Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive 2023 [Pricing Plans & Cost] – Cloudwards

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Choosing the right cloud storage service is tough, especially when you have to pick between the most popular clouds in the world. In this Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive comparison, we’ll look at how these cloud storage services fare across several categories — including collaboration, file sharing, storage options, pricing and more — to determine the winner.
Written by Ben Stockton & Aleksandar Kochovski (SEO and Briefings Editor)
Last Updated: 21 Nov’23 2023-11-21T11:18:55+00:00
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If you were to ask someone to rank and contrast cloud storage services, it would be a good bet that comparing Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive would get a mention.
It’s no surprise why. Dropbox is the cloud storage service that really popularized the concept, and Microsoft and Google are two of the biggest players in the software sphere. If you’re thinking about signing up for cloud storage, you might wonder who wins in a battle between Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive on pricing, features and more.
We’ll hopefully help you decide for yourself in this Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive comparison — three of the best cloud storage services available. If you want a snapshot version of this piece, check out our video below. For a closer look at each service, you can check out our full Dropbox review, Google Drive review and OneDrive review.
Cloudwards.net updated the pricing information and images. The Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive comparison now correctly reflects the changes to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
It’s a close call, and it really depends on what your needs are. OneDrive offers more value than Google Drive and Dropbox, as it comes bundled with the offline versions of the Office suite. Meanwhile, the other two only let you collaborate on files online. However, Google Drive is a cheaper option overall with a larger free plan, and Dropbox is more flexible.
If your budget isn’t restricted, file sharing is one of your priorities, and you really need to collaborate using Google Docs and Microsoft Word, then you might be better off using Dropbox. In most other instances, OneDrive should be a better option.
If you don’t need too much space, you could make use of Google Drive’s free account, which comes with 15GB of storage. As most folks don’t backup too much data to the cloud, there should be ample room for personal use and much more than what OneDrive offers for free.
OneDrive has a free account with 5GB of storage, but you can expand that storage with a paid plan.
While neither will win any security accolades, OneDrive is marginally safer than Google Drive and Dropbox, thanks to its private vault feature, which adds a PIN-protected folder to your cloud storage.
These are three huge names in cloud storage, so which one comes out on top as the better cloud storage provider? The quick answer is a disappointing “it depends.” Well, at least of these three: Google Drive vs Dropbox vs OneDrive. However, Sync.com is our absolute favorite (read our Sync.com review to find out why).
Microsoft OneDrive is easy to use and offers fast syncing — you can also manage multiple OneDrive accounts. Although it’s not the best cloud storage provider on the market, it still offers better security features than the other two providers.
Meanwhile, Dropbox scores very highly for features, especially if you’re looking for a product that’s ideal for collaborating on both Microsoft Office and Google Workspace documents. However, it does have some flaws, especially for Mac and iOS users, which we’ll cover in further detail.
Lastly, Google Drive offers the most free storage space and has better customer service, but there are well-known privacy issues (read our guide to Google Drive alternatives).
Before we go into more detail, here’s a quick explanation of how this comparison will work.
To try and make this comparison as fair as possible, we’ve divided it up into nine key areas that we feel are the most important when choosing a cloud storage provider. We’ll compare the providers across each of these areas: features, pricing, file sync, file sharing, ease of use, mobile app support, security, privacy and customer support.
At the end of each round, we’ll declare a winner, if there is one. If the round is too close to call, it may end in a two- or three-way tie. At the end of the nine rounds, we’ll add up all the scores and declare an overall winner. Without further ado, let the battle commence.
First, let’s take a gander at the features these cloud storage providers offer. We’ll compare them not only on the features each offers out of the box but also on third-party app integrations. We’re especially interested in how these cloud services can facilitate productivity and collaboration.
OneDrive is a Microsoft cloud storage product, so it plays very nicely with other Microsoft apps. For example, if you receive an attachment in Outlook, you can right-click and save it directly to any OneDrive folder of your choice. As part of Microsoft 365, OneDrive comes with all the perks of integrating natively with both Microsoft’s apps, like the Office 365 suite, as well as Windows itself.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any third-party integrations to speak of unless you’re on the business version of OneDrive. While there are apps that work with OneDrive, it’s more of a case of the apps having integration with OneDrive, rather than the other way around. This is also the case with Google Drive and Dropbox, as you’ll see further down in this comparison.
Likewise, Google Drive works seamlessly with other Google Workspace apps, such as Google Docs and Google Sheets (find out how to change your default Google account). Integration with Gmail is also excellent. You can attach a file from your Google Drive directly from within the “compose” window.
