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Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS)

Explains customer-provided S3-compatible storage, capacity outside the hosted quota, and per-studio entitlements — and states plainly that connecting a bucket does not import or retroactively encrypt existing objects.

Connecting your own storage bucket sends only new PhotoLog uploads there, from the moment you connect it forward. It does not discover, scan, index, import, re-encrypt or convert anything already stored in that bucket.

Bring your own storage (BYOS) lets a studio store PhotoLog uploads in a storage bucket the studio owner controls — an Amazon S3 bucket, or another S3-compatible provider — instead of PhotoLog's own storage. You keep the credentials to a bucket you already control; PhotoLog writes new uploads to it.

What happens to what's already in your bucket

Note

Connecting a bucket does not discover, scan, index, import, re-encrypt or convert anything already stored in it. It is not an import feature. From the moment you connect, PhotoLog writes new uploads there — nothing about the objects that already exist in that bucket changes, and nothing in the connection process reads, lists or inventories them.

This is not a protection PhotoLog performs on your existing files — it is that PhotoLog does nothing to them at all, protective or otherwise. If you already keep photos in the bucket you connect, they stay exactly as they are, under your own management, exactly as before you connected it. Bringing an existing photo library into a PhotoLog gallery is a separate, future workflow that does not exist today — it is not part of connecting a bucket, and connecting one does not start it.

What connecting a bucket does and does not touchEntering your bucket credentials in PhotoLog connects one thing: new uploads. A line runs from PhotoLog to a "new uploads" area inside your bucket. Whatever was already in the bucket before you connected it sits in a separate area with no line running to it at all — nothing about connecting reaches it.PhotoLogYour account,after you enterbucket credentialsnew uploadsonlyYour bucketNew PhotoLog uploadsstored here from the moment you connectforwardWhatever is already in your bucketno line reaches this box — connecting does not scan,index, import, re-encrypt or convert it
Entering your bucket credentials connects one thing: PhotoLog's new uploads going forward. Whatever was already in the bucket before you connected it is not scanned, indexed, imported, re-encrypted or converted — connecting does not touch it at all, and no PhotoLog process reads or lists it.

Capacity outside your hosted quota

A studio connected to your own bucket is excluded from your account's hosted storage pool. Its storage does not count against the storage quota your plan includes — what you store in your own bucket is governed by your own arrangement with your storage provider, not by PhotoLog's storage limits.

Entitlements count studios, not buckets

Each plan permits a limited number of studios to use customer-provided storage. That limit is counted per studio, not per bucket, not by how much data sits in it, and not by object count. Two studios pointed at the same physical bucket use two of that allowance — the allowance does not become cheaper by sharing one bucket across studios. See pricing for how many BYOS-enabled studios each plan includes.

Connecting a bucket

Setting up BYOS walks through creating a bucket, issuing PhotoLog a scoped access credential, and entering it in PhotoLog — including the least-privilege permissions to grant, in place of a full-account policy.

How we verified this

  • The one-time check PhotoLog runs when you save your bucket credentials writes, reads back and deletes exactly one small object of its own — it never lists or reads anything else already in the bucket (verified 2026-08-27)
  • New uploads to a connected studio are written to your bucket with a single write request; connecting itself performs no read, listing or scan of the bucket's existing contents (verified 2026-08-27)
  • Deleting a PhotoLog-managed photo stored in your own bucket removes only that object, on your explicit action; PhotoLog's routine gallery cleanup deletes PhotoLog's own record of a BYOS photo without touching the object in your bucket (verified 2026-08-27)
  • Marking a whole gallery for deletion removes PhotoLog's pointer records for any BYOS photos in it; the objects in your bucket are never touched (verified 2026-08-27)
  • A studio connected to your own bucket is excluded from your account's hosted storage pool — its storage does not count against your hosted quota (verified 2026-08-27)
  • Each plan permits a limited number of BYOS-connected studios per account owner; the limit counts studio rows, not distinct buckets, so two studios pointed at the same bucket use two of that allowance (verified 2026-08-27)