Written to be fair · Facts checked August 2, 2026
Mylio moves your photos. Sally writes down the truth about them.
Mylio Photos+ is a twenty-year DAM pedigree wrapped around device-to-device sync: it relocates, replicates and organizes your actual files. Sally never moves a byte — she fingerprints what you have, wherever it is, and makes the catalog legible to you and to your AI. Those are different jobs, and this page is honest about which one you are hiring for.
The short version
Mylio is the incumbent for exactly the person Sally serves — multi-device, multi-source, privacy-leaning families — and it earns four rows below outright. But it went subscription-only at $240 a year in March 2025, its sync architecture wants a vault computer that stays awake, and it has no answer to "let my AI see my catalog." Sally costs $72 a year, moves nothing, and ships the MCP server.
3
of 12 rows below go to Mylio
7
go to Sally
2
are a matter of what you want, not who is better
What Mylio is, as of August 2, 2026
Facts first, arguments later. If any of this has gone out of date, it is a mistake rather than a tactic — tell us and we will fix it.
- Price
- $25/month or $240/year for Individual; Pro is $40/month or $480/year. Legacy subscribers were grandfathered at $12.99/month or $119/year "for the foreseeable future." Seven-day trial, no free tier. (support.mylio.com, checked August 2, 2026.)
- The 2025 pivot
- A March 4, 2025 letter from the CEO announced the move to subscription-only, positioned around white-glove onboarding — "we help them get configured correctly." Read plainly: the peer-to-peer sync architecture is complex enough that paid hand-holding is part of the product.
- Architecture
- Desktop-first peer-to-peer sync. Devices hold full or "optimized" copies and reconcile with each other; a designated vault machine should stay on for sync to complete. A "Sync Health" panel was added in 2026 to make the process more inspectable.
- Known friction
- Recurring review themes across the App Store and aggregators, noted August 2026: duplicates created by interrupted or repeated syncs, "lost originals and duplicate files" from failed initial syncs, the vault needing to be awake, and a steep learning curve around Vaults, Optimized Images and Sync Policies.
- AI posture
- On-device face recognition and keyword AI. No assistant interface, no MCP server, no way for an external AI to query the library.
What Mylio does better than Sally
Every one of these is real, and some of them are permanent. A comparison page that cannot name the other product's advantages is an advertisement wearing a lab coat.
It actually moves and syncs your files across devices
Mylio replicates your library — full-resolution or space-saving copies — across your laptop, phone and vault, and it works offline. Sally will never do this. If the job is "make my photos physically present on every device," Mylio is built for it and Sally is not even applying.
Polished native apps on four platforms
Windows, macOS, iOS and Android apps with desktop-class culling, rating, albums and editing hooks. Sally is a web app plus a command-line agent; there is no native Sally app on your phone today.
Automatic face grouping, if you want it
Mylio’s on-device face recognition sorts people for you with no cloud involved. Sally refuses to do face recognition by architecture — people tags in Sally are typed by humans. If automatic face grouping is a must-have, that row is Mylio’s forever.
Two decades of DAM craft, plus a human onboarding
Mylio’s team has been building personal photo management since the Photo Mechanic era of DAMs, and the subscription includes real setup help. Sally is run by one operator with documentation and an email address.
Side by side
Each row says who it favours. We wrote the labels before we counted them, which is why some of them say Mylio.
| Feature | Sally Does Data | Mylio Photos+ |
|---|---|---|
| Where your files liveSally | Exactly where they already are. Sally stores fingerprints and metadata; storing a copy is opt-in per item. | Replicated across your devices and vault under Mylio’s sync policies. |
| SetupSally | Sign up in a browser; optionally run one zero-dependency binary against a folder. | Install on each device, choose vault and sync policies — involved enough that guided onboarding is a selling point. |
| Device-to-device syncMylio | None. Sally is a catalog, not a mover. | The core feature: full or optimized copies kept in step across devices, offline-capable. |
| Native desktop and mobile appsMylio | Web app (installable as a PWA) plus a CLI. No native apps. | Native Windows, macOS, iOS and Android apps. |
| RAW workflow and offline editingMylio | Not Sally’s job — she catalogs and links out to your files. | Rating, culling and edit round-trips in a desktop app, offline. |
| Duplicate handlingSally | SHA-256 exact matches plus perceptual near-duplicate clusters, with a keeper recommendation and a verdict you can cite. | Dedup tools exist, but interrupted syncs are themselves a recurring source of new duplicates in user reports (noted August 2026). |
| Fingerprints and provenanceSally | Every item gets a cryptographic hash, a perceptual hash and an EXIF-derived history — a claim you can verify years later. | Internal catalog IDs; no user-facing fingerprint or provenance trail. |
| Your AI can query itSally | Built-in MCP server with per-item consent tiers; Claude or any MCP client can search the catalog you allow. | No assistant interface and no MCP, as of August 2026. |
| Face recognitionDepends on you | None, by architecture. People are tagged by humans. | On-device face recognition, on by default. |
| SearchDepends on you | Full-text search over titles, stories, tags, people and places you and Sally wrote down. | Local AI keyword and face search over the synced library. |
| PriceSally | 5,000 items free; Plus is $72/year. | $240/year Individual, no free tier (7-day trial). |
| Leaving is safeSally | XMP sidecars, JSON-LD, CSV and a full SQLite export at every tier — the catalog is yours on the way out. | Your files remain yours, but the catalog and sync intelligence live in the subscription. |
So which one is for you?
