We have several cloud storage services, but one group stands out in popularity over the rest. Either because your services are better, or because of the name itself. We’re talking about Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive trinity.
The first one democratized the storage of files in the cloud, and the others were coming into fashion, sooner or later. Google Drive brings together a powerful application pack, and Microsoft did more or less the same when it brought Office to the cloud.
In this post, we will compare the three services in their free versions and in their most important aspects for users.
Storage capacity
The main reason for you to look for a service like this.
Both Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive give you GBs of storage for free just by signing up on the platforms. But all have differences in this aspect.
Right away, we can say that Google Drive wins in this regard, as it has the largest free storage capacity, with 15 GB, expandable by contracting one of its paid plans.
Dropbox only offers 2GB for free on the basic plan. But you can extend this limit with specific promotions with other brands by purchasing devices, sending invitations to friends to open an account, and other actions. So you can have 16GB for free on this platform.
Finally, OneDrive offers 5 GB of storage for free, but it doesn’t offer the possibility of an expansion via promotions, only in paid mode, which leaves this as the last option.
Safety
There aren’t many differences within the free plans of the three services. All rely on the basic security standards we can find on most websites to protect our information.
Google Drive tends to be more complete, with longer, unlimited, and free options. Dropbox stands out for recovering file and version history for up to 30 days, remote device removal, and quick account disconnection. Finally, OneDrive stands out for its individual encoding for each file, thus preventing other files from being compromised in case of problems.
Other settings
Both Dropbox and Google Drive allow you to work on files offline. OneDrive, on the other hand, only delivers this functionality on its Premium plans. In all three cases, we can store any type of file.
It is also common for the three services to have the option to share documents with other people, or to edit documents within the tool itself. In the latter case, both Dropbox and OneDrive are a bit rough when it comes to working with Office documents, including some problems when trying to open files.
Here, Google Drive already has Office apps for free and fully integrated, much more convenient for editing. In addition, it has full integration with Google Photos for image management.
In summary, Google Drive is much more complete than the others in the settings. Although OneDrive offers the Office 365 pack, and Dropbox has Dropbox Paper and Dropbox Showcase, which require a pre-payment to use.
And that was our comparison of the free versions of Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. We show the differences between them and review some of their main features. Maybe this guide can help you when choosing the plan that best fits what you are looking for.
Although the perfect world is to have an account of each one of them. Even if they are free, one service can complement the other.