With the increasing amount of data, the demand for more space is also increasing. Ranging from personal photos taken on almost every happening in our lives to collaboration with employees while sitting in the same building as well as business dealings with near and remote clients, increasing size of storage space is becoming a dire need of the day. While there are a number of cloud storage out in there, free Cloud storage service is what mostly everyone looks for.
Number of top cloud storage providers are available on internet but which one you should go for depends on your requirements and a number of other factors. As a starting point, make a cloud storage comparison and have their reviews.
There are a number of things to consider in order to choose from a number of free cloud storage providers that matches your need. The amount of space is one major factor. Others include bandwidth size, sharing and accessibility, streaming videos, data synchronization and data recovery. Going through cloud storage reviews will help a great deal of saving time. Below are reviews of 25 providers along with the services they offer under the term “FREE” to give you a cloud storage comparison.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 2GB
Drop box may be one of the famous cloud storage providers but it is not the best. It offers a free centralized storage for almost types of files with access from any device anywhere. It gives the ability to share files not only with those who have drop box account but also who don’t. However, unlike many, it offers a limited pace of 2GB only. For more space, there are other plans that comes with a price.
There is a Dropbox Pro Plan for $9.99 per month enabling storage of 1 TB and Dropbox for Business for $15 per user per month for unlimited amount of storage. If your data size exceeds the minimum free storage space, you can upgrade to other plans after paying the price. You can also edit your MS files online thus, no need to download a file to make amendments and upload it again.
Charge Rate: Free Storage
Space: 15 GB
Google Drive is owned by the tycoon of internet industry – Google. It gives a deal of 15 GB free space. For $2 per month, you can upgrade to 100 GB and for 10$ per month you can increase the space to 1 TB. You can create, edit and share work files using google docs and share them with public as well as specific google users by mentioning their email addresses. You can control sharing with limited capabilities like just for viewing or enabling editing. It has a syncing option with Windows and Mac platforms. On mobile, it has applications for Android as well as iOS users.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 5 GB
iCloud is cloud storage provided by Apple. It gives a 5GB space as a free storage plan. Other storage plans start with a minimum of $0.99 per month with up to $19.99 per month. While it provides all other features in other service providers, it has a limitation of sharing with apple users only.
It lets you share and access different types of files to/from iMac, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. For other platform users, a third-party software is required. However, for using it on PC, Windows 7 or higher is compulsory.
ChargeRate: Free
Storage Space: 15 GB
OneDrive is owned by the leading competitor in the market – Microsoft. With an initial free space of 15 GB, users can increase their space to 100 GB for $1.99 per month, 200 GB for $3.99 per month and 1 TB for $6.99 per month inclusive of Office 365. Users can access share from any platform that includes, PC, Macs, tablets and Mobile phones. This provider gives an incentive of gaining more space whenever you refer OneDrive to a friend or backup your data.
Charge Rate: $11.99/yr and $59.99/yr with 3-month trial period
Storage Space: minimum 5 GB
CloudDrive is the biggest online store – Amazon. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer any free cloud storage. It has only two storage plans with a 3-month trial period. Unlimited Photos plan is solely for saving photos plus 5GB to store video files for $11.99 per year.
For more than just photos, you can grow to the ‘Unlimited Everything’ Plan in which you can access and share all types of files for $59.99 per year when the 3-month trial period ends. Other features are all the same with an incentive for prime members of free two-day shipping.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 10 GB
This provider gives away 10 GB free space for sharing personal media files and by inviting friends to pCloud, it can be upgraded to 20 GB. Other storage options include 500 GB for minimum $3.99 per month to 5 TB and more for business purposes.It covers a wide range of platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux Desktop, Android and iOS Mobiles and all types of web browsers. It has an additional feature of pCloudCrypto which provides security for sensitive files. This feature comes along with the business plan.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 50 GB
ADrive has storage plans of three types – Personal, Business and Enterprise each with sub plans. Coming to the free space feature, this is available as a Basic Personal plan with a space of 50 GB. So initially, you take 60-day free trial and if you want to can either upgrade to Personal Premium plan or downgrade to the Basic Personal free plan. ADrive also has yearly plans. The Catch – huge free space but this comes with a trade-off with lots of advertisements. Another disadvantage is that files expire automatically after two weeks of upload.
Rate: Free
Storage Space: 15 GB
Copy is a cloud storage provider run by Barracuda – an IT solution company. It has three package plans, Basic, Pro and For Companies. As a basic user, you can get 15 GB free space and can get 5 GB more through friend referrals. Sharing and accessing features are also a part of basic plan. What mainly differs in other plans is the 250 GB to 1TB space per user at $4.99 per month and unlimited storage space for 10 or more users. This last plan offers companies with a number of other features available on their website.
Rate: Free
Storage Space: 5 GB
Cubby has storage plans similar to ADrive. The Basic plan provides 5 GB free amount of space and up to 25 GB by inviting friends yet fewer services. Pro gives 100 GB per user and Enterprise Plan gives 1 TB for every five users at monthly prices with more security, activity log and lot of other features.
Rate: Free
Storage Space: 50 GB
Mega is another cloud storage that provides 50 GB free storage. While most providers offer security with a price, this one supports end-to-end encryption for high-end security in the free package plan. These two could be the main advantages of Mega but it has a small disadvantage of 10 GB Bandwidth that renews after 30 minutes. So that not that of a big issue actually. Both types of public and private access is available with multiple folders download as a single zipped file.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: Unlimited
Hive is by far, one of the few cloud storage providers that offers unlimited storage space entirely free. However, it has a major drawback of not being able to share with public.
That means, in order to share a file, the receiver must also have a Hive account. Another disadvantage is that in order to share a file, it must be first kept inside a folder.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 15 GB
MediaFire is an online cloud storage no caps on Bandwidth, and 50 GB plus storage space. The accessibility feature from any device is the same as in most cloud service providers. Initially after creating account, it gives a 10 GB storage space which can then be increased through various means such as referring your friends and downloading applications.
It also offers compatibility with Android and iOS users. An added feature is that people with no account on Mediafire can also upload on user accounts.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: unlimited
Mankayia also ranks amongst the unlimited free storage providers. There are no bounds on speed throughput and no fear of file expirations. However, major turn off with Manakayia is that files stored cannot be shared unless you pay $10. By paying the price, you also gain additional service of setting password security on shared files and folders.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 5 GB
Dump Truck gives an instant access to 5 GB space which can be enhanced to a possibility of 21 GB by inviting friends to join DumpTruck. Like other providers, it also has OS compatibility as well as public and private sharing, As such, it doesn’t have any significant drawbacks.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 1 GB
Once you sign up, SeaCloud provides a 1 GB of free storage. There are no ways and methods through which you can increase the size which counts to its major and probably the only disadvantage in comparison to other providers. However, it does add a lot of useful options.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 100 GB
For every new user who signs up in to SurDoc, it gets you a 100 GB free space which is more than enough to meet an individual’s media file needs. This could easily cover photos, videos and movies as well. It gives the option to increase the space size more by referring it more friends and posting about it on social networking websites. A turn-off includes the end of free space after a year.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: Unlimited
Mightyupload is a completely free online storage service with an upper limit of 4 GB file size. The brighter and unique aspect is its Reward program. You can earn by joining, uploading and disseminating your file link to places where you can get most traffic. For every click on your file, you get paid. Drawback includes file expiration if it isn’t views for a month.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 5 GB
HiDrive is a cloud storage service provider that gets you 5 GB free space when you register with it. By inviting more friends to join, this storage size can be increased to maximum of 10 GB. It has a drag and drop feature to upload files in your HiDrive. Ithas its applications for Apple, Microsoft and Android phone users. You need to set the expiry date of the file shared after which it is no longer available to the recipients.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 10 GB
Compared to HiDrive, OziBox offers 10 GB space size online for cloud storage. Number of files can be uploaded at a time by putting them on priority queue. It also has a drag and drop option to upload files and also supports compatibility with Desktop and Web platforms. It can be used through Android phones.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 20 GB
StreamNation gives instant access to 20 GB free space for storing files online after you create account on it. You can increase the free size by doing a number of other tasks. The idea behind this provider is to stream media. Fifty files can be uploaded simultaneously provided they don’t exceed 800 MB size but this could be a small size for most users. It has applications for both desktop and mobile users.
Storage Space: 2 GB
Like DropBox, this cloud storage gives space of 2 GB only. But by asking friends to join JumpShare, this size can be increased to 18 GB. Apart from typical features of every cloud storage its prominent feature includes easy drag and drop to upload files.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 250 GB
PromptFile is a simple and easy to use cloud storage giving a huge free space of 250 GB. With maximum file types supported, it doesn’t offer much features as compared to other cloud storage providers. Drag and drop feature is missing in Promptfile and instead you have to use cut and paste to upload files.
When you start using FlipDive, you get 5 GB free space which can then be increased to 500 MB for every user you refer to flipDrive. Unlike others, it doesn’t have any mobile application. The dark side of FlipDrive is difficult usage as compared to other competitors.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 25 GB
Hubic has an upper bound limit of 25 GB free storage space. It has compatibility support with all desktop platforms and Mobile platforms through installation of hubic application on it. Files can be shared with both hubic- registered and non-registered users. A feature to consider is that files expire after 5, 10 or 30 days which is set by the one who shares.
Charge Rate: Free
Storage Space: 3 GB
CloudMe offers a size of 3 GB storage space. Refer friends to join your CloudMe club and you can gain more space and increase your online storage to 19 GB. It has applications for both desktop including Mac, Windows, Ubuntu and Mobile devices including iPhone and Android.
A number of other free cloud storage providers are out there in the market. Depending on your purposes, you can decide which suits best to your needs.