Dropbox (free) - only made a couple of referrals, so limited to 3GB. I keep it for occasional business use. The desktop synch is handy for a few files that I want to keep cross-platform access to. Annoying when someone sends me an invitation to share, rather then a link to download, because sharing their data uses up my data allowance. Fortunately, more people send links these days. iOS app works well.
Box (free) - When they first came out with their iOS app, they had a promotion for 50GB free for life, so yay! Sharing folders is very easy for both work and personal, control of access very straightforward. File transfers (up & down) seem really fast. I use this the most often. Good iOS app.
OneDrive (two accounts- free personal, and work w/365 subscription) - When it was SkyDrive, it was 25GB free. When they changed to OneDrive, free amount was reduced to 7GB (I think), but by registering, I was able to keep 15GB free. The company Office 365 account gets the 1TB, so that's a pretty good deal (company pays, so free for me--but I only use it for work related stuff). The OneDrive app has Mac version, so is therefore cross platform, and it allows synch of two accounts. Easy to choose/create two separate folders on computers to synch, one for the personal account, one for the work account. A good place to put MS Office files and access them using either Office web apps or desktop apps. The iOS OneDrive app is OK too and is well integrated with other iOS Office apps.
iCloud (.99/mo) - 50GB. Yes, the only one I pay for. I use it to share some Apple files with certain work colleagues, but mainly to support my mobile devices' backups. (It would be nice if the free iCloud tier would be large enough for at least one smaller mobile device backup, and if maybe some discount on paid storage or a few extra GB would come with every mobile device on the account).
iCloud Drive is a little too clever for my liking. If I had a simple cloud drive icon on my desktop and I could deposit or remove files as I see fit, I would be happy with that. OneDrive does that for me and it's great! iCloud with it's automatic syncing this and automatic syncing that, and new documents that haven't explicitly been saved locally going to the cloud by default, it's just too confusing trying to control my own data. Which for a company that professes to care so much about privacy, you would think would be a priority.
I used iCloud drive when it was first introduced, but I was so frustrated by long file update delays that I gave up (I realize it's since gotten better). I use Dropbox, Google Drive (my preference for sharing video files), Box and, to a limited extent, iCloud Drive (mainly for Apple applications like Keynote and Numbers). Dropbox remains my regular go-to for a number of reasons -- integration with 1Password, easy access to sharable web links via control-click on the file, and, especially, File Requests. The latter feature is very important to me because I very often request files from associates.
While I trust Apple more than I trust Dropbox with my data, I trust Dropbox's reliability more than I trust Apple. Apple has a very spotty history with cloud services, and has had several outages. I was all in with Mobile Me several years ago, the Apple suddenly decided to pull the plug and virtually shut it down, gradually building it back up as iCloud. With this history, I'm very leery or trusting Apple again. iCloud is clearly more tightly integrated with the Apple Ecosystem, so for things like iCloud backups and keychain syncing it wins, but Dropbox's feature set is far more robust and there are more applications that use dropbox than iCloud. Let's be honest, iCloud's web-based feature set is pretty pathetic, especially when compared to Dropbox.
As far as privacy goes, I use an app called Boxcryptor. It allows real time, on the fly encryption of files stored in the cloud, so I get the reliability of Dropbox without having to worry about data security.
I use iCloud with the $4.99(NZ) option. I store everything there as it’s way easier to work with this way than DropBox. I even use the iCloud Windows in a VirtualBox VM because Win 10 has issues with sharing drives between machines.
I never thought about Family Sharing but I’ll look into that for my wife to store her business files on.
I vote neither!! Dropbox suxs! & icloud too expensive!
my vote: OneDrive from Microsoft. 1TB free with your office 365 subscription your already paying monthly for 1 TB plenty for most people & each family member gets 1 TB each so your not sharing 2 with whole family. besides, never trust a company that offers unlimited storage. there’s no such thing as unlimited that’s a scam right there
The answer is simple: I trust Apple and I do not trust Dropbox.