Choose Mylio if…
- You want one product to physically consolidate, sync and carry your library across devices — that is the actual job Mylio is for.
- You want native apps with offline culling, rating and a RAW-friendly workflow.
- You want automatic, on-device face grouping and are comfortable with it.
- The $240/year includes hand-holding you will genuinely use — Mylio’s onboarding help is real.
Choose Sally if…
- Your files should stay exactly where they are — no relocation, no vault, no sync policies to misconfigure.
- You want your AI assistant to answer questions from your catalog; Mylio has no door for that and Sally’s MCP server is the product’s spine.
- You want fingerprint-verified duplicate verdicts and provenance rather than another sync engine’s opinion.
- You would rather pay $72 a year than $240, and you want to try the real thing free with 5,000 items first.
What Sally cannot do, next to Mylio
Nobody has ever regretted reading this list before signing up, and plenty of people have regretted not being shown one.
- Sync, replicate or move files between your devices — not today, not on the roadmap. Sally is a catalog by conviction.
- Edit photos, cull RAW shoots or replace a desktop DAM workflow.
- Recognize faces automatically. People tags in Sally are typed by a human on purpose.
- Hand you a native mobile app today — Sally on a phone is the web app (installable as a PWA), not an App Store listing.
Keep the mover, hire the librarian
If Mylio is working for you — especially at a grandfathered $119/year — there is no need to leave. Point `sally go` at the folders Mylio manages and Sally will fingerprint the same files where Mylio keeps them: you get dedup verdicts, provenance and an AI-readable catalog on top of Mylio’s sync. And if you ever do leave, the catalog is your map of what you own, independent of any one app’s database.
The verdict
Mylio and Sally get described with the same words — "organize my photos across all my devices" — but they are different trades. Mylio is a moving-and-storage company: it relocates and replicates your actual files, beautifully, for $240 a year and a learning curve its own CEO letter acknowledges. Sally is a librarian: she never touches the shelves, she writes down what is on them, proves it with fingerprints, and hands the index to you and to your AI.
If you need the moving company, hire the moving company — nothing on this page argues otherwise, and four rows above go to Mylio on merit. But most people arriving here do not need their photos moved; they need to know what they have, which copies are the real ones, and how to make any of it findable by the tools they actually use in 2026. That is the librarian’s job, it costs $72 a year instead of $240, and you can test it on 5,000 items without a card.
Questions people actually ask
Is Sally a Mylio replacement?
Only for the cataloging half of what Mylio does. Sally replaces nothing about device sync, offline apps or RAW culling — she replaces not-knowing-what-you-have. Plenty of people should run both; some will discover the catalog was the part they actually wanted.
Can Sally read the metadata Mylio already wrote?
Sally reads what your files themselves carry — EXIF dates, GPS, camera, embedded XMP keywords — at upload or when `sally go` walks a folder. Metadata that lives only inside Mylio’s own catalog database stays there; metadata written into the files or sidecars comes along.
Why is Sally so much cheaper?
Because Sally does less, on purpose. No sync engines, no per-device apps, no white-glove onboarding staff — a catalog of fingerprints and human-written truth is cheap to run, and the price says so. You are not getting a discount Mylio; you are getting a different, smaller, sharper tool.
I am grandfathered at $119/year. Should I still care?
Staying is rational — that price is Mylio’s own retention dam and it is a good deal for the sync job. Sally still adds the two things no Mylio tier has: fingerprint provenance you can cite, and an MCP server so your assistant can finally see your catalog.
Where these facts came from
Checked August 2, 2026. Where we could not stand behind a link, the claim is dated and left unlinked rather than dressed up in one.
- Mylio pricing and plans (support.mylio.com), checked August 2, 2026
- Mylio CEO letter announcing the subscription-only model, March 4, 2025 — mylio.com
- App Store and aggregator review themes (duplicates from sync, vault-awake requirement, learning curve), collected August 2026
The other comparisons
Sally vs Immich
Immich wins five rows below, including the big one for self-hosters: it is free, open source, and backs up your phone to hardware you own. The cost is the job — Docker Compose, Postgres, ML containers, GPU quirks and backup discipline, forever. Sally holds nothing, hosts nothing of yours by default, and ships the MCP server Immich’s team explicitly declined to build.
Read it →
Sally vs Google Photos
Google Photos wins the rows you would expect — effortless backup, editing magic, search over its own copy, and a free 15GB start. The catch is structural: its AI sees only what Google holds, answers only through Gemini, and since March 31, 2025 no third-party app or assistant can read your library at all. Sally is not a better Google Photos; she is the map of everything — Google’s copy included — that any assistant you consent to can read.
Read it →
✨
The cheapest way to settle this is to try it.
Five thousand items free, no card, nothing to uninstall. Point Sally at one messy folder and see whether “I did not know I had four of those” happens to you. It usually does.