Plates, a new photo-sharing app serving up as an Instagram alternative

It’s no secret that Instagram is no longer the ideal place for photographers to share their photos. The push towards ads and reels has forced photographers to find alternatives elsewhere. There is a need for a platform that is free from such malicious algorithms and ads. One that treats all kinds of content creators equally. With these principles in mind, we have built Plates, a new storytelling platform.

So how is Plates different from Instagram and other alternatives?
Plates and Instagram are fundamentally different in the way storytelling and subscriptions work. Instagram’s core is photos or videos shared by a single person. In contrast, Plates’s core is a continuous story told by one or several people sharing the same interest or experience. On Instagram, you follow a person and see their content one at a time. It does not provide much context or flow. There is no place for much collaboration either. Whereas on Plates, every photo belongs to a themed album providing greater context. Users can subscribe to specific albums giving them complete control over what they see in their feed.

How does Plates work?
With Plates, you create a plate that is essentially a photo album. A plate could be based on your photography, trips, experiences, etc. You can choose whether you want it to be public, private, or protected. You then add photos to your plates and build your collection. You could even add other people as co-curators to your plates to co-create. Think photo walks, Trips, etc!

And while subscribing to content users can choose to subscribe to specific plates of interest and have complete control of what they see in their feed. If you just like one particular album on a creator’s page, you can opt just to see content when it’s added to that plate rather than seeing everything they post.

You could find Plates from all genres of photography like Street, Wildlife, Portrait photography, etc from the discover page to subscribe to.

Plates is available on both iOS and Android. You can take a look at it here platestheapp.com

Disclaimer: I’m the founder of Plates. Through this article, I wanted to talk about the idea behind Plates and how I believe it could be the ideal Instagram alternative for us photographers. Do give it a shot and let me know what you think about it!