This is complicated further by the fact that the bonus storage is different for each achievement and only temporary, with a range of expiration dates from 30 days to a year. These include validating your account, installing the Mega apps, and inviting friends to the service. New Zealand based Mega used to offer a generous 50GB to new users, but that’s now changed to 15GB with additional capacity rewarded for something Mega calls ‘achievements’. The lifetime pricing makes it good value. It means that the service is effectively free after you’ve used it for about four years.īottom Line: pCloud is a stable, fast storage service with optional encryption. Pricing is unusual, in that you can pay a yearly fee for 500GB or 2TB, but the focus is on the Lifetime plans which cost $199 / £199 for 500GB or $399 / £399 for 2TB. Additional client-side encryption is also on offer (meaning your data is encrypted before it leaves your device) for a fee of $49.99 / £49.99 per year or for a lifetime fee of $150 / £150. Security is strong with pCloud stating that it keeps five copies of each files, distributed to different servers, with 256-bit AES encryption applied on the servers. You can preview common file types in the browser version of pCloud, and use it to listen to stored music. There are no restrictions on file size, so you can upload anything that your storage space allows, and versioning means files can be restored back as far as 30 days. The free tier gives you 10GB of storage, although 3GB needs to be unlocked by completing tasks such as downloading the mobile app, uploading a file, or sharing the service with friends. Instead the Swiss company sticks to what it knows best: keeping your files safe, secure, and available across all your devices. PCloud doesn’t have the office suites, video content or other extras offered by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. If you need 1TB of storage, Microsoft 365 is good value, but Google is more generous with completely free access to its office apps.īottom Line: If you already use Windows 10 and Microsoft Office, or plan to, then OneDrive is the obvious choice for storage. This brings with it a number of extras such as restoring the entire drive back to any point in the past 30 days, ransomware detection, password protection on shared files, expiration dates on shared links, offline folders on mobile devices, and ten times the allowed amount of content that can be shared each day. To use those, you’ll need to sign up for Microsoft 365. This monthly subscription gives you all of the Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, etc.) plus 1TB of OneDrive storage for either $6.99 / £5.99 per month (one user) or $9.99 / £7.99 (six users). Stepping up to 100GB of storage costs $1.99 / £1.99 per month, but even this doesn’t give you access to Microsoft Word or other Office apps. Although the initial free tier of 5GB will quickly fill up, it’s still on a par with many other services.įeatures include automatic photo backups, advanced search facilities, mobile and web access to OneDrive, plus the Files On-Demand settings that can keep files stored solely online rather than taking up space on your device. The cloud storage service that’s seamlessly integrated into Windows 10 is Microsoft’s OneDrive. The best part is that Google One can be shared by up to five family members.īottom line: Google Drive is an excellent, reliable, and affordable cloud storage service. There’s a choice of 100GB ($1.99 / £1.59 per month), 200GB ($2.99 / £2.49 per month), 2TB ($9.99 / £7.99 per month), right up to 30TB for a princely sum of $299.99 / £239.99 per month (and that is a fraction of what Amazon charges for 30TB!). If 15GB isn’t enough space then you can pay for the Google One service. One of the real benefits is that Drive works seamlessly with Google’s free suite of office apps which you can use in a web browser or via apps on your phone and tablet. That’s not to say it’s basic, as Drive has useful features such as sharing links to folders (while setting the level of control the recipient has), accessing a file even if it’s opened on another device, plus apps for PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. This can be used to back up documents, photos, videos, and anything else you want to keep safe.ĭrive’s interface is simple, clean, and takes about two minutes to master. If you have a Google account then you already have 15GB of free storage available to you in Google Drive.
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