Internet is getting more and more popular each day and so is the cloud storage demand. Earlier, users had an option of using Dropbox only but now Google has also joined the war with its new product, Google Drive. There are loads of features which are comparable and we can easily measure their usability in various aspects. Along with Dropbox and Google drive, we have Microsoft’s OneDrive and Box.com, fighting to be the best for cloud storage.
Storage And Bandwidth :
In terms of cost, all the four services are giving free cloud storage service but being free, they are limited in some or the other way. As a free storage, Dropbox provides 2 GB of free storage space and a daily bandwidth of 10 GB, Google Drive provides 5 GB of storage with unlimited bandwidth, OneDrive offers 7 GB (Earlier it was 25 GB) with unlimited bandwidth as that in Google Drive. Box is a bit different and provides 5 GBs of free storage but a monthly bandwidth of 10 GBs (very less as compared to others).
For Premium Users
Dropbox: With Dropbox you can have two types of accounts, one is the Pro account which is further of three types, 100 GB for $9.99, 200 GB for $19.99 and 500 GB for $49.99, the prices are for monthly billing. The other one is for teams. A team can have a minimum of 5 members and for 5 members you get 1000 GB’s of storage and it costs you $795 a year. For every additional team member you get 200 GBs of storage at a price of $125 a year.
Dropbox Pro Account Pricing
Dropbox Pricing For Teams
Google Drive: It offers monthly plans priced at $2.49/month for 25 GB of storage, $4.99 for 100 GB storage, $9.99 for 200 GB storage and so on up to 16 TBs which is priced at $799.99 a month.
Microsoft OneDrive: In addition to the 7 GB free storage, you can buy more space at $10 for 20 GB , $25 for 50 GB and $50 for 100 GB. That means in total you will get 27 GBs, 57 GBs and 107 GBs with $10, $25 and $50 respectively.
Box: Box has come up with 3 types of premium storages, the Personal, Business and Enterprise. For personal storage, Box offers 25 GBs of storage at $10 and 50 GBs of storage at $20. For business storage, you can have 3 to 500 users with online storage of 1000 GBs at $15 per user per month. For Enterprises, the users can be unlimited with an unlimited storage, but you need to get into talks with them for the pricing quotes.
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Cross Platform Support
All the services have apps for all the major operating system, both for mobile and computers.
Dropbox: Dropbox is available as a standalone syncing app for both Windows and Mac. You can also use Dropbox’s mobile application that are available for Android, iOS, Kindle Fire (Android) and BlackBerry.
OneDrive: OneDrive is also available for Windows and Macintosh. It also comes pre-installed in Windows 8 as the SkyDrive app. In addition to Android and iOS, OneDrive is also available for Windows Phones.
Google Drive: Google Drive is also available for Windows, Macintosh, Android and iOS.
Box: Box is available for Windows, Android and iOS. If you are looking for a service that has a dedicated application for Macintosh, then you can go for any service other than Box.
In addition of dedicated applications for different operating systems, you can also use any of the service using your web browser. You can upload new files and download the files that are already uploaded to your account. If you are happy with a service that does have an app for your operating system, then it’s not a big problem to go for an alternative.
Uptime And Reliability
In order to compare their performance and reliability we can upload the same file to all the above discussed services. According to Pingdom it was observed that all the four services gave almost similar results except from little dissimilarity. It was also found that the best performer was Box, however Google Drive showed some minor outages but was somewhat close to a perfect result. If we talk about Microsoft’s OneDrive and Dropbox, they experienced few outages, very high if compared to Box and Google Drive. When checked for a month Box.com showed no downtime, Google Drive was down for a minute and Dropbox and OneDrive for 13 and 15 minutes respectively.
These were just four of the best free online cloud storage services we used. There are many more services like these which you can try, it all depends on what exactly are your requirements. But if you are new to this and want to start off, then you can surely go for anyone of these.
There are many people who are in love with Dropbox since it has proved to be a very useful tool giving a very good performance and reliability at all levels. Microsoft’s OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive, all are focusing on storing your data right in the cloud, now you don’t need a hard drive, which is more prone of crashing and you might lose all your data.
P.S. All of the cloud storage services discussed above are great. But Box.com is specially good for the Enterprises. It already has 140,000 companies that share and access their content using Box. And for personal use, I recommend Dropbox. It has larger bandwidth for file sharing and the storage can also be increased up to 18 GB by inviting your friends and uploading images from other devices to Dropbox. Read my article on getting up to 70 GB of free storage space on Dropbox