There are so many Cloud Storage Services that we can pick from, and the obvious question is which one to pick. For most of the users the choice is pretty straightforward: Pick the service that offers the largest storage space. Since most of the users are primarily interested in a service for storing their files, in this article we will compare the services based on the storage space.
The good thing is that most of the Cloud Storage Services offer a free account. We will examine the following cloud storage services: Box, Dropbox, iDrive, Google Drive, MediaFile, MEGA, Onedrive, pCloud, and SugarSync. Please, write in the comments if you want us to review more services.
Free Accounts
- Box: Available storage space of 10GB
- Dropbox: Available storage space of 2GB
- iDrive: Available storage space of 5GB
- Google Drive: Available storage space of 15GB
- MediaFire: Available storage space of 10GB
- MEGA: Available storage space of 50GB
- OneDrive: Available storage space of 5GB
- pCloud: Available storage space of 10GB
- SugarSync: No free account
Clearly the winner is MEGA with 50GB available storage space. Now, 50GB is certainly a lot of space, and even if we take pictures at high resolution we can store roughly 10000 photos on a MEGA account. Still, we may need more space, and in that case we would need to update our free account to a paid account. Lets now see what our options are:
Paid Accounts
- Box: Available storage space of 100GB for $9 / month
- Dropbox:
- Available storage space of 2TB for 9.99€ / month
- Available storage space of 3TB for 16.58€ / month
- iDrive:
- Available storage space of 2TB for $69.50 / year (~$5.79 / month)
- Available storage space of 5TB for $99.50 / year (~$8.29 / month)
- Google Drive:
- Available storage space of 100GB for $1.99 / month
- Available storage space of 200GB for $2.99 / month
- Available storage space of 2TB for $9.99 / month
- MediaFire: Available storage space of 1TB for $5.00 / month
- MEGA:
- Available storage space of 400GB for 4.99€ / month
- Available storage space of 2TB for 9.99€ / month
- Available storage space of 8TB for 19.99€ / month
- Available storage space of 16TB for 29.99€ / month
- OneDrive: Available storage space of 100GB for $1.99 / month
- pCloud:
- Available storage space of 500GB for 3.99€ / month
- Available storage space of 2TB for 7.99€ / month
- SugarSync:
- Available storage space of 100GB for $7.49 / month
- Available storage space of 200GB for $9.99 / month
- Available storage space of 500GB for $18.95 / month
It is not clear which cloud service to pick, but we can easily eliminate the Box, and SugarSync as being the most expensive ones. For the rest services, we need to compute the cost of 1GB per month. Keep in mind that 1TB = 1024GB. Also, we do not take into consideration the different currencies, and we assume that $1 = 1 €. Thus, we have
- Dropbox:
- For 2TB the cost is 0.0049€ per GB / month
- For 3TB the cost is 0.0054€ per GB / month
- iDrive:
- For 2TB the cost is $0.034 per GB / year (~$0.0028 per GB / month)
- For 5TB the cost is $0.019 per GB / year (~$0.0016 per GB / month)
- Google Drive:
- For 100GB the cost is $0.020 per GB / month
- For 200GB the cost is $0.015 per GB / month
- For 2TB the cost is $0.0049 per GB / month
- MediaFire: For 1TB the cost is $0.0049 per GB / month
- MEGA:
- For 400GB the cost is 0.012€ per GB / month
- For 2TB the cost is 0.0049€ per GB / month
- For 8TB the cost is 0.0024€ per GB / month
- For 16TB the cost is 0.0018€ per GB / month
- OneDrive: For 100GB the cost is $0.02 per GB / month
- pCloud:
- For 500GB the cost is 0.008€ per GB / month
- For 2TB the cost is 0.0039€ per GB / month
From the above analysis we conclude two things: Firstly it is more cost efficient to purchase a plan with the largest available storage space (except Dropbox!!), and secondly, iDrive has the cheapest paid plan.
It is important to emphasize here that we compared different Cloud Storage Services based on the storage space, and nothing else. This is certainly not a fair comparison test, as some services sacrifice storage space for security or file sync or whatever other features they offer. But, then again, most of the users are not interested in those extra features, and all they want is a service to store their files.
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