Cloud storage services offer so many advantages that the question nowadays is not ‘to store or not to store?’ but ‘where to store?’ i.e. which cloud storage service to choose, there are just too many of them out there. We’ll try to help you with this by comparing some of the most popular services below – Dropbox, Amazon, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Even if you don’t opt for any of them, you’ll at least figure out what you need to pay attention to when figuring out which one suits your needs best.
The biggest advantage of this service is that it supports pretty much all platforms. Its desktop applications work on macOS, Windows and Linux, mobile applications – on iOS, Android, BlackBerry and KindleFire.
You might not be impressed with the size of free storage you get initially – it’s only 2 GB. However it is possible to add free storage and it is relatively easy – 250 Mb for taking the ‘Getting Started’ tutorial, 3 GB for enabling the automatic photo upload feature, 500 Mb for each friend you invite to use Dropbox.
What would we want Dropbox to improve on? On collaboration features – there aren’t any at the moment.
This service is for those who need unlimited storage space: Unlimited Photos can store as many of your media files (photos and videos) as you want it to; Unlimited Everything is for all kinds of files, but it is not free. One big put off with this service is that it provides no file syncing.
Apps are available for Windows and macOS, as well as Android and iOS mobile devices.
What we like about Google Drive is the office suite you get with it. Docs, Sheets and Slides – what else would you need for your regular office work? Add a Google Chrome extension and now you can work on Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. You can share the documents with your team and work on them together. Please note that once files are uploaded you cannot change their ownership and there might be problems with syncing large files.
Google Drive works on macOS and Windows and has applications for Android and iOS. Sorry, Linux users, no version available to you – not yet.
You get 15 GB of free storage here, but be warned – this includes all files and documents you store on your Google account, including your mails. But getting more storage is no problem at all, if you are willing to pay for it.