Review of the 6 Best Free online(Cloud) file storage services

Do you own more than one PCs e,g a PC and a laptop or tablet or netbook?
Or do you use more than one PCs if not own them like a home PC and an office PC?
Do you use public PCs like internet café or during travelling?
If so, read this post carefully. If not, you may leave the page!
I fall in two of the above-mentioned categories. When you use more than one PC, you often want to reach files located at your other PC’s hard drive.

So how do you do it normally?

USB? What if you forgot the USB/ what if your tablet doesn’t support USB like the notorious iPad?
How about having a few GB of online storage free of cost that is fully secure and that is only yours.
This is what the nerds call “cloud storage”.

Cloud storage is a way of storing your important files online in secure servers so that you may reach them at any place at any time using any device. Also This is a way of creating free online backup of your files whether these are documents or music etc.

There are more than 200 services available that give a storage space for your files but few of them have an edge on other services based on their flexible options and free storage space and pricing plans for large amount of online storage. 

The most famous services that provide a 1-50 GB of free online storage or free cloud storage are DropBox, Windows Live SkyDrive, Amazon CloudDrive, Google Docs, and Adrive.

Let’s take a look at the top 6 services that give best options for free users. Of course, they have more flexible plans for paid users also but this article emphasize only on their basic plan that is free of cost.


You talk about cloud storage and you miss DropBox that is something unthinkable. DropBox is THE MOST USED online file/date storage service and that honor comes from the unique options offered by DropBox even for free users.
You signup for a free account on Dropbox and choose a storage plan that starts from 2GB for free to 100 GB for around 200 dollars a year.
Now download their desktop utility and install it. On installation, it will create a new folder. You can change the folder later on. Now this folder becomes your Universally accessible folder and the process is purely automatic. You just drop files in this folder and these files will be automatically uploaded to DropBox servers. Whenever you modify, delete, add files to this folder, it will be automatically synchronized. To access this folder on another device, install the drop box utility on that device (your tablet, netbook, laptop etc.) and this folder will be downloaded there.

It couldn’t be more simple than this. The only drawback of this service is the amount of storage for free users. Although 2GB is sufficient for docs and music etc, but it is meager as compared to some other services doing the same job.

If you ask me to rate this service as a regular user, I'll just say: "I am lovin' it!" Go get it for free from this link .

Amazon CloudDrive has some pros and cons as compared to DropBox. Still, it is the best service after DropBox and it has 5GB of free storage. But it lacks the automatic synch because Amazon CloudDrive doesn’t provide any desktop utility like the one DropBox offers.
Now, its possible to use Amazon cloudDrive just like any other windows folder. That makes it as good as DropBox. Read how
One advantage of Amazon cloud drive is that its paid plans are pretty flexible. Additional storage options are available for the equivalent of $1 per gigabyte. So you pay only for what you need. In addition, Amazon automatically stores music directly to your CloudDrive when purchased from Music keeping a bit of pain away from music lovers. 



25GB of online storage free of cost is the point that struck most of the people as this is the most astonishing features of Windows Live SkyDrive.

Windows Live SkyDrive from Microsoft was essentially an answer to Google Docs. Free access to the Microsoft Office web apps suite serves as one of the biggest bonus of using SkyDrive. Office 2010 is already fully integrated with Office Live and Skydrive. Not to mention that through SkyDrive, users can create Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint or OneNote documents without having to pay for the costly desktop software.

But this 25GB of online storage free comes at some lack of fucntioanltiy that you cannot upload file more than 50 MB size. I repeat 50MB. This is the only biggest drawback of this service otherwise it is perfect for a free user although isn’t seamless as DropBox.


Have you ever thought of using Google Docs as an online file storage option? If not, think again. It’s not docs anymore. Google docs has turned itself into a universal file storage service with the additional capability of opening and editing documents online. It gives you 1 GB of free file storage space and you can purchase additional space for $0.25 per GB per year. $0.25 per GB is pretty much less than other services.


The shining thing about Box is their 5GB of free online storage and their very user-friendly interface, even first time could-storage users will get it easily. In addition to storing files, Box provides a number of applications, like Web Documents and Zoho, an online productivity suite. Box also offers a strong app for the iPad and iPhone, which provides much of the service’s functionality on the go.

However, free users are restricted to a file size limit of only 25MB. That is disgusting as compared to Google Docs and DropBox.


Last but not least is the ADrive THE MOST GENEROUS cloud storage service available on the planet to date, gives you 50 GB of free space, file editing options with Zoho® Editor, File transfer protocol. Desktop application is also available for paid costumers.

That completes my review of top 6 Best cloud storage services.

By the way, I am using DropBox what about you?

11 Responses:

ajenkinsdelong said...

I have been using www.onlinestoragesolution.com for many years and i think it is a really good site. They are easy to navigate and can store a unlimited amount of data for a good price. They are also offering a free trial offer on the site.

Owen Francis said...

From absalon upload you get 5GB of free online storage space, from this system you are able to make and send files to folders, and swich files between them. You are also able to link files to files. this system also allows you to search all files and order them as you wanted. You are also given the option to customize the system as you wish so you get the layout you want.
http://absalon.free-online.co.uk/upload/.

Anonymous said...

ADrive sucks. NOTHING works there.

Anonymous said...

http://bit.ly/rOiAaD sugarsync is the best

Charles said...

Try out my service for storing and streaming videos and movies at www.wdsstreamsolutions.com. Need feedback as we speak we are testing out.

Online Storage said...

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Online Storage said...

Hello, I'm Cole Barney. And I really love to read your blog as well as the examples that you've mention. Thank you so much for this helpful contents. I am looking forward to see more example contents like this.

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Syed Sabih Uddin Ahmed said...

Hello Rizwan,

Thank you very much for such a nice and informative piece of review. The content is very useful and the information providers which you have mentioned in it & are remarkable though. There are different free and paid cloud storage options available in the market with different features and subscription plans.

I prefer to use Dropbo and JustCloud because they sound good to me. However, there are several choices available in the market but everyone would take one with respect to his / her need. So choose the one which ever you think might fulfil your needs.

Source: http://www.cloudreviews.com/blog/best-cloud-storage-providers

Russel adword said...

Online backup systems are now becoming popular, mainly because they are very convenient to use. You can backup and access all your data using different devices that have an internet connection. What’s even better is that some cloud hosting services offer free storage for your data, which means if you only use a small amount of storage space, you don’t need to pay for it. If you want larger storage space, you can buy it to upgrade the space.

http://www.cloudways.com/

votam said...

The best cloud service is COPY, just launched and it's giving away 5GB for each referral. Follow this link to get started with 10 GB. https://copy.com?r=itVLNk

votam said...
This comment has been removed by the author.

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