Top 4 Cloud Storage Service for Business & Personal Use

As the costs of cloud data storage are dropping, more and more organisations are opting to backup documents on the cloud and streamline their communications.

Among the swarm of cloud storage solutions available in the market, the ones that dominate the market are Google Drive, BOX, DropBox and OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive). For the readers, I have done a thorough research on the advantages and disadvantages of each of them.

Best 4 Cloud Storage Service For Business & Personal Use

 Google Drive

Google is probably one of the most used service and this is because unlike the others, Google Drive tends to get automatically installed.

Free Storage: 15 GB

What’s Good:

• Apps for iOS and Android
• Requires minimal setup effort and one can easily upload files into the cloud by dragging and dropping them into the Drive website.
• Simple to save attachments from your e-mail directly to Drive
• Works best for personal storage purpose where the user wants just a few office tools for File Management.

What’s Not:

• Does not let you automatically upload photos from your phone directly to the Drive.
• Cannot host sensitive or personal information as Google holds the right to scan all your content and sell information about you to anyone.

 BOX 

With a free signup, the user gets 10 GB free storage space and can use the service to share files, leave comments on files shared by others and also be notified when a shared file is edited.

What’s Good:

• Popular choice among big business houses with its good set of collaboration tools and privacy control options.
• You can password protect individual files and thus restrict as to who can view or edit certain files.
• Can be connected with other apps, such as Salesforce and NetSuite

What’s Not:

• Expensive
• Not suitable for personal storage or when only few files or folders are to be managed.

 Dropbox 

Once a pioneer in modern cloud storage services, Dropbox lets access to any files uploaded from any device and from anywhere. It gives 2 GB of free data storage, which is much lesser than its competitors.

What’s Good:

• Simple and easy navigation.
• Countless sharing options
• Offers one of the best mobile access programs. The files can be accessed from Dropbox’s Web site, desktop applications or the iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Kindle Fire mobile apps.
• No size limit on files you upload
• Backup space available for a price
• Top encryption security

What’s Not:

• Large files may take several hours to upload
• Not suitable for business houses as there is no corporate control of document sharing or retention in personal accounts
• No full text search
• Difficulty in collaboration of files
• With so many extra storage offers, Dropbox has gone viral and is not a good choice for cloud storage of sensitive data.

 OneDrive – (formerly SkyDrive) 

OneDrive gives you 7 GB of storage for free with each signup and lets you store and share your photos, videos, documents, files, and more.

What’s Good:

• Organizes users files by type of extension (like doc, excel, etc.)
• With an Office 365 subscription, opening a document saved in OneDrive lets you collaborate on it in real time with other people.
• With its Android app, when you shoot a photo with your phone, it’s automatically saved to OneDrive.
• Let’s you increase your storage through referrals
• Microsoft user privacy agreement gives you full ownership of your files and documents; Microsoft does not scan them or sell data about you

What’s Not:

• Unsuitable choice if most of your devices are not running on Windows OS
• In order to use OneDrive, you must sign up for a Microsoft account
• The switchover from SkyDrive has created name confusion