Best cloud storage of 2020

If there is something that characterizes the Internet, it is the enormous number of solutions of all kinds that it offers us, some for payment and others many free. In this case we will talk about the best cloud storage for this 2020, hardware that companies make available to the user to be able to store all kinds of data and backups without using our hard drive.

We will see which are the best, whether they are paid or free, commenting on their different functions and advantages over the competition. And remember, if you want your own cloud storage, you could go for a NAS.

Index of contents

What is cloud storage and how can it help us?

When we talk about storage we all imagine the obvious, a hard drive, memory card, flash drive, SSD or any other way to permanently store information.

Cloud storage is exactly that, hard drives to store data but which we can only access with an Internet connection. With them we have practically all the possible advantages, except that we will not be able to access if we do not have a network connection. These hard drives are located behind a server with high protection against attacks and arranged in RAID arrays so that our data is not lost if a hard drive fails, since the data would be replicated on more drives.

It is precisely called a cloud because we do not know its physical location, in principle, and we can also see or access them from anywhere in the world just by having the Internet and our access data. Behind them of course, there is a technical maintenance team and even user support so that nothing goes wrong, and many of them offer a certain amount of storage without paying a single euro. So what do these people eat? Well, to give services to companies, advertising, other services or payment accounts that offer greater advantages.

List of best cloud storage

Without further ado, let's see what these cloud storage are, and certainly the majority, we recommend for being the most reliable, offering the most space and above all for being more secure.

Google Drive: Google's must

By now almost everyone knows about Google's cloud storage service. One that we automatically have available when we create our email account to access Google Play services on our Smartphone. So the good thing about this space is that we have it practically automatically.

Google Drive is a free service limited to 15 GB as soon as you create your account, and it offers us a huge number of functions, being a very important one that few use to make backup copies of their phone and other equipment with their program. Something also very good is that we can share files between our or friends' accounts without taking up extra space, having full access to them.

And if you need a storage for your career or studies, it is also ideal, since it includes text editing programs, spreadsheets and presentations where we can edit simultaneously with our colleagues, saving the content automatically. It is also possible to do surveys and link it with the other functions of our Google account. Of course there is a program for Windows, Mac, Android and Linux PCs, being able to have all devices synchronized.

OneDrive: for Windows users

OneDrive is also a cloud storage that is automatically included if we make a Hotmail or Microsoft account. It is a cloud very similar to the previous one that will offer us with our free account a space of 5 GB, which we can expand if we add new friends to the platform. And the best part is that for licensed Office 365 users the space increases up to 1 TB, which is not bad.

In this case, the editing options are a little more advanced than those of Google, since by including Microsoft products such as those of Office, from it we can edit normally and as if we were in Windows with our uploaded Word, PowerPoint, Excel files., One Note and others.

Synchronization in this cloud is quite fast, although we must say from our own experience that sometimes the download of files is quite slow. As in the previous case, we can share content and thus we have documents from other users available without sacrificing space, as well as backup functions for our team if we are in Windows 10. We believe that it is mandatory and necessary if we use the Microsoft system.

iCloud: only for Apple users

And of course, the same can be said of Apple iCloud, the cloud storage of the apple brand that will be included with our Apple account and our operating system or Smartphone. In this case the free available storage is only 5 GB, which is certainly little.

iCloud is very oriented towards content creators, as is traditional in the brand, offering functions for creating and modifying video, image and text files, with their own formats and in real size. It's funny that we don't have a good shared file system implemented yet, which is still in the testing phase.

What we can do is synchronize all our Apple devices and thus activate backup functions, but only on brand devices. As always, compatibility is poor since it does not integrate with Windows or Android in this type of services.

Dropbox: possibly the most used independent storage

This is one of the cloud storage services most used by users, which also has a free registration option that offers 2.75 GB of storage. We can even get unlimited storage with the most expensive subscription, which would be 15 euros per month per user.

It is compatible with all systems including Mac and Android, and unlike the others it is a little more basic in functions and also in interface, purely dedicated to storage. Currently, it has a couple of interesting services such as transfers, to send heavy files to other users as if it were an email, and Paper, a somewhat basic text editor where you can make documents.

With the application that we can download we will synchronize the content with our team and the folders that we have shared with other users. This is the true Dropbox utility, although it certainly doesn't offer anything different from what we've seen previously.

