Hello and welcome to another Cloudwards video.
My name is Mauricio and today we’ll be looking at the best free cloud storage services on
offer in 2022.
We understand that not everyone wants to spend money on cloud storage, or even needs to,
so we put together this list to help you get the most at no cost at all.
If you want to see more cloud storage content, make sure to subscribe to the channel and
ring the bell icon so you don’t miss our upcoming videos.
But before we begin, I just want to say that we do earn a small commission for any purchases
you make via our website, but that does not affect our reviews in any way.
We are a professional team of experienced software reviewers and our opinions are fully
our own.
So with that out of the way, let’s jump right in.
Now, one thing I wanna get out of the way first is that with free cloud storage, more
isn’t always more.
In fact, if a service offers a ridiculous amount of storage for free, that is usually
a huge red flag.
We get a million comments on our website about these free cloud services offering, I don’t
know, 500GB or a terabyte of free storage, and they always end in the person losing their
data or getting their account shut down.
Alright, so what kind of storage can you get for free?
Well, the largest free plan we recommend on this list is 20GB, and it belongs to MEGA.
And yes, there are larger free plans out there, but I’d consider anything above 50GB to
be suspicious.
In any case, the services on this list are all tried and tested, both by us and by the
thousands of people that read our articles on the Cloudwards website.
So, let’s take a look at the top service on this list -- pCloud.
pCloud pCloud is one of my favorite cloud storage
services, and it’s one that I use daily.
It comes with 10GB of free storage, but if you decide you really like it, its paid plans
are some of the most affordable as well.
Plus, it’s fast, it’s secure, and it has some features that I just love.
For example, I honestly can’t live without its space-saving virtual drive.
It basically attaches your cloud storage as an extra drive on your computer to expand
your device’s storage.
But besides that, pCloud is one of the fastest cloud services, and in our testing it was
only outpaced by Icedrive and Google Drive.
Plus, its interface is just clean and neat, and together with that speed it really makes
for a very smooth experience.
It also has a really advanced media player that lets you create playlists for your music,
and even lets you control playback speed for videos, just like YouTube does.
Now, one drawback is that the free plan does not come with zero-knowledge encryption or
advanced sharing controls.
That’s not to say pCloud isn’t secure, it still has what they call “military grade”
encryption, or AES-256 encryption basically.
It’s also based in Switzerland, which has excellent privacy laws, and its privacy policy
is stellar as well.
All in all, it’s definitely our top free storage recommendation and you can watch our
full video review of pCloud here.
Sync.com The silver medal for free storage goes to
Sync.com.
This is what I consider the best cloud storage service overall, as you can see in our best
cloud storage video.
Sync.com’s free plan only gives you 5GB of storage, which admittedly isn’t a lot.
However, you can raise that to 20GB by referring friends.
The great thing about Sync.com is that your entire storage is covered by zero-knowledge
encryption, which means that no one but you can ever see your files, not even Sync.com.
And if you need that kind of security, Sync.com is definitely the service you’ll wanna use.
But honestly, I mostly see its free plan as a “gateway” to the paid plans, which unlock
all of its best features, like advanced sharing control and Microsoft Office integration.
It’s a bit of a bummer that those features aren’t available for free, but fortunately
Sync.com has the cheapest paid plans in the business.
We have an in-depth review of Sync.com on the channel which you can watch here.
Icedrive Coming in third is Icedrive.
It burst onto the cloud storage scene around three years ago now, and it’s been making
waves ever since.
Icedrive offers 10GB of free storage, though like pCloud, the free plan does not include
zero-knowledge encryption.
What really caught my eye about Icedrive was again that virtual drive, which I love.
But unfortunately, you can’t get it on Mac and I do most of my work on my Macbook, so
I won’t be getting rid of pCloud anytime soon.
And the similarities with pCloud don’t end there.
Remember I said pCloud was almost the fastest cloud service?
Well, Icedrive topped our latest speed test charts.
And again like pCloud, it has a gorgeous interface as well, which works out to a pretty sleek
package overall.
Unfortunately, we saw some backsliding in terms of their customer support, which just
hasn’t been able to scale as the service has grown.
You can find out more details in our dedicated Icedrive review video.
MEGA MEGA is a bit of a wildcard.
On the one hand, it offers 20GB of free storage, which is a lot.
But on the other hand, you don’t really get any extra features.
Thankfully, all that storage is mega secure, thanks to zero-knowledge encryption, and yes
you get that on the free plan, too.
You also get end-to-end encryption for sharing links, which makes sure the service is completely
airtight.
But really, that’s pretty much all there is to MEGA.
Even its paid plans are a bit expensive when you consider how simple the service is.
But if all you need is a ton of secure cloud storage, MEGA is your safest bet.
Google Drive And finally we have Google Drive.
Google Drive is a service I use pretty much every day, and yet I rarely recommend it.
Part of that is just principle.
I just don’t want to recommend a service that I know isn’t completely secure, and
Google is notorious for harvesting user data.
But on the other hand, Google will probably get to your data one way or another anyway
and its free plan is frankly, pretty impressive.
So if you wanna sell your soul to the devil, what do you get?
Well, for starters, you get a pretty generous 15GB free plan.
Plus, you get access to the entire Google Workspace suite, which includes Google Docs,
Sheets and Slides.
These are tools that the Cloudwards team uses daily, and frankly, there’s really no replacing
Google Drive when it comes to online collaboration, at least for free users.
With other services you have to pay to get a fraction of the features Google Drive gives
you for free.
But when it comes to Google Drive, the old adage rings true.
If the product is free, you’re probably the product.
That’s it for our best free cloud storage roundup.
I hope you enjoyed the video.
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Also, feel free to drop us a comment about which service you chose, any issues you’ve
had with my recommendations, or if you just wanna tell us that we did a good job.
Our team always reads your comments, and we really appreciate anything you have to say.
See you in the next video, and as always, thank you for watching.