I built Relay-It because I kept hitting the same wall. I was designing and developing all day, moving things between my phone and my computer — iOS to Windows, Windows to iOS — and emailing myself was the fastest route I had. It still took too many clicks and too much waiting.
So I tried most of the apps out there. Every one of them failed at the thing I actually wanted: take it, send it to my other device, and it's already there.
— Mike, who builds Relay-It
Every figure below was checked against the company's own documentation where it exists. Each tool is genuinely good at something — this isn't a list of bad software. It's a list of gaps, and where they fall.
| Tool | Photos stay readable | Phone ↔ computer, any OS | Any distance | Arrives by itself | Nothing for them to install | Never fills up | No monthly cap | Group, ongoing | Notes & clipboard | Pay once |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relay-It$8 once | ||||||||||
| TextingSMS / MMS | ||||||||||
| iMessageApple only | ||||||||||
| WhatsAppfree | ||||||||||
| Emailing yourselfGmail, 25 MB | ||||||||||
| Google Drive15 GB free | ||||||||||
| Dropbox2 GB free | ||||||||||
| WeTransfer3 GB / 30 days | ||||||||||
| AirDropApple, 30 ft | ||||||||||
| Quick ShareAndroid / Windows | ||||||||||
| Discord10 MB free |
Scroll the table sideways to see all ten →
The specifics, so you can check them yourself.
MMS is a carrier feature, not a phone feature, and carriers cap it hard — commonly around 1 MB, varying by network. Your phone shrinks the photo to fit before it goes, so what arrives is a re-encoded copy. It's also phone-to-phone: getting the file onto your computer is a separate errand.
Misses: photo quality · phone ↔ computer · never fills up · pay once
Apple's own limit is about 100 MB per attachment, which is generous — but only between Apple devices. Send to anyone on Android and it falls back to MMS and gets crushed to carrier size. No Windows, no Android, no browser.
Misses: photo quality · phone ↔ computer · never fills up
The 2 GB ceiling everyone quotes applies to documents. Send a photo the normal way and it's re-encoded to roughly a tenth of a megabyte — which is why a picture of a serial number or a handwritten measurement arrives unreadable. There is a workaround: attach it as a Document instead of from the gallery. It works, and it's a thing you have to remember every single time.
Everyone in the conversation also needs the app and an account.
Misses: photo quality · nothing to install · never fills up
This is the one I used for years, and it's the honest benchmark. Nothing gets re-compressed and it works on everything. But Gmail caps a whole message at 25 MB, and encoding inflates files by about a third on the way — so a 19 MB video is already too big. Drive's free 15 GB is shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos, so it fills up from three directions at once.
The real cost isn't the cap. It's that nothing arrives — you go and get it. Open mail, find the message, download, wait, find the download. Every time.
Misses: arrives by itself · never fills up · group, ongoing
Both are good at what they are: places to keep things. Dropbox Basic is 2 GB, Drive is 15 GB shared. Recipients don't need an account — a shared link is enough on either.
But a link is an invitation, not a delivery. Nothing appears on their phone; they have to notice, tap, and download. And because both are built to hold files, they fill, and someone eventually spends an evening clearing them out.
Misses: arrives by itself · never fills up · notes & clipboard
Free is 3 GB per transfer, capped at 10 transfers or 3 GB total in any 30-day window, and links die after 3 days. The free plan is also for personal, non-commercial use — so billing a client with it isn't within the terms.
It's built for one delivery to one person. There's no shared place, no notes, and no clipboard.
Misses: arrives by itself · monthly cap · group, ongoing · notes · pay once
Both are excellent and both have the same two walls. AirDrop needs both devices within about 30 feet and both to be an iPhone, iPad or Mac. Quick Share covers Android, Windows and ChromeOS, needs the same proximity, and needs the desktop app installed on Windows.
And they don't talk to each other. Between them they cover most devices in the world and neither crosses the line. If your crew is half iPhone and half Android, neither one is the answer — which is exactly the problem I built Relay-It for.
Misses: phone ↔ computer · any distance · never fills up · group · notes
Rooms, push notifications, notes alongside files — structurally the closest thing here. Then you hit the ceiling: 10 MB per file on the free tier, lowered from 25 MB in 2024. Nitro Basic is $2.99/mo for 50 MB, Nitro is $9.99/mo for 500 MB. A single phone photo can exceed 10 MB.
Everyone also needs an account and the app, and it's built for communities that stay — the opposite of a hand-off.
Misses: photo quality · nothing to install
These aren't in the table, because they aren't trying to do this job and it would be unfair to score them as if they were. If you use one, Relay-It sits beside it.
Photo documentation tied to jobs and addresses — a permanent record of the work. If you need job documentation, that's what it's for.
Estimating, invoicing, client portals, scheduling. A place your projects live and get billed from.
Field service suites that feed their own job records. Everything gets filed against a work order.
Those keep things. Relay-It moves them, then gets out of the way.