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Ditch your old-school methods of storing and sharing your digital data and get a cloud storage account. We are in the 21st century, after all, folks. Cloud storage makes your digital life infinitely easier.
Article Overview
- What Is It?
- Why Get It?
- What are Benefits?
- Best Cloud Storage Companies By Category
- Alternative Solutions
What Is Cloud Storage?
Simply put, storing things on a cloud is like an online version of a hard drive, but instead of having the drive within your computer or on another device, you save your files to virtual servers hosted by cloud storage providers.
Why Get Cloud Storage?
Millions upon millions of people around the world rely on cloud storage. The cloud storage service market will see nearly a two-fold increase in revenue from 2014 to 2016, with revenue reaching an estimated $4 billion per year according to Statistica forecasts. Security features to protect your data are better than ever before. With the promise of your crucial data stored — and protected — it makes sense to convert to the cloud.
What Are The Major Benefits Of Cloud Storage?
- Quick and easy access from any device, anywhere you have internet access
- Easy file sharing with co-workers, family and friends
- Your important files, photos and videos saved where they won’t get lost
Note that we differentiate between cloud storage (simply a place to host your files online), and online backup (providers that automatically sync and back up your content). Online backup services typically include features that are unnecessary for simple file storage (and can hog resources). If you’re interested in our online backup recommendations, check out our article on the best online backup services.
Best Cloud Storage Providers
Here we review several of the best cloud storage providers to help you choose which one best fits your personal and/or business needs. Click on a link below to go directly to the review you’re most interested in or read on for all of our cloud file sharing reviews.
Best for Personal Use | Best for Business | Best Free Cloud Storage
Best Cloud Storage For Personal Use: DropBox Review
Dropbox is our winner for best cloud storage for personal use. It is best suited for those who only need to sync and share smaller files. With a sleek and simple user interface and drag-and-drop features,
Dropbox is easy for novices and has all the tools more advanced users need: file-syncing with any device, photo backup from your mobile phone, file sharing and more. Drop Box gives you 2 GB of free space, but for more space, it can get expensive compared to other top services. We use Dropbox and think it’s one of the best online storage companies.
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Pricing
You can save 17% off monthly prices by clicking here, signing up, and paying annually. Free 14-day trial.
Free Plan
- Free
- 2 GB storage space
Individual Plus Plan
- $9.99 per month
- 2 TB (200,000 GB) storage space
Individual Professional Plan
Team Standard
Team Advanced
- $20 per user per month
- Unlimited storage space
Best Cloud Storage For Business: Hightail Review
Hightail, formerly YouSendIt, is an excellent choice for small, medium and even enterprise-level businesses. Their strengths lie in their file-sharing and digital workspace capabilities, unlimited storage and bandwidth and the ability to store and share large files easily. Hightail has even bumped up their file size limits since our last review!
You can transmit sensitive files thanks to their advanced encryption levels, and we love their e-signature feature that makes signing and sending important documents a breeze. Hightail has several pricing plans.
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Pricing
HighTail offers a 14-day free trial.
Lite Plan
- Free
- 2 GB storage
- 100 MB file size upload limit
Pro Plan
- $12 per user per month (billed annually)
- Unlimited storage
- 25 GB file size upload limit
- Additional features
Teams Plan
- $24 per user per month (billed annually)
- Unlimited storage
- 50 GB file size upload limit
- Additional features
Business Plan
- $36 per user per month (billed annually)
- Unlimited storage
- 100 GB file size upload limit
- Additional features
Best Free Cloud Storage Service: Box Review
Cloud storage service Box gives you an impressive 10 GB of space for free. Couple that with their extensive file sharing and syncing capabilities, and you’ve got a lot to work with for a free service. Geared more toward professionals than personal use, Box has great features to offer in its paid versions.
These pricing plans, however, get expensive quickly for less storage space than other high-end plans offer. Box’s free version is a solid option given its good reputation and storage space.
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Pricing
Personal Plan
- Free
- 1 user
- 10 GB storage
- 250 MB file size upload limit
- Option to upgrade for $10 per month: 100 GB storage; 5 GB file upload
Starter Plan
- $5 per user per month
- 3-10 users
- 100 GB storage
- 2 GB file size upload limit
Business Plan
- $15 per user per month
- Minimum of 3 users
- Unlimited storage
- 5 GB file size upload limit
Enterprise Plan
- Contact Box for pricing
- Minimum of 3 users
- See all available plans
How Does “The Cloud” Work?
Here’s a fun video that does a great job of explaining just how cloud storage works in layman’s terms with a dog illustration, no less! Check it out.
Are There Other Options Besides Cloud Storage?
Hopefully by now you’re sold on why you should get cloud storage, but if you’re still not convinced, maybe check out our online back up article to learn more. Or, if you’re still kicking it old school style and not ready to make the jump yet, maybe it’s time for a new external hard drive.
Which cloud storage service do you prefer and why?
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Dropbox just announced new pricing, and is making me choose (for renewal) between their standard plan ($150/user) and advanced plan ($200/year). The only difference they mention on the renewal page is that the advanced plan comes with admin and security features (and unlimited data vs 10TB with standard). What exactly are those admin and security features, any ideas?
Hi Caleb, Dropbox has a summary of the new plan differences here. It looks like the main differences between standard and advanced are that the latter adds these features: