iCloud paid storage options for kids

[mlody]

So my 12 years old daughter is now a very happy owner of iPhone 6 64GB gold - she came from 4S 16GB black - don't judge why she has it etc - I am not posting to hear your opinion on this.

She has her own iCloud account so she can use it for e-mail, iMessages, FaceTime etc; however,we share the same account for app store/itunes to ease the purchasing of apps/music etc between the family - this was setup before iOS8 family sharing was available.

the problem that we are having now is that she would like to have more iCloud storage as the free 5GB is no longer cutting it. Since she is under aged, obviously she does not have a credit card to make this reoccurring monthly purchase, and I cant figure out how to make a purchase for her on my behalf? - is this even possible? I appreciate any advise/solution to this problem.

Thanks

 

[FNH15]

Couldn't you just setup family sharing between her account and yours?

 

[Yun0]

log into the apple id on their site & add credit card info, or do so from the app store on device, or itunes

 

[DotCom2]

That's what we did. We just setup a family share and upped 2 girls storage for 99 cents each.
It gets charged to to credit card on file of who the primary is.
EASY!

 

[mlody]

Thank you guys for the info. I completely forgot about the family share and this option. I will look into this.- I just wish I could purchase one storage upgrade and share it across the family? perhaps iOS 10 option?

 

[PNutts]

I took a different route. I don't back up their photos to the cloud and instead back them up myself onto my PC (which is backed up to the cloud via iDrive). Without photos my kids have nowhere near 5GB of data to back up, even with the ba-gillion games and apps they have installed. I grab their devices every week or so to back them up so the downside is that is a gap where photos could be lost. Since Apple lowered their cost for cloud storage and introduced Family Sharing I should revisit my photo backup strategy of eight years.

Congrats to your daughter! My kids/family/friends also benefit from my upgrade cycles.

 

[aajeevlin]

I took a different route. I don't back up their photos to the cloud and instead back them up myself onto my PC (which is backed up to the cloud via iDrive). Without photos my kids have nowhere near 5GB of data to back up, even with the ba-gillion games and apps they have installed. I grab their devices every week or so to back them up so the downside is that is a gap where photos could be lost. Since Apple lowered their cost for cloud storage and introduced Family Sharing I should revisit my photo backup strategy of eight years.

Congrats to your daughter! My kids/family/friends also benefit from my upgrade cycles.

Another way you can do is to look at the Microsoft Onedrive for $100 (or sometimes less) you can get a year wroth of 1TB (each) for a family of 5. It will back up photos along with other things. I use mostly for photos.

There is also the option of using Google Photo, although I'd be worry about their privacy issue.

Lastly, and this is the one I use, is Bittorrent Sync. Setup on your computer, and your kids can upload photos into your computer, then you can back up that into anywhere you like.

I use a combination of Sync and Onedrive. I like to give Apple storage a try, but I find their photo management a mess to deal with.

 

[mlody]

Thank you guys for all the advises. We are already using the onedrive (using bing points for it so technically it is free) for photos, but her e-mails, messages, etc are the one that are outpacing the lame 5GB limit. I guess I will look into a iTunes backup as it seems like much cheaper and faster alternative, although not as convenient.

 

[aajeevlin]

Thank you guys for all the advises. We are already using the onedrive (using bing points for it so technically it is free) for photos, but her e-mails, messages, etc are the one that are outpacing the lame 5GB limit. I guess I will look into a iTunes backup as it seems like much cheaper and faster alternative, although not as convenient.

E-mail? Maybe she is syncing too much? You can choose how far back you want to sync. I usually tell the phone not to maintain anything beyond a month ago. As for messages that's a hard one, I just don't care about those anymore.

Personally I think you are correct to go with iCloud (it's cheaper these days anyways) and probably easiest to work with, but I'm not a fan of how they manage photos from the phone. Given that I don't do much photo editing, after a trip I generally like to go home and just throw them into a folder then off to the backup at home and off site.

 

[Primejimbo]

Another way you can do is to look at the Microsoft Onedrive for $100 (or sometimes less) you can get a year wroth of 1TB (each) for a family of 5. It will back up photos along with other things. I use mostly for photos.

There is also the option of using Google Photo, although I'd be worry about their privacy issue.

Lastly, and this is the one I use, is Bittorrent Sync. Setup on your computer, and your kids can upload photos into your computer, then you can back up that into anywhere you like.

I use a combination of Sync and Onedrive. I like to give Apple storage a try, but I find their photo management a mess to deal with.

Why pay $100 a year and get Microsoft office for $70 a year? You still get 1TB of OneDrive.

 

[Primejimbo]

Thank you guys for all the advises. We are already using the onedrive (using bing points for it so technically it is free) for photos, but her e-mails, messages, etc are the one that are outpacing the lame 5GB limit. I guess I will look into a iTunes backup as it seems like much cheaper and faster alternative, although not as convenient.

I would look to see what's taking so much space (apps that she doesn't use?). I did the OneDrive and it would always sign itself out and got annoying after a while. I got the $0.99/50GB and use iCloud photos and love it now. Ever think about just loading gift cards? We have the family plan stuff, but we find gift cards on sale all the time and stock up. Target had them for 10% off not to long ago, SAMs had $100 for $84, and Best Buy will have them on sale too.