What a Google Drive folder does well
A Google Drive folder costs nothing to set up, and many hosts and guests already have the account it lives in. You share a folder with edit access for anyone with the link and send the link around; Chrome turns it into a QR code for a printed card. Every Google Account includes free storage, shared with Gmail and Google Photos, and one folder holds a very large number of files, as the table above shows.
Drive keeps each file as it was uploaded, so photos and videos keep their full resolution, and it takes very large files, long videos included. You can comment on photos and videos, and on a computer you download many files at once. Google sets no end date for a folder. If your guests already work with Drive and you only need a place for the files, a folder fits in with what they know.
Where EventAssets offers more
EventAssets is built around the event rather than the files. Each event has its own page with the schedule, the location on a map and what guests should know, and the same page collects the replies: guests find their name, answer for their whole party and fill in your questions. The guest list feeds the seating chart, guests look up their table on the page, and budgets keep the costs beside it. The guestbook takes written messages and voice recordings made in the browser.
For the photos, guests open the link or scan the QR code and upload from the browser on their phone, with no app and no account, and what they send uses no storage of theirs or yours. Every file is kept in its original quality. Uploads can wait for your approval before anyone else sees them, albums keep the ceremony, the dinner and the party apart, and hiding, moving or deleting a file is up to you as the host. Guests react with an emoji and comment under a photo, you download everything as one ZIP file, and a full-screen slideshow picks up new uploads while it runs, on a screen at the venue.
A folder of files, or a home for the event
The core difference is what each one is for. A Drive folder is a place for files. Adding to it takes edit access, and Google’s help says that people with edit access can open, edit, delete or move any files within the folder. Each file belongs to the guest who uploaded it and takes up space in their own Drive, and on phones, Google’s upload steps use the Drive app. EventAssets is a home for the event: it begins with the page you send with the invitation, holds the replies and the seating, and keeps the photos, videos and messages together afterwards.
That difference shows when you want to keep everything. Because guests own what they upload, a file stays in the folder only for as long as its owner keeps it, and Google’s policies allow content to be deleted from an account that has long been inactive or over its storage quota. On EventAssets, the gallery belongs to your event: it stays online for a set window, listed in the table above, and you download everything as a ZIP before it ends. If you want a folder without a set end date that takes very large files, Google Drive does that; if you want the event and its photos in one place, EventAssets does. If you are also weighing a shared album, the comparison with a Google Photos shared album covers it.
What to check before you decide
Think about your guests and the phones they use. If they all have a Google Account and the Drive app, and you only need a place for the files, a shared folder may cover it. Ask a guest or two to try the link on their phone before the day, check whose storage the uploads use, and decide whether everyone who adds photos should also be able to move or delete what others added. If you want guests to upload from their phone’s browser without installing anything, to approve what appears, or to keep the replies, the seating chart and the guestbook beside the photos, compare the planning rows of the table as well. Then try the free plan: with EventAssets, the event page, the guest list and the guestbook are yours to set up before you pay anything.
