app when you open it. I think I started paying $4.99/month, and no…" - AmberWritesReviews
10
"month"
11 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "iPad App is Unusable with Keyboards. Hello! Just checking in to see when landscape mode may be available on the TB iPad app. I would really like to use my iPad Pro keyboard. Thanks! Still waiting on landscape mode on iPad, and it would be nice to be able to scroll faster when…" - jb1102
11
"kids"
10 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Glorified safari skin. It’s no secret most apps are basically modded browsers. TinyBeans implementation is about as lazily average as you can get. Like when you click on support it brings you to their site support pages, but then you aren’t logged in and so the a…" - godanm
12
"year"
9 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Glorified safari skin. It’s no secret most apps are basically modded browsers. TinyBeans implementation is about as lazily average as you can get. Like when you click on support it brings you to their site support pages, but then you aren’t logged in and so the a…" - godanm
📋 All 56 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Glorified safari skin
It’s no secret most apps are basically modded browsers. TinyBeans implementation is about as lazily average as you can get. Like when you click on support it brings you to their site support pages, but then you aren’t logged in and so the authentication loop begins. Also, if tinybeans is emailing my family and friends every week with images of my kids referenced from their server, it ain’t secure - anyone can see the photos. Finally - and this was the big one for me - when the March 25 newsletter’s lead article is “An Astro Compatibility Chart for Kids & Parents” and they didn’t respond to my repeated inquiries asking if this was an early April fools joke, despite claims that they are a customer responsive company. tinybeans doesn’t deserve my money.
EDIT: three years since I requested and received confirmation that my account and data were deleted, there are still pictures of my kid available on their site.
EDIT: three years since I requested and received confirmation that my account and data were deleted, there are still pictures of my kid available on their site.
No longer free
No notice to my email or on the app it would no longer be free. Log in today and have to pay. So disappointed.
Edit: My MIL paid for a year and repaid when it was up a few months ago and there must have been an upgrade and bumped me down to the free plan out of nowhere when we paid for the year plan. Can I rate below 1 star?
Update -1000 stars as I went to find a specific memory that I downloaded here as my main storage app years ago when my kids were babies and you now have to pay to see your old memories you downloaded when it was free and when my MIL paid for a few years. Insane. I need to pa to get my previous memories back. 🤬😡
Edit: My MIL paid for a year and repaid when it was up a few months ago and there must have been an upgrade and bumped me down to the free plan out of nowhere when we paid for the year plan. Can I rate below 1 star?
Update -1000 stars as I went to find a specific memory that I downloaded here as my main storage app years ago when my kids were babies and you now have to pay to see your old memories you downloaded when it was free and when my MIL paid for a few years. Insane. I need to pa to get my previous memories back. 🤬😡
No support
I paid for a subscription but the app is limiting my posts. I’ve reached out to their “support” twice and received no help.
THIS IS A SCAM
We've been using Tiny Beans for a few years. It is a service that allows us to upload photos of our kids, and it then organizes them by date. It also allows us to share photos with our extended family like a private social media page. We have honestly loved it though it is really just a private facebook page at best. We've had a premium membership for a year or two which was $40 per year. However, they just announced a price hike to $75 per year. Not wanting to pay the higher price, my wife and I decided to cancel. THIS IS WHERE THE FRUSTRATION STARTS. The cancellation page is easy to find, however, when you hit cancel subscription, there is a pop up offer for a discount to get you to stay. The options are "Send me the offer!" or "Cancel Subscription". Neither button works. Frustrated, I look for payment options to try and delete my credit card from the account. No visibility for the card on the account. Even payment history just has XXXX instead of the card number. There isn't even an option to swap to a new card. So I look for a phone number on the page to call. No phone number. No readily available email, though I did eventually dig one up. Our renewal date is in a week, and I have no recourse to stop the payment other than cancelling my credit card. Do not subscribe to Tinybeans! If you do, do it through the Apple App Store or Google Play so that cancellation is streamlined. It was a great service that we have recommended to friends in the past, but now it seems like a scam site. I believe they came under new ownership during the time that we have had them. Stay away!
Great app till it’s not
I have used this service for 7 years, and every year the quality goes down. Now the free plan is so restrictive that I’m locked out of my account. I tried to upgrade and they happily take the payment but don’t actually give me access to my photos. One year they charged me for the same service twice and balked when I asked for a refund. Great idea, poor execution, questionable business practices. There are better options, at least for now.
Useless
You need to know people’s emails to invite them to view your album. This is the only way?! What is this, 1997???
