The age we live in, the post-digital revolution era, is dominated and even controlled by electronic data, media and services. In such an era, keeping a soft copy of all of one’s information, from IDs to presentations to leisurely taken photos, is essential. The only answer to keep these easily accessible from any device at hand in a cost-effective, as well as convenient manner, lies in cloud storage services.
The process one goes through to find the right such service for you, however, is often confusing and mind-boggling with so many different offers up there. However, if you’re starting with cloud storage, there are few top cloud storage services which are planning beginners plan for free. So, here, we are providing the list of Top 8 free Cloud storage services which you can start using for free to test their benefits in your personal or professional life!
1. Google Drive
Certainly, among the most popular of cloud storage services online! Users are given a free 30 GB of storage on the drive and Google’s Gmail service. With Google’s reach is all-encompassing; their products are available on computers, phones, tablets and even watches, one can use the migration tools and services offered by them to essentially access any piece of information, any photo, video or document (with Drive supporting more than forty different document types) you had saved anywhere from any device with internet. Plug-ins available for Microsoft Office and Outlook make sharing work seamless.
Moreover, users have the power over who can view, edit and share files. The paid Business and Enterprise editions of the drive give users unlimited storage (1 TB per day for accounts with less than 5 users), provide audit logs, customizable alerts and team unit level controls. This makes it a robust and attractive service for many.
2. Microsoft OneDrive
OneDrive, the cloud service hosted by the long-standing giants Microsoft has proven itself to be reliable and useful. For those who work frequently on any Microsoft Office service; be it Word, Excel, or PowerPoint among many, OneDrive is a fantastic platform to keep all work accessible and secure. OneDrive allows users to use and share files across different devices; laptops, tablets and phones, you name it! It also allows you to stay with your work when you do end up in one of those remote areas where you don’t have internet, giving you access to your files without a connection. Encryption using SSL ensures all your work is safe and secure.
To share your work with next of kin or employer; no more sending large tedious attachments via emails, as one can simply share the link of the OneDrive location through a message. The basic subscription of Microsoft OneDrive gives 5 GB of space for free. Getting a paid version for either office or home gets you password protection, security against ransomware, improved scanning and links more secure with expiries and up to 6TB of storage per user!
3. Apple iCloud
Run by the tech giant who insists they get one of everything of their own, and they do it right. Apple products are the envy and desire of many, the cloud service being no different. It is built into and automated on all devices manufactured and sold by Apple and is easily installable on other operating systems. For those with Apple devices, what this means is you would not have to put in any additional effort to put your valued photos, notes and files up on the cloud, it will be done automatically.
Users get 5 GB of space for free on Apple iCloud but it is easily upgradable to much larger amounts of space for low prices, with offers starting from 50 GB going up all the way to 2TB per user, with options for your family members to share your storage space and huge security throughout the process.
4. Amazon Drive
For those with an Amazon Prime subscription, which offers a host of other services itself, the Amazon Drive is a great cloud storage device. It offers users with unlimited storage for photos and RAW files, something that is amazingly handy, along with 5GB of storage for other files like videos and so on. They can be uploaded to the drive through mobile apps hosted by Amazon, the Drive website or through any Kindle device. Amazon also offers a paid limited storage service one might be interested to look into.
5. Dropbox
Dropbox has its own uniqueness when it comes to cloud storage services. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive & Apple iCloud had userbase but Dropbox started with no users and now it sits at the top 5 cloud services due to its awesome features both for free as well as premium users.
A basic Dropbox account gives you 2 GB of free storage. It is accessible through the app on your phone, tablet or computer and one can also earn more free space by referring more users or by contributing to the Dropbox community platform. One can get more space, up to 2TB by upgrading to Plus or Professional accounts, where one can also get multi-user access.
6. Mediafire
MediaFire Cloud Services gives an amazing 50 GB of free storage space per year in the Basic subscription model. Per file, the cloud service accommodates uploads up to 20 GB in size. It has no restrictions on the nature of the uploads; audio files, music, videos, pictures, word documents, compressed files and even executables (.exe) are acceptable.
Files available on MediaFire can even be shared with non-users of the platform. The platform “rewards” more free space to users if they get more subscribers, with users getting up to 1TB of space that they can use in any way they wish. Paid versions are the “Pro” and “Business” forms, providing users with up to 100 TB of storage space with improved file sharing abilities, security and an advertisement free experience.
7. SurDoc
The platform offers a whopping 100 GB of free storage to users for a year. After that, one has to pay very minute amounts for the space given to keep it. SurDoc allows users to choose a file and they will continuously upload and update the cloud version in the background. It gives you options to earn even more space by referring friends and simply sharing documents, giving you 10 GB and 1 GB respectively per act.
8. pCloud
pCloud is another popular cloud service which gives up to 10 GB to users for free and offers lifelong plans that give over 2 TB of space to users. For videomakers, a unique feature of the service lies in that it supports high definition videos. It also offers users end-to-end encryption of uploaded files, giving privacy that matches no other cloud storage platform. Paid versions give users features like recovering deleted files, at-rest encryption and improved security.
The online cloud storage service in the modern era is transforming how we store our data. Finally, we are truly moving away from storing things on physical devices, and keeping them “up in the air”. These competitive free services bring the incredible future of storing and archiving information to the common person.
I highly recommend you to start using any of these top free cloud storage services which you find best according to your requirements because cloud storage are more secure, easily accessible and have all the more features that you’ll never be able to find in any offline, traditional storage systems
