Protection and backups

Standard keeps one primary copy of your final photos plus a 7-day recovery bin. Protected adds a verified second copy of final photos and clips on a separate provider for the paid period and archive month, with restore within 24 hours. Both prices are shown side by side at checkout and nothing is pre-selected.

Protected packs cost: Lite ₹129 for 6 months and ₹209 for 12; 40 GB ₹1,378 / ₹2,498; 50 GB ₹1,718 / ₹3,068; 120 GB ₹4,148 / ₹7,348. All prices are before 18% GST. Protection is optional and never pre-selected; you choose Standard or Protected yourself at checkout.

It depends on the file type. Final photos and clips get a verified second copy only on Protected packs. Previews have a 7-day recovery bin, with no second copy. Originals are kept as one primary copy and are not backed up, so keep your own copy. Pikvaa states this plainly instead of promising everything.

Yes. Keep your cards until you have your own independent second copy, such as on your own drive. Pikvaa shows a keep-your-cards warning until you confirm that copy, because originals are stored as one copy and not backed up. Studios storing previews only see 'Keep your cards. Originals are not stored here.'

'Protected' appears only after the second copy of your final photos and clips is verified by checksum. Until then the event shows 'Protection in progress'. If a copy fails, Pikvaa retries automatically and alerts you if it keeps failing. Protection follows pack extensions, and restores happen within 24 hours.

Deleted files go to a 7-day recovery bin first, so you can restore them within 7 days. After that they are purged. On Protected packs, final photos and clips also have a verified second copy that can be restored within 24 hours. Previews lost after 7 days can be re-uploaded from your cards.

Your studio data sits in a managed database with 7-day point-in-time restore, daily backups kept for 30 days and an encrypted daily off-site copy at a different provider. A monthly automated test restores a full event, including photos, selections and permissions, to prove backups actually work.

Protection covers final photos and clips, plus their top-ups. It does not cover previews or originals, which have only the 7-day recovery bin. This is shown on the Protected card at checkout, so you know exactly what you are paying for before choosing.

Photos are stored on Cloudflare R2 object storage, with archive months on R2 Infrequent Access. On Protected packs, a second copy of final photos and clips is kept on Backblaze B2, a separate provider. Pikvaa plans to move primary storage to Backblaze B2 as volume grows.

Pikvaa monitoring alerts the team within 5 minutes, a public status page and in-app banner keep you informed, and client galleries are kept working where possible. Client time periods such as selection deadlines and pack warnings are extended by the length of the outage, and affected studios get an incident note.