No one can figure it out
I know the Elderly are bad at technology. But half the people I invite get an email with a password and when they open the app they are promoted to enter the password and boom they’re connected. The other half end up on their own island completely disconnected from our family’s page and I have no way to help them as their experience is radically different from that of my own. The developers have to understand for parents trying to share pictures but protect their children we are already inconveniencing our confused and elderly loved ones. It needs to be so user friendly an 80 year old can do it.
Used to be great
This was the best app ever when I started using it in 2020. Totally free! Then they started charging. Understandable that at some point it would happen. The next year the price DOUBLED! So I opted for the free version with limited uploads. Now they say my storage is full and I can’t even see the photos I had or upload new ones. I definitely regret recommending this app to so many other moms.
Surprise Terms Change
It is evil capitalist garbage to suddenly require payment to access my own family photos. My family has been leaving photos and comments for years. Now they’re hidden until I pay. Absolutely sinister corporate nonsense. BEWARE!!
It wasn’t what I expected
I requested reimbursement
App holding my memories hostage
We loved tiny beans when we first downloaded. We used it to share photos from 2014-2024 and had great experiences but now the app said out album was full (no previous mention of a limit) and we have to pay to upload anything new. What’s worse is we now no longer have access to look at older photos we’ve uploaded. They are archived and not visible unless we pay. Seems like they offered free services to get you hooked and now are gouging us that years of photos are posted, basically the sales strategy of a drug dealer.
Can’t add or see photos
We have been using this app for about 10 years and now all of the sudden we cannot add any photos or access any previous photos from the past decade. Our photos of our childrens’ births and early years have been effectively stolen by Tiny Beans
A Place to View My Own Photos
I was looking forward to having a hub for friends and family to see my baby’s photos. However, virtually none of the app’s features work. The only option to “invite” people is via email; no link to copy or option to invite by phone. If the recipient actually gets the email, it only contains a link to view the latest photo. They can’t page through other “memories” because they will be prompted to make an account. But once they make the account, they’re not returned to the shared page; they have to get back to it manually. Then, there’s no longer an option to page through other memories-only the latest one is displayed and there is also no option to follow the page. If you use the option to invite through your contacts, nothing happens, and the list then disappears so you can’t try again. There are also entirety too many notifications-if you don’t go through each section of the app to turn them off, you’ll get a daily email reminder to post and a separate email every time someone interacts with your memories via like or comment (if you could manage to get anyone access to your page). Altogether the app is totally useless.
They Keep Changing the Rules
Been using this app for 6.5 years and I can’t say I recommend it. First off, we paid for a lifetime plus membership to avoid the annoying ads. After a year or two, they got rid of the lifetime and made us pay annually for that. Whatever, we finally stopped paying and dealt with the ads. Then they limited the number of photos toe you could upload in a month. Annoying, but we put up with it. Now all of a sudden our “journal is full” and the app is USELESS unless we pay the monthly or annual fee. But we already played that game before and we got screwed over every time. Wont be using anymore and won’t be recommending.
Terrible
Cannot access the photos.
Will not upgrade on iMac
Today Tinybeans would not open on my iMac. Got a window that said upgrade required. Clicked on “upgrade” button, got a window that said not compatible in this device.
Used to be good
I understand needing to charge for the service if you want more than the 20 photos/month to upload but when we first started using it over 6 years ago, the idea was all past photos would always be there free. Was tired of paying for the premium version when only my husband and I could have unlimited photos to upload (what a pain for grandparents to have to text photos and me upload them - completely defeats the purpose). Now I’m getting alerts that I won’t have access to my library of photos if I don’t upgrade. I loved the weekly flashbacks and being able to go look at my kids when they were younger but without access to my own photos, we’ll be finding another way to share photos with family and close friends.
Not happy
Horrible! So expensive and they rarely get back to you.
Boo pop up ads
I liked this app much better before they added screen wide pop up ads to the premium subscription tier.
Tinybeans wide of the mark
Tiny beans started as platform that would “always remain free” for their most valued customers . We started with them back in 2018. They’ve slowly whittled away all of the goodwill as they’ve continually added additional layers and costs associated with their service. My wife is currently unable to load pics to her account due to our journal being full, after years of uploading pics DAILY. The idea was to have a photo album of the kids every day of their lives for as long as possible. It is unfathomable to me that the entire basis of this product is image storage, which is data storage and we can’t figure out the cost / business model into the future and have to keep changing the rules. Tiny beans needs an overhaul of who’s running it. Leadership is starting to resemble that of Vail resorts. A group who had something great and ran it into the ground. Please respond to my wife and unlock our account. Thanks!