MEGA: enough space for free

The 50 GB that MEGA provides us with our free subscription are not bad and it is one of the fastest platforms for both downloading and uploading files. Surely many of you will have downloaded a MEGA file, since many users upload game content there, movies not exactly copyrighted, but well, it is the charm of the Internet.

As a personal cloud it offers the same as the rest, the possibility of uploading all kinds of files and creating shared folders among the contacts that we have added. There is no document editor as in the previous cases, so it will be a pure and hard cloud storage, with a very simple and intuitive interface.

The service has a chat for our contacts, a recycle bin and the possibility of adding shared content from other users without taking up space in ours. It has MEGASync applications for PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, an extension for Chrome, and email clients for Thunderbird and a command console to manage files in true SSH style.

pCloud: the largest capacity for the lowest price

pCloud is a Dropbox-like storage that also gives us encrypted storage of up to 2TB with fees that are paid monthly or once for life. For free we will have 10 GB of storage.

Something that the others do not offer is the fact of being able to back up images and content from our social networks such as Facebook and synchronized computers. We can upload files of any extension as long as the maximum available capacity of 5 GB is not exceeded.

Like others, we have applications for all kinds of operating systems including mobile phones. We can expand our storage by inviting friends to the platform. We can add protection and extra encryption with pCloud Crypto for an extra in our contracted rate, not being available in the free version.

Amazon Cloud Drive: Yes, you also have this service

Amazon dares with everything, one of the largest and most powerful companies of our time also has its own cloud storage services. We will get this cloud for free 5 GB of storage and unlimited storage for photos with the subscription to Amazon Prime. Its maximum capacity is 30 TB paying 3000 euros a year, which nobody in their right mind would buy.

It also has not only one, but several specific applications for our PC where we can upload and synchronize photos, videos and other documents, we believe that one would be enough sincerely. The interface is quite friendly and offers us a browser environment with folders exactly the same as in the other cases, although not the possibility of editing text files and others from the site.

We do have the possibility to share folders with other users and synchronize all our devices through the applications. It is a good storage for those of us who have an Amazon account, which will be the majority, but we believe that Google, Microsoft and Apple do it better.

Box: possibility of unlimited capacity

We come to the end of this small and select list with a platform that also offers free subscription with 10 GB of storage. Their plans are divided into individual or business type. And with the Business subscription of 13.50 euros per month, unlimited capacity with files with a maximum size of 5 GB and a minimum of three users. In which many extra functions are included such as Active Directory, SSL encryption, security reports, access from the mobile, etc.

Box is a very long-haul platform that is highly oriented towards productive and business- type storage, since it implements hardware encryption and the ability to create and edit text documents, presentations or others simultaneously by multiple users, as in Drive.

Its interface is clean and intuitive, with the possibility of sharing folders to other users or using network credentials. It's one of the longest-running, best-integrated cloud storage on the network, so it's very reliable and professional.

If you want your own Cloud, then buy a NAS

If what these storage platforms offer us is not enough and we want to have something more ours and that we can manage ourselves, the best thing we can do is buy a NAS.

NAS (Network Attached Storage) without networked mass storage devices. For practical purposes it is a computer provided with normal hardware, CPU + RAM + Operating System that will be connected to our internal network to provide us with full access to its storage from the devices we have and even outside it by VPN, or the cloud itself maker.

These computers are not that they are very cheap, and in addition we will have to buy the hard drives ourselves, but it will be a private cloud only ours where we will be the administrators. Among the most outstanding functions we have:

• Ability to create RAID systems of all kinds with a capacity of up to hundreds of TB of storage Manage from a web browser locally or remotely through your cloud Backups, snapshots, tiered storage, etc. Ability to share files over the network 1080p video encoding and 4K @ 60 FPS Set up web, mail, plex, multimedia, firewall servers, etc. Create a surveillance station with IP cameras Virtualization of operating systems

The main NAS manufacturers are QNAP from which we review their systems, Synology, Asustor and Western Digital.

Visit our updated guide to the best NAS on the market

conclusion

So far our article on better cloud storage comes, we hope that with all these and our special reference to NAS you have enough to start uploading files to your personal cloud. Now we leave you with some articles of interest:

Which one are you going to choose? Do you know of other better storages than the ones we have counted? Let us know in the comments.