Public Cloud Drives were the biggest buzz not so long ago. IT giants were providing best options to backup all the personal files with many options to edit & share files securely. Cloud Drives almost removed the big ugly attachments from our personal emails. Many startups also pitched into the same idea and later on providing free file storage was a market with-in-a blink of eyes.
Today corporates that have their own internal FTPs, Private Cloud services and applications to easily share files publicly or privately as-per-the-requirements. Whereas there are still some gaping-holes when files being shared publicly from a Private Cloud system. For that business tapped-out to opt for Public Cloud Drives whenever required.
There are many benefits of Cloud Drives that gives a great User Experience overall. Some key benefits are:
- Drag-&-Drop facility to upload files quickly
- No maintenance and back-up worries
- Easy and secure to share
- Peers can collaborate
- Syncing among devices
- Cost saving
Which are the best Cloud Drives?
Well all major IT companies are still providing Cloud Drives services for free up to a certain limit of storage space. Maximum of these providers also have limit on single file upload to not to keep their servers heavy all the time. Some good and best Cloud Drive services today are:
Dropbox:
The largest used Cloud Drive is Dropbox. It’s available for every platform and for a free user it gives 2GB initially and this can be increased up to 16GB free-of charge by linking your Dropbox to social media and referring friends to join the service. Dropbox also has business subscription that allows collaboration and gives Unlimited space to each person/user. Whereas Dropbox for business comfort users by giving add-on for Gmail.
| Dropbox for freelancers and personal users | ||
| Space | Price | Feautres |
| Basic | ||
| 2 GB | Free | * Sync Files * Shared Folders and Links * Dropbox Paper |
| Plus | ||
| 1 TB | $9.99/month | * Offline file access * Remote device wipe * Priority email support |
| Professional | ||
| 2TB | $19.99/month | * Smart Sync: save hard disk space * Showcase: Present and track your work * Shared link controls * Full-text Search * 120-days version history * Priority Chat support |
| Dropbox for Business | ||
| Space | Price | Feautres |
| Standard | ||
| 3TB | $12.50/User/Month (starting at minimum 3 users) |
* All features of freelacners and personal users * Office 365 integration * Admin console and audit log * User and company-managed groups * Unlimited API access to security and productivity platform Partners |
| Advanced | ||
| Unlimited | $20/User/Month (starting at minimum 3 users) |
Everything with advances as mentioned in Standard subscription pack |
G-Drive (Google Drive):
Every Gmail user has access to Google Drive up to 15 GB for free of cost. Its one of the most fast syncing platform and works super fine across mobile and desktop platforms. Upgrading to 1 TB and Unlimited options are there with it with monthly prices. With Google Drive now users have access to limited G-Suite options that full-fills all office needs. Pricing for Google Drive are:
| Space | Price |
| Basic Google Drive (with every Gmail account) | |
| 15 GB | Free |
| Drive Enterprise | |
| Unlimited (priced as per usage) |
$8/active user + $0.04/GB |
| G-Suite | |
| Unlimited (1 TB/User if less than equal to 5 users) |
$10 – $25/month/user |
OneDrive by Microsoft
Microsoft was one of the first movers who provided online free storage back in 2007 named as Windows Live Folders, first it was given to few beta users and later made it open for public. Over the course of time Microsoft kept changing the name Windows Live SkyDrive, then SkyDrive and now its OneDrive and integrates many of the Office 365 features for every user. There was a time every Hotmail/Live/Outlook user use to get 25 GB of free space and now for new users free space is only 5 GB. OneDrive is one of the most robust cloud drives and with Office apps integration it full fills all the requirements of editing, collaboration and sharing. OneDrive also has different Personal and Business subscriptions plane. Pricing for OneDrive are:
| Personal | |
| Space | Price |
| OneDrive Basic | |
| 5 GB | Free |
| OneDrive 50 GB | |
| 50 GB | $1.99/Month |
| Office 365 Personal | |
| 1 TB | $69.99/Year |
| Office 365 Home | |
| 5 TB | $99.99/Year |
| Business | |
| Space | Price |
| OneDrive for Business Plan 1 | |
| 1 TB | $60/Year/User |
| OneDrive for Business Plan 2 | |
| Unlimited | $120/Year/User |
| Office 365 Business Premium | |
| 1 TB | $150/Year/User |
Amazon Drive
Amazon is one of the most active Cloud providers for all the corporates with it AWS and EC2 services. All the app developers today wants to have the access of AWS to build their apps. From this, its sure that Amazon is a great leader in Cloud services and their Cloud Drive is also quite good to use. Amazon Drive is also there on all major mobile and desktop platforms. Syncing among devices is very responsive. Moreover Amazon Drive is considered one of the secured drive. Amazon Drive provides up to 5 GB of storage space for free for each Amazon user.
iCloud
Apple is the trend setter in the world. Apple provides the complete solutions to the users and keeps them happy with the performance all the time. If a user is in the Apple tech-environment that user has it all under his thumb. iCloud is a service from Apple that actually syncs up all the iOS, watchOS and macOS that gives the feel that user is accessing that file from a single-pane-of-glass. Apple also offer their all Office apps with Photos, iMovie, Contacts to sync up at a single place. iCloud gives 5 GB of space for free-of-cost to all Apple ID users. Pricing for different iCloud subscriptions are:
(Image Source: Apple)
These are one of the finest Cloud Drives that are there today from biggest IT companies. There are many others cloud drive providers that are also good and in some way, those could be better than above ones also.
So for personal data and file sharing is these Cloud Drives are the best options to share and centralize all your important files.
