Hello and welcome back to Cloudwards.net.
My name is Mauricio and today we’re going to be looking at pCloud.
pCloud has appeared on a number of our “best of” lists, which I’ll link in the description
below, for everything ranging from its zero-knowledge encryption to its generous free plan.
We’ll cover all of that and more in this video, but first, I just want to remind you
to hit subscribe and press like to see more cloud storage reviews as we publish them.
Now, let’s take a look at pCloud.
I could swear that I had a more recent video review on pCloud but when I looked at my channel
to get a few ideas on what videos to make I found that the latest pCloud review is from
2012scr.
While we’re updating our written pCloud review once every 3 months or so it was about
time to rerecord a new pCloud video.
So here you go.
pCloud currently sits at number two on our overall cloud service rankings, and for good
reason.
Starting with pricing, pCloud offers everyone up to ten gigabyte of free storage space,
but there are some hoops you need to jump through to get all of that.
At first, pCloud gives you just two gigs of storage for free.
Verifying your email will add another one to this, as will uploading your first file,
downloading the pCloud Drive application, installing pCloud on your phone and finally
turning on automatic uploads so that pictures and videos taken on your phone are automatically
backed up to pCloud.
If you do all of these things, you’ll have reached a total of seven gigabytes of free
storage, and you can get the last three by inviting friends to join pCloud.
Each successful invitation gives you yet another gig until you reach the ten GB maximum of
free storage.
Moving on to the paid plans, pCloud offers two tiers for personal use, premium and premium
plus, as well as flexible business plans.
The lower tier comes with five hundred gigs of storage while the premium plus option comes
with a solid two terabytes.
Both of these plans are offered either monthly, which is kind of hidden on the website for
some reason, as well as an annual and a lifetime plan.
The pricing and plans are on par with our favorite cloud service, Sync.com, and much
more affordable than a service like Dropbox, with the lifetime plan offering an interesting
option for those who want to store their data for very long periods of time.
We’ve done the math, and forty four months is the point at which the lifetime plan becomes
the most affordable option, so keep that in mind when shopping.
There is another video I’ve made about the pros and cons of Lifetime cloud storage plans,
you can check that out by clicking the card here.
The second thing we want to highlight regarding pCloud is the way it handles security.
pCloud offers what it calls pCloud Crypto, which is about an extra five dollars a month
but allows you to apply zero-knowledge encryption to your backed up files.
This also lets you choose which files are encrypted and which ones aren’t, which is
nice, especially since encrypted files lose certain features such as thumbnail previews
and built-in playback.
Even files that don’t use the zero-knowledge encryption are still encrypted with AES-256
to prevent your information from falling into the wrong hands, but the zero-knowledge add-on
is an excellent way to greatly improve the safety and privacy of your files.
What’s more, is that pCloud also accepts bitcoin as a form of payments making it a
top option for those who are highly privacy-minded.
Of course, pCloud wouldn’t sit so high in our rankings if it wasn’t also highly capable
when it comes to file syncing and sharing.
One of pCloud’s best features is pCloud Drive, which is almost like adding another
drive to your computer.
You can see your files right from the file explorer and open them just as though they
were on your drive, however, the files are returned to the cloud once you close them.
This is a great way to easily add up to 2TB of added storage to your system.
pCloud also makes it easy to share files with people.
You can share things directly from the file explorer if you’re using pCloud Drive, or
using the web interface or mobile app.
You also have tons of control over your files with options like settings passwords, granting
read-only access or read-and-write access and even giving people’s access to files
an expiration date.
While it might lack some of the collaboration and teamwork elements of something like Google
Drive, and it may fall behind Sync.com when it comes to high-end features, there is still
plenty that makes pCloud worth checking out.
Especially since it’s easy to sign up and get a few GB of storage right away to try
it out, risk-free.
If you’re interested in trying out the free plan, I’ll put the link for that in the
description below, along with our full written review for pCloud where you can find a lot
more information than what we looked at here.
As always, thanks for watching and remember to give this video a thumbs up if you found
it helpful and subscribe to our channel for more upcoming reviews.