Every video you record has to live somewhere. The two obvious options — your phone or someone's cloud — each have real strengths and real weaknesses.
Your phone
Pros: it is yours, it works offline, nobody else holds a copy, and playback is instant.
Cons: phones get lost, broken or replaced. Some browsers also clear the storage of web apps that haven't been opened for a while — on iPhone this can happen after seven days without use (WebKit, 2020) — so a web app's local archive is not a backup.
The cloud
Pros: survives a lost phone, syncs across devices, makes moving to a new phone easy.
Cons: your videos sit on someone else's servers, often indefinitely, and storing large amounts of video is not free for anyone.
The hybrid approach
Circlr combines both:
- Everything you record or receive is saved on your phone.
- The servers keep circles for a limited time — posts and replies for 30 days on the free plan, stories for 24 hours, direct messages for up to 48 hours.
- Older posts can still be watched peer-to-peer from the author's phone while the author is online.
- Premium keeps your circles in the cloud for good, with backup of your archive and transfer to a new phone.
Making it reliable on your side
- Open the app now and then, especially on iPhone, so the browser keeps its storage.
- Use "Download whole archive (ZIP)" occasionally and keep the file somewhere safe.
- When you switch phones, import that ZIP — or, with Premium, download your cloud straight to the new device.
There is no single right answer for everyone. If you want the smallest possible footprint on servers, the phone-first default does that. If you want never to think about it, the cloud is there.