Beware fraud
I have been a paid member since 2018. I decided that the cost of $75 was too much and went to the free version. I received a 40% off discount and paid $45 to receive everything the app has to offer but after paying it won’t allow me to upload anything. I logged out and back in and still nothing. They charged me $45 for the free app version and only let me upload 14/20 photos. It is disappointing. Learn from my mistake and look for a different app that won’t ripe you off.
Feel tricked into buying
I was an original Tinybeans user when it was free 11 years ago. 3 kids later and it’s been going from having to pay a premium price to another huge increase in price to be able to continue using the service. I live abroad and my whole family has grown to love their daily updates but after paying full price for 2 years I just can’t continue anymore. So I went with the free plan. Only to find that my old memories have been locked/archived until I pay again. My girls used to love going back in time to see what they looked like when they were younger. That makes me sad. I wish I had never started using this app. I don’t care about all the upgrades bells and whistles. I don’t need photo editing and all that junk. I can edit my own photos. Enough is enough!
Also I’ve written bad reviews before for this app. They’ve been deleted. Just bad company.
Also I’ve written bad reviews before for this app. They’ve been deleted. Just bad company.
Works great with a catch
I have been using this app for free for years and now I won’t be able to access my photos unless I pay. What a joke! Go use a better more honest platform.
Only way I see grandkids - & now it’s “refreshing”
I LOVE Tinybeans, but just made the fatal error of updating the app. Now it tells me “something has gone wrong” and that it’s “refreshing”. ALL my photos of the grandkids are gone just as they’ve left on their summer vacation! Help!!!!
Used to be great, but now it’s impossible to use.
Like a lot of software companies, they think they’re improving their software, but they make it harder to use every time they do a new release.
NEW- Charging duplicate fees to post pictures in the New Tinybeans+ membership
We have been members and supporters of Tinybeans… until now.
They have increased prices from 50 to 75 AND applied that membership fee to only 2 members!!
So heads up grandparents, if you want to post more than 20 pictures in a month * You Also have to Pay and additional Membership fee*
Do Not Recommend This App!!
They have increased prices from 50 to 75 AND applied that membership fee to only 2 members!!
So heads up grandparents, if you want to post more than 20 pictures in a month * You Also have to Pay and additional Membership fee*
Do Not Recommend This App!!
Love / Hate
Used to love this app but for a very long time, after reporting many issues, there are a lot of problems that have not been resolved. It’s become more of a hassle to upload pictures.
Money grab
My son was born in May and have been using Tiny Beans to update friends and family. I have been able to upload as many photos/videos as I wanted. This month, I have hit a paywall. According to their recent responses to reviews addressing this change, it was a “glitch” and they want to keep it “fair.” Just another company gouging prices. They’ve definitely lost my trust. Extremely disappointed.
So frustrated!!
This app continues to have so many bugs and glitches despite all the “updates” that make the app worse! I spend so much time uploading and writing captions only for everything to continuously be deleted. I continue to post everyday because I love the concept and how the app used to be. It really went downhill! And for it to cost so much is absolutely absurd!
Keep Looking, Issues Too Often
I’m so sad because honestly, this should be the best photo sharing app out there but there are just too many problems with it. I swear every 6 months I have a huge issue that I have to email support about. They say we’re working on it, which they are and they do eventually fix most of it, but it’s so frustrating. There shouldn’t be issues uploading, that’s what this whole app is for. I spend a lot of time writing captions and uploading photos and too often it just stops and everything I did for that day is lost. We are tired parents, we don’t need to add difficult things to our lives. Not even to mention the outrageous cost. If I wasn’t already so invested I would run far, far away from this app. I can’t say I will continue to pay the fee, it’s way too expensive and then on top of that to have problems so often is just not worth it. I’m sad to say it, but keep looking. This is not the app you want.
Kind of scammy
If I could do 0 stars I would. I have used this app for YEARS to follow my nieces then I had a child and started using it. All of a sudden I can only upload 20 photos a month or pay $75 a year?!? In this economy $75 is ridiculous. And they do it in the same month of Christmas so now I can’t upload all the Christmas photos I have to share with family out of state. I loved this app but now it’s just a scam and I will never recommend it again.
Tinybeans
I used to like the grid view but now it’s gone when you go to the grid view it’s just white and nothings there i wish it worked
They started charging
I have used this app for years and used to love it .. however recently the app started charging to upload pictures. Huge bummer. Now I’ll just be switching to iPhone shared albums and google photos to share these moments with our family and friends.
Use to be great
I’ve been using this app for years. Truly never had a problem with it. Today I went to upload a photo and it said I have one more free upload for this month…when did that change! You get 20 free and then you have to pay.
