Everpix

The photo service that solved the problem everyone had and ran out of money anyway, and then published its entire post-mortem for others to learn from

Shut down
19902026

Everpix was a photo organising and backup service founded in San Francisco by Pierre-Olivier Latour and Kevin Quennesson, two engineers with Apple and Mac software backgrounds. Launched in September 2011, it gathered every photo from every device, found the best ones and quietly backed everything up. It reached about 55,000 users but could not raise more money, and closed on 15 December 2013. The founders then published all their numbers.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2011
  2. 12 September 2011 Launch
    Everpix launches at TechCrunch Disrupt
  3. 2012
  4. July 2012 Funding
    Seed round of about $2.3 million

    Index Ventures and others.

  5. 2013
  6. June 2013 Peak
    About 55,000 users, under 7,000 paying
  7. 5 November 2013 Shutdown announced
    The founders announce the closure

    The Verge publishes the inside story the same day.

  8. 6 November 2013 other
    The company posts its internal numbers on GitHub
  9. 15 December 2013 Shutdown
    Downloads close and the service is switched off

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: everpix.com, 7 June 2013 →

Browse everpix.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2011 2012 2013 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Everpix, Inc. 2011–2013 Founded Pierre-Olivier Latour and Kevin Quennesson, San Francisco

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Registered accounts ▲ 55,000 October 2013 Reported From the published metrics
Revenue (USD) 4,800 October 2013 Reported Monthly subscription revenue near the end

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Everpix could not raise a second round. It had about 55,000 users, under 7,000 of them paying, and an Amazon hosting bill that grew with every photo uploaded. The founders announced the closure on 5 November 2013, gave people until 15 December to download their pictures, and then put their investor deck, metrics and internal documents on GitHub.

Our analysis: Everpix did the hard part right. It pulled every photo you had from every phone, camera and service, removed the duplicates, and showed you the good ones; people who used it loved it. What it did not do was grow fast enough to interest investors, or charge enough to cover its own storage. Each new user cost money at Amazon before paying a cent, and the free tier meant most never did. The founders were engineers who built the product first and thought about distribution last, and they said so themselves. The post-mortem they published became the most honest document of its kind and is still read by people starting companies.

History [edit]

Every photo, sorted

By 2011 most people had photos in five places and could find none of them. Everpix, launched on 12 September 2011 at TechCrunch Disrupt, connected to your iPhone, your Mac, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram and Picasa, pulled everything in, removed the duplicates, and ran a picture-quality model over the lot so that the Highlights view showed you the ones worth seeing. A Flashback email showed what you had shot on this day in earlier years, a feature that every large photo service copied later.

It was free to try and $4.99 a month or $49 a year to keep everything. The people who used it tended to describe it as the thing they had been waiting for. Reviews were good, and the product was technically ahead of Apple and Google at the time.

The sums

Behind the app was a bill. Every photo went into Amazon S3, and every free user added to that bill without adding to the revenue. The company raised $2.3 million in seed money, spent it carefully, and went looking for a Series A in 2013 with around 55,000 users, about 6,800 of them paying. Investors wanted faster growth; the numbers were good for a product and bad for a venture bet. The founders talked to potential acquirers and could not close one.

On 5 November 2013 The Verge published a long account written with the founders during the final weeks, and the same day Everpix told users it would close. Downloads were open until 15 December 2013, then the service switched off and the data was deleted. Rather than go quietly, the founders put the pitch deck, the investor spreadsheets, the AWS bills and the internal Slack-style chat logs on GitHub, an unusual amount of openness that made Everpix a case study long after the product was gone.

The domain today

everpix.com no longer serves the app. The founders went to different companies; the Flashback idea lives on as Memories and On This Day in the apps that outlasted them.

Similar projects

Picasa Everyone's first photo library 2002–2016 Picnik The photo editor in your browser, bought by Google and closed two years later 2007–2012 Panoramio The Spanish photo map Google bought for Google Earth and closed a decade later, taking millions of geotagged pictures off the map 2005–2016 Photosynth Microsoft Live Labs' 3D photo stitcher, a jaw-dropping demo in 2006, a website from 2008, switched off in February 2017 2006–2017 OnLive Cloud gaming, a decade too early 2010–2015 Pebble The smartwatch Kickstarter built, and Fitbit buried 2013–2018

Sources [edit]

  1. Out of the picture: why the world's best photo startup is going out of business The Verge 5 November 2013 [archived]
  2. Everpix-Intelligence GitHub 5 November 2013 [archived]
  3. Everpix is shutting down TechCrunch 5 November 2013 [archived]
  4. Everpix launches at Disrupt TechCrunch 12 September 2011

Last verified: 22 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).