A cloud-filled sky usually means that rain or snow is moving in. In the tech world, lots of clouds is a great thing. It means companies that offer storage are all competing for your business.
More and more people these days are moving their file storage on to clouds. According to PC Magazine, the definition of Cloud storage is:
“A backup and storage service on the Internet. Cloud storage providers generally let users upload any size and type of computer file, whereas e-mail attachments often have limitations.”
There are some tremendous advantages for storing files in the cloud:
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You can access your files from any device
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Other people can share files with you and vice versa, making it easy to collaborate
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The files can be accessed whether you are online or offline by syncing
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Attachments that are too large to send through email can be shared
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The storage capacity of a cloud can be limitless (if you are willing to pay)
More and more companies are offering cloud-based storage. They usually offer a certain amount of storage for free, with more storage available if you pay for it. There are also ways to increase your storage if you do some things to help the company out.
The Big 3
Most people who use cloud service opt for one of the biggest providers – Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive (formerly known as SkyDrive). Let’s look at them one at a time to see what they offer.
1. Dropbox
Dropbox starts with the least amount of free storage – just 2GB. However, Dropbox will quickly upgrade you to more space if you go to this page and do what they ask. Most of the easy, free stuff is taking a tour, sharing and liking Dropbox on social media, and referring friends. That can get you up to around 16-20GB.
You can add additional storage (3GB) by downloading Carousel, a photo-sharing app, for iOS or Android. You also may be eligible for up to 48GB of free storage if you have a Samsung or HTC mobile device.
2. Google Drive
Google Drive offers 15GB for free. In addition to the 15GB, any documents you make and save using the Google Docs software don’t count against the 15GB. Google also automatically saves different versions of the Google docs. That can come in handy if you’re negotiating a purchase agreement and need to go back to an earlier version.
Currently, there isn’t any way we could find to increase the storage size on your Google Drive without paying for it. If you can do a $1.99 payment each month, though, you can have 100GB.
3. Microsoft Cloud
Also known as OneDrive or SkyDrive, Microsoft Cloud offers 5GB upfront for free or 50GB for $1.99/month. It gets better...
If you join the Bing Rewards program, you can upgrade to 100GB of storage for free.
Want even better than that? Put MS Office 365 on your computer, and you will receive at least 1Terabyte (TB) when you sign up for just $6.99 per month. You get all the popular office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) plus a huge amount of storage for $6.99.
By the way – want to know how much a Terabyte is? It’s 1,024 GB or about 1,000,000,000,000 bytes of information. You’ll have to do A LOT of deals to fill that puppy up.
Promising Alternatives
If you want to look beyond the Big 3, there are some promising alternatives. For some reason, they are not huge in popularity, but they still have some very nice features.
Let’s start with a service called pCloud. pCloud gives you 10GB of storage right upfront for free with standard ways to upgrade to 20GB without paying, such as recommending friends (1GB per friend) and completing a tutorial (3GB).
The real attraction of pCloud, however, is how much storage you can receive for a very small price. For just $3.99/month you can receive 500GB of storage, and for $7.99 you receive 1TB. pCloud also doesn’t count any folders your friends share with you as storage on your account.
Mega is a New Zealand-based company that will give you a whopping 50GB of storage for free. Bigger storage plans are a bit pricier, but you can receive up to 4TB of data for only €8.33 per month (about $9.50 as of June 2016).
Security is very important to Mega. They provide you with your own security key to send to non-Mega users. That way, all your files can be completely encrypted, both when stored or shared.
Mega is also in the process (as of summer 2016) of rolling out secure audio and video chat. They are trying to bring some competition to Skype by allowing users to communicate more securely. Currently Skype does not have much for security.
Secure text chat and video conferencing may be added to Mega soon as well.
Mediafire started out as a file-sharing service back in 2005, but turned into another cloud company. You can still share files on it, just as you can with many other cloud-sharing services. You can also share files directly from your Mediafire account to all your social media accounts.
Starting with 10GB of free storage, Mediafire will let you expand it up to 50GB free, if you accomplish some tasks. Going with their Pro Plan means you will receive 1TB of storage for just $3.75 per month. The Pro account allows you to store individual files as large as 20GB. The free account limits your file size to 200MB.
Well, we’ve just tapped the surface of all the storage services out there on the web...
Hopefully, we’ve given you some thoughts on looking beyond Dropbox, Google and OneDrive.
Share a Thought
Do you use or recommend some other cloud services? Don’t be quiet. Let us know in the comments below.
Backup Your Files – Real estate investors need to keep track of important records and documents. Make sure they are backed up.
Organize Your Storage – Don’t feel like you have to keep everything in one place. Maybe you want to keep large video files of your houses on YouTube instead of your cloud drive for instance?
Secure Your Files – The last thing you want is for someone to hack into your computer, bank account or file storage. Learn how secure your data is. Identity theft and fraud is real.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.