Cards expire, banks block things, accounts change. It shouldn't put a family's photographs at risk, and it doesn't.
Nothing is deleted#
The first thing to say, because it's the fear: a failed payment does not delete your photos.
What actually happens#
For 14 days, nothing changes. You keep full access while the payment is sorted out.
After that, the account becomes read-only. Everything stays exactly where it is, visible and downloadable. What stops is adding new photos.
That split is deliberate. Blocking uploads applies pressure to fix the payment; blocking access would hold your memories hostage, which is the thing we think is wrong with how some services handle this.
Only uploads into your own storage stop. You can still add photos to a Family Hub, or to an album whose owner pays for everyone's photos.
And then nothing else happens#
Read-only isn't a countdown to something worse. There's no date at which an unpaid account gets cleaned up, trimmed or deleted — it stays exactly as it is, readable, for as long as it takes you to either come back or take your copies and go.
That's a commitment rather than an accident: it's written into our Terms and Conditions, not just a policy we happen to follow this year.
We email you, three times at most#
If the payment for your own plan fails, Keepr emails the address on your account:
- The day it fails, with the date uploads would pause.
- Three days before that date, if the payment still hasn’t gone through.
- The day uploads pause, if it never did.
Each email has one button, straight to updating the payment (or, in the last one, restarting the plan). If you fix it in between, the next one doesn’t come. On an iPhone or iPad, payment details can’t be changed in the app, so the emails point you to keeprcircle.com instead.
Fixing it restores everything#
Updating the payment method lifts the read-only state immediately. Nothing was moved, nothing needs re-uploading, no settings are lost.
The overdue payment is taken from the method you add, straight away, whether that is a card, a card from Link or PayPal. If your plan has already ended, nothing is charged: Keepr asks you to choose the plan again, and it starts on that method.
If you'd rather stop#
That's a legitimate outcome, and read-only exists partly to make it survivable. Take your copies:
- Download your photos — individual photos or whole albums.
- Export everything — a full copy, emailed as a link.
Both work in read-only, on every plan.
Going over the free allowance#
The same read-only state applies if you drop to the free plan while using more than it holds. Your photos stay; uploads stop until you're back under the limit or back on a paid plan.
To get under it, the two things that free the most are removing originals you've finished with and reviewing duplicate stacks.
Family Hubs#
A hub has its own subscription, with the same 14 days, and its billing admin gets the same emails. See If the hub payment stops.
If you're a hub's billing admin and the card is one you no longer use, hand billing to another admin before it becomes urgent rather than during the grace period.