Comparison: Cloud file-storing services

Free hosting services for synching files in the cloud are becoming ever more indispensable as it becomes more common to use several different devices in our daily lives. While it’s true that all of them offer a certain amount of free space, you may find it a good idea to subscribe to a paid plan to increase your space. To help you make a smart choice, here we compare the features and prices of five of these cloud file-storing services: DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, MEGA, and iCloud.

DropBox

The free version of DropBox offers you 2GB of space, and although they offer a paid plan with accessible prices, you can increase this allowance in other ways as well. You can, for instance, get up to 16GB of more space by recommending the service to your friends. If they register, you’ll get 500MB for each one. Also, if you associate your account with the Mailbox app (available only on iOS), you’ll get another 1GB for free.

Google Drive

One of the perks of this Google service is that you’ll get 15GB free to share between your Gmail inbox and your Google Drive. Nevertheless, recently Google has drastically reduced its space-upgrade prices, and for just two dollars a month you can get 100GB of remote storage.

iCloud

Apple’s cloud-storage service, although devised for use on the company’s mobile devices, is perfectly extensible to any other desktop machine as well, with a client for Windows as well as extensions for various browsers.

OneDrive

After its recent name change from “Skydrive,” Microsoft’s cloud-storage service has completely revamped its look, and increased its integration with the Windows operating system in the process. In fact, the latest update to Windows 8.1 leaves it running in the background automatically in order to sync your preferences.

MEGA

The successor of Megaupload has opened its horizons to also serve as a remote-storage service, having launched a multiplatform file-synching app, which—together with the 50GB Kim Dotcom offers just for subscribing—makes MEGA an excellent option. (Let’s just hope it can avoid the fate of its predecessor….)