Let’s explore several options from free software to expensive. To sum it up, Lightroom beats every other software hands-down as the ultimate photo organizer. It comes with a learning curve and is only available via the subscription model.

If you absolutely hate the subscription model, Photo Mechanic is the fastest software for organizing photos. It’s been around longer than Lightroom and many photographers use it in conjunction with Lightroom since it is so much faster for processing.

Free Options:

Google Photos

Pros:
FREE
Available for both PCs and Macs

Cons:
Extremely limited editing.
Cloud storage only JPEGs
No print module
Slow upload/download speeds
Cannot sort photos in albums
Search could be better

Apple Photos

Pros:
FREE
Comes already loaded on to your Apple Computer, iPhone and iPad
Easy to use
Automatically uses iCloud

Cons:
Extremely limited editing
Automatically uses iCloud so your iCloud can fill up quickly. Apple makes it difficult to empty iCloud.
Search is limited.

Microsoft Photos

Pros:
FREE
Comes already loaded on to your Windows computer
Easy to use

Cons:
Extremely limited editing
Search is limited

Faststone Image Viewer

Pros:
FREE

Cons:
Windows only.
Extremely limited editing
No real organization, no keywording

Paid Software Options

Photoshop Elements

Windows and Apple

Pros:

Organizer is catalog based. Easy to add keywords. Facial recognition.
Includes powerful editing software including Layers, masks, HDR, Pano

Cons:
Organizer is confusing and has a learning curve
Can install on two devices

Cost: $100

ON1

Windows and Apple

Pros:
Organizer is database driven, which makes it much easier to learn
Easy to add keywords. Facial recognition.
Includes powerful editing software including layers, masks, HDR, Pano
Can install on 5 devices

Cons:
There is no built in way to back up your files.

Cost: $180 per year subscription model
According to the website, the option to buy this outright is coming in June 2020

ACDSee

Windows and Apple

Pros:
Database vs catalog so no importing
ACDSee utilizes about one-third of the memory as Lightroom.
Very fast
Powerful editing including layers.
Can install on 5 devices
One year of free updates and technical support

Cons:
You may still want to use Photoshop for the very detailed editing

Cost: $89.95 (offer expires May 6, 2020)

Photo Mechanic

Windows and Apple

Pros:
Super fast for culling and tagging your photos. As far as I can find, Photo Mechanic will reduce the time in your workflow better than any other product.
Keywording and IPTC capabilities are very advanced.

Cons:
Not intuitive. Definite learning curve.
No editing besides cropping.

Cost: $124

Luminar

Windows and Apple

Pros:
Easy to use
Editing capabilities such as Masks

Cons:
Very limited organization features

Cost: $89

Affinity

Windows and Apple

Pros: Great editing software at an amazing price

Cons: Not an organizing software

Cost: On sale at this writing for $25