Hi, I’m Mauricio from Cloudwards.net.
In today’s video, we’re gonna pit Dropbox against Google Drive against Microsoft OneDrive
and see who comes out on top in this battle of the biggest cloud storage services.
Let me add a disclaimer at the beginning of this video, I’m only going to give a bird’s
eye view on each section because otherwise this video would probably be an hour long.
It’ll be a good starting point for you to make a better decision which service might
be best, if you haven’t used them a lot or not at all before.
Before we start, don’t forget to like and subscribe to get more of our videos in your
feed.
Done?
Good.
Let’s get going with this cloud storage battle royale.
Dropbox is the service that made cloud storage mainstream.
Unlike the other two, it’s been focused on cloud storage since the very beginning.
It was also one of the first cloud storage services that could also be used as a collaboration
platform, rather than just extra space.
OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage service.
It comes standard on all Windows PCs.
OneDrive benefits from great exposure, but also from syncing with the whole Microsoft
Office suite.
Of our three contestants today, it’s the most secure.
Google Drive is easy to use with other Google apps, like Docs and Sheets.
It offers the most storage space, and the most customer service help for beginners.
All three contenders make strong cases.
But only one can be the best.
We’re gonna compare these services in nine different areas, then determine a final winner.
Obviously your mileage will vary here so consider our ranking as a starting point in your research
by comparing whats important to you and your situation.
Also, check out out cloud storage comparison chart where you can select services and pit
them against each other.
You’ll get a list of features as well as pricing information.
First, let’s see what features each service has.
All three integrate with other apps to make sharing and collaborating easier and all three
have similar sharing and syncing capabilities with only minor differences in speed, file
handling and backup.
Dropbox actually works with both Microsoft and Google services, though you’ll have
to pay extra for Microsoft.
Google Drive integrates with the most third-party apps.
You can use media players, photo and video editors, accounting software and more in your
Google Drive interface.
If you frequently find yourself thinking: mhhhh, I wonder if I can connect application
xyz with a cloud storage service, Google Drive probably integrates with it.
Next category is price.
All three services have free plans, but Google Drive is the most generous at 15 GB of free
storage.
It also got the cheapest tier that gets you 2 TB of storage for roughly 8 USD per month,
which is probably the most you’ll ever need as an individual.
So that’s another point for Google Drive.
If you’re a Microsoft user then it might be worth checking out the subscription plans
for Microsoft Office Family which cost around 100 USD per year for 6 users and each user
gets 1TB of storage and you’ll also get the Office apps on top.
We tested the file sync folders next.
A sync folder is a folder on your hard drive that syncs to your storage folder in the cloud
and then back to your other machines or devices.
Although all three services have sync folders, Dropbox wins this round with its Smart Sync
feature.
Smart Synced files show up in your sync folder but don’t take up your disk space, since
they only actually exist online.
Next, let’s look at how easy each service makes it to share files.
This is something all three providers do really well, but there can only be one winner.
With OnceDrive you’re getting more options with your shared links like setting expiration
dates and password protection.
You would need a Dropbox Professional account if you need these features.
So this point goes to OneDrive.
Let’s move on to ease of use.
This is a very subjective category because it really depends on your experience using
apps and computers for that matter.
All three can be used on desktop, mobile and web.
Installation and setting up the syncing folders is straight forward, I do find however that
OneDrive and Dropbox do a better job of explaining how everything works while GDrive tends to
be a little bit cluttered and all over the place, especially for beginners it might be
hard to find out what gets synced and where to find your files.
Overall, OneDrive’s apps looks way better on Windows computers, as you’d expect from
a Microsoft product but still I feel that most people will feel right at home with the
user interface.
That’s why OneDrive snags another point.
For round six, we compared mobile apps.
All three apps look similar on both iOS and Android.
However, you can’t scan documents with the Google Drive app.
You can scan with Dropbox, but the document recognition algorithms in OneDrive seem to
do a much better job at detecting edges.
OneDrive lets you scan in color, and has settings for different kinds of documents like business
cards.
This makes it very easy for collecting bills or other documents on the go.
So OneDrive continues their winning streak.
Security is an issue for all cloud storage platforms, but the Big Three are especially
common hacking targets.
They’re all secured with two-factor authentication, but OneDrive goes a bit further.
Their personal vault requires two-factor authentication every time you look inside.
None of the three are that secure if you compare it to our most secure services like Sync or
Tresorit, but OneDrive is the best.
In privacy, we don’t like any of them.
None of the three offer zero-knowledge encryption, so their engineers can always see your files.
Google openly uses your content to target ads at you.
Dropbox admits that it can analyze your content whenever it wants.
OneDrive at least doesn’t use your own files for ads, so it wins this round.
However, we still advise you don’t use it without encryption software.
Finally, there’s customer service.
OneDrive took about an hour to answer our question.
Google and Dropbox both answered right away.
Since Google was more diligent about sending follow-up emails, they win the final point.
That’s a total of one point for Dropbox, three for Google Drive, and five for Microsoft
OneDrive.
Every round came down to the wire, but OneDrive was better at edging out the competition.
Here’s the thing, though.
We wouldn’t call any of these services our favorite.
Here is what I like to do: for file syncing I use Sync.com and pCloud both are extremely
easy to use and offer great security, plus your files are not hosted in the US.
You can check out my reviews here on this channel and I’ll make sure to link everything
up.
Then, for all document sharing and editing needs you can use OneDrive in combination
with Office Online, or if you’re an Android user and like Google ecosystem go with GDrive
which has Google Docs and Sheets.
Those are great addons that Sync or pCloud simply cannot offer.
That’s it for this video.
If you liked it, don’t forget to like and subscribe and check out the other videos on
our channel.
Thanks for watching!