Was Great, then Not
I was loving TinyBeans, but felt very tricked! It says it’s free, BUT that’s NOT true. They only allow 20 photos uploaded for free. That’s not even a photo a day. They basically switch it on you one day! It’s a terrible business model and will be switching to a different sharing platform. Wish I would have read the reviews before I started using it. I would have picked a different one from the start.
Skips/Jumps when scrolling
These clowns have one job: an app that loads photos. And they can’t even do it. They don’t preload the photos and the result is a super jerky interface. The app literally doesn’t do anything else. How do you screw this up so bad??? Embarrassing for whoever is the developer.
Avoid like the plague
Ads keep locking up screens. Have two families with kids and the unit keeps freezing. Tiresome having to reboot iPad to access photos
Became more and more money focused
I started using Tinybeans when they offered a free service. Now they force you to pay unless you only want to upload 20 photos a month. Such a shame they’d already added things like advertising to make money and now they charge the user, too. There are other similar apps for free so use one of those instead!
Not functionally sound
It takes several minutes for pictures to load, sometimes they do not load at all. This is not a good user experience
iPad App is Unusable with Keyboards
Hello! Just checking in to see when landscape mode may be available on the TB iPad app. I would really like to use my iPad Pro keyboard. Thanks!
Still waiting on landscape mode on iPad, and it would be nice to be able to scroll faster when adding photos many months in the past.
Still waiting on landscape mode on iPad, and it would be nice to be able to scroll faster when adding photos many months in the past.
Incredibly ANNOYING!
Constant nagging to “add to my Tinybeans” drives me insane! I DON’T HAVE A TINYBEANS OF MY OWN! I just use it to follow others’ kids who live far away!
Can’t Share??
Been using tiny and for years and we love it for keeping memories of kids. But I can’t share memories anymore. When I click on share, a window pops up but it’s blank and I can’t go any further.
Product is useful; business practices are disappointing
The product is fine. It's not great, it does the bare minimum. The frustrating part is that the price will increase without any added benefit. And you receive ads in the app when you open it. I think I started paying $4.99/month, and now I pay $7.99 and I don't get anything more of value. And there's an ad that takes over the screen every time I open the application. I wish they'd have stuck with just having a solid product instead of trying to milk every possible penny from everyone.
Ads, glitchy
A great idea for a platform but like all others, it gets worse every year. Once we had to start paying I thought it would be worth it, and that’s when the ads started. So aggressive now! And it glitches and refreshes and bounces that it makes scrolling thru photos difficult, which was the whole point of the app!
App for iPad is Trash
the app is extremely buggy on an ipad.
Haven't had any issues up until now
Customer service is beyond slow - I have not been able to post for more than a week now even after several emails to them. Despite having premium account, my journal says it is full. They are unresponsive.
Pricing Model is Terrible
We’ve been using this app for three years and have enjoyed it, but a recent change has left us frustrated. We pay for the subscription to maintain a photo library for our children, yet now, anyone other than the parents is limited to just 20 uploads a month unless they pay for their own subscription. It doesn’t make sense that others would need to pay to contribute to the library we’re paying for. Because of this, we’re now looking into other apps as an alternative.
Nice idea, it’s gotten too expensive.
I don’t mind ads, but having a twenty photo limit on the free plan is really lame.
Every couple of years, they change their policy and it’s reached a point that it is far too expensive. I’m moving all my moments to a personal blog. I’ll really miss the ease and convenience of Tiny Beans, but their policies have priced me out.
I’ve used Tiny Beans for six years, I’m really sad to leave.
Every company is jumping on the subscription model train and something has got to give. I’d much rather have the option for a lifetime one-time fee. But as far as I can tell, even that isn’t an option anymore.
Every couple of years, they change their policy and it’s reached a point that it is far too expensive. I’m moving all my moments to a personal blog. I’ll really miss the ease and convenience of Tiny Beans, but their policies have priced me out.
I’ve used Tiny Beans for six years, I’m really sad to leave.
Every company is jumping on the subscription model train and something has got to give. I’d much rather have the option for a lifetime one-time fee. But as far as I can tell, even that isn’t an option anymore.
Glitching
Price is expensive and the app is more glitchy than ever.
I wish I could but I can’t
My brother, and my two cousins all used TinyBeans dating back between 2016 and 2021. Over 9,000 photos between 5 children, my family LOVED this app. Focus on the past tense. I just had my first child and was so excited to share the photos the same way with my family, but now it costs $75 a year to share more than 20 photos a MONTH. I took more than 20 photos the first day my daughter was born.
I am very sad about this but my child will have photos shared on a different app than her cousins.
I am very sad about this but my child will have photos shared on a different app than her cousins.
+ 6 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
97%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
1%
Negative (1-2★)