If you trust Apple in cloud-based applications given their history in this area over a specialised business like Dropbox then, as the kids would say “you’re doing it wrong”.
I have tried Dropbox, Box, SugarSync, and iCloud for syncing files between computers and locations. Aside from the security reasons mentioned by others, I use iCloud because it is apparently the only one that will keep previous versions of files. With that, I am able to revert to an earlier version if I make a mistake along the way. None of the others will let me do that.
iCloud is clearly great to sync phones and desktop computers in the Apple ecosystem. I love it. That’s what you get with such tight integration in the OS.
Photos is also nice but there are some nasty bugs with albums not showing the complete content, and some annoying UX decisions that make file management hard and unclear.
However as a professional user iCloud is severely lacking. No pro user or organization would ever choose iCloud with so much better options out there.
One advantage of iCloud is its ability to easily and invisibly store my wife's huge photo library.
What we haven't yet got our heads around is what happens when the size of the library exceeds the storage capacity of the iDevices to which it tries to sync.
She hasn't yet loaded all her photos, but when she does it'll be about 1.5TB. What will her iPhone and iPad, with 126GB capacity, do when presented with that huge library?
The only thing that I know works more than anything else is iCloud, the Dropbox, but Dropbox has limitation on iPhone and far as accessing files. OneDrive is ok, but how many updates does it constantly need? If you have multiple machines OneDrive is a head ache. GoogleDrive? aka Backup and Sync from Google, haha what a joke!
Comments
Dropbox (free) - only made a couple of referrals, so limited to 3GB. I keep it for occasional business use. The desktop synch is handy for a few files that I want to keep cross-platform access to. Annoying when someone sends me an invitation to share, rather then a link to download, because sharing their data uses up my data allowance. Fortunately, more people send links these days. iOS app works well.
Box (free) - When they first came out with their iOS app, they had a promotion for 50GB free for life, so yay! Sharing folders is very easy for both work and personal, control of access very straightforward. File transfers (up & down) seem really fast. I use this the most often. Good iOS app.
OneDrive (two accounts- free personal, and work w/365 subscription) - When it was SkyDrive, it was 25GB free. When they changed to OneDrive, free amount was reduced to 7GB (I think), but by registering, I was able to keep 15GB free. The company Office 365 account gets the 1TB, so that's a pretty good deal (company pays, so free for me--but I only use it for work related stuff). The OneDrive app has Mac version, so is therefore cross platform, and it allows synch of two accounts. Easy to choose/create two separate folders on computers to synch, one for the personal account, one for the work account. A good place to put MS Office files and access them using either Office web apps or desktop apps. The iOS OneDrive app is OK too and is well integrated with other iOS Office apps.
iCloud (.99/mo) - 50GB. Yes, the only one I pay for. I use it to share some Apple files with certain work colleagues, but mainly to support my mobile devices' backups. (It would be nice if the free iCloud tier would be large enough for at least one smaller mobile device backup, and if maybe some discount on paid storage or a few extra GB would come with every mobile device on the account).
As far as privacy goes, I use an app called Boxcryptor. It allows real time, on the fly encryption of files stored in the cloud, so I get the reliability of Dropbox without having to worry about data security.
I never thought about Family Sharing but I’ll look into that for my wife to store her business files on.
my vote: OneDrive from Microsoft. 1TB free with your office 365 subscription your already paying monthly for
Photos is also nice but there are some nasty bugs with albums not showing the complete content, and some annoying UX decisions that make file management hard and unclear.
However as a professional user iCloud is severely lacking. No pro user or organization would ever choose iCloud with so much better options out there.
Different usecases, different solutions!
What we haven't yet got our heads around is what happens when the size of the library exceeds the storage capacity of the iDevices to which it tries to sync.
She hasn't yet loaded all her photos, but when she does it'll be about 1.5TB. What will her iPhone and iPad, with 126GB capacity, do when presented with that huge library?