Cloud Storage: Best Choice?
Backup? Should I pay? Here are the answers.
Cloud storage becomes more and more popular for personal use. Regardless uploading files manually or using automated upload/backup, the space provided for free is never enough. And so it comes, that you need to buy some cloud storage. In this post, I'm trying to compare the 4 most popular vendors: Dropbox, Google, Microsoft and Apple.
Dropbox
Dropbox provides the best integration - an official client app is available for all popular platforms: Windows, Mac OS, iPhone, iPad, Android, Linux Desktop.
The free subscription allows up to 2GB of data and maximum of 3 devices.
Two personal plans are provided for Dropbox Plus:
- Standard, which gives you 2TB and unlimited number of devices for 1 user and
- Family, which allows you to share these 2TB with up to 6 users.
The prices in Germany of 12€/month (120€/year) for standard and 20€/month (204€/year) make Dropbox the most expensive of them all.
Microsoft OneDrive
Official apps are available for all platforms except Desktop Linux: Windows, Mac OS, iPhone, iPad, Android.
The free version of OneDrive provides 5GB of data and a light version of the personal vault. No limitation in number of devices.
Microsoft provides as well two personal plans as part of the 365 subscription:
- Single, with 1TB of space, premium versions of the Office Apps and some Skype credit and
- Family, which allows 6 users to share the subscription, allowing up to 6TB (1TB per user)
The price in Germany for single is 7€/month (69€/year), for family 10€/month (99€/year).
Microsoft offers also a 100GB space-only plan for 2€ per month.
You can get an official app for Windows, Mac OS, iPhone, iPad, Android.
The free version includes 15GB of data storage, making it the biggest of them all. No limitation of number of devices is there too. The photos, that are being uploaded can be viewed in Google Photos, which also comes with an app.
These plans are available:
- 100 GB (1.99€/month or 19.99€/year)
- 200 GB (2.99€/month or 29.99€/year)
- 2 TB (9.99€/month or 99.99/year)
Apple
Like anything else from Apple, also the iCloud is vendor-locked, meaning you can use it best with Apple devices (Mac OS, iPhone, iPad).
The free version includes 5 GB of storage.
Also 3 pricing plans are available:
- 50 GB (0.99€/month)
- 200 GB (2.99€/month)
- 2 TB (9.99€/month)
Conclusion
If you are looking for small storages then Google and Apple (if you are already using their products) are your best choice.
If you want more space then you should consider OneDrive as the best option.
If you want a lot of storage then you can either take Google/Apple's 2 TB or have 6 accounts with a total of 6 TB from OneDrive.