Where Google Drive beats Microsoft OneDrive is integration with third-party services, meaning you don’t have to rely on Google’s default feature set. You can use third-party media players, photo and video editors, accounting software and more in your Google Drive interface.
Unlike Google Drive and OneDrive, Dropbox cloud storage doesn’t have its own office suite or email client, but it does offer a note-taking app (see our Dropbox Paper review), as well as a document signer, a file transfer service and a password manager. It even lets you take and share screenshots and screen recordings.
However, because of its lack of office apps, you might expect Dropbox to be less useful as a collaborative tool. In fact, the opposite is true, as Dropbox works with files from both Microsoft and Google. Be sure to check our guide on how to add Dropbox to Office 365.
If you want to switch between services, Dropbox makes this easy. Rather than having to decide which service you’d prefer to use, Dropbox allows you to use both.
As for integration with other third-party apps, Dropbox has its own app store where you can find add-ons for everything from project management apps like Trello and IFTTT to full-on design apps like Canva, Procreate and even AutoCAD.
All three of these cloud storage providers offer excellent collaboration tools, which is why we recommend each service on our best cloud storage for collaboration short list. This isn’t really surprising, as two of the cloud storage providers are responsible for some of the most popular office apps out there.
OneDrive provides seamless integration with Microsoft 365 apps, as we’ve mentioned. If you share an Office document with others, you can all work on it simultaneously. You’ll see who else is working on the file, as well as any changes they make in real time. All changes automatically save to your OneDrive account.
Microsoft 365 also gives you access to Microsoft Teams. This opens all kinds of avenues for collaboration, using OneDrive’s integration with the Office 365 suite of document editors in tandem with the robust Teams communication platform. OneDrive integrates with Skype as well, letting you share and preview documents directly within the app (though, why are you still using Skype?).
Google Drive integration works in a similar fashion, using Google’s own office apps, such as Google Docs and Google Sheets. You can see other collaborators viewing the file, with their name appearing as a different-colored cursor as they add new text.
Google also offers a communication tool in the form of Google Meet. Although it’s not quite as flexible as Teams, you can integrate third-party add-ons to expand its functionality. Plus, if you get Google Drive as part of Google Workspace, integration between services becomes even tighter, letting you collaborate on Google Drive documents from within other Google apps.
Click on any Google document in your Dropbox cloud storage, and it will open it in the relevant Google app. You can collaborate in exactly the same way as you can with Google documents in Google Drive, but your changes will automatically save to Dropbox. The one niggle we have with this is that your Google email has to match your Dropbox email for the integration to work.
Dropbox also lets you collaborate on Microsoft Office files in exactly the same way as you would in OneDrive. You can even open Microsoft file formats in Google Docs, Sheets or Slides and make edits. The files will still save in your Dropbox storage in the original Microsoft formats. You can even share files directly to Teams, just like you can with OneDrive.
There isn’t much between OneDrive and Google Drive here. However, with support for additional third-party services, Google Drive pushes out OneDrive to be the overall winner here.
All three providers offer some level of free storage, as well as various perks that come with a paid account. If you’re not looking to store a huge amount of data, then there are well-priced cloud storage options from all three providers. In fact, all three cloud storage services make it onto our list of the best 1TB cloud storage providers. First, let’s take a look at what each service offers for free.
Dropbox and OneDrive don’t really offer too much free cloud storage space. Dropbox offers a measly 2GB for free, while OneDrive offers only 5GB. Both services are similar in that they limit certain features from free accounts.
The free version of OneDrive has limited sharing features and a limit of three files for your “personal vault” (we’ll look into these features in a bit). Similarly, a free Dropbox account has no advanced sharing features or access to the Dropbox Vault, and although Dropbox still keeps a 30-day version history of your files, you can’t use the full “account rewind” feature for free.
Google Drive comes out the highest of our three contenders in our rundown of the best free cloud storage providers, offering a generous 15GB of free storage. Besides beating both OneDrive and Dropbox in terms of sheer free storage space, the free version of Google Drive has no limitations like the other two cloud storage services do.
Paid tiers are where things get more complicated. Looking at prices alone, Dropbox is by far the most expensive cloud storage option in this comparison, while Google Drive is the cheapest, with OneDrive in the middle of the pack. All three cloud storage solutions offer a discount for a yearly subscription, so we’ll compare prices with the discount applied.
Dropbox has only one personal plan, the Dropbox Plus plan. It costs $9.99 per month for 2TB of cloud storage space and adds all the perks missing from the free plan. There’s also the shared Family plan, which costs $16.99 a month for 2TB of shared file storage space.
You can add up to six users to this plan and get a common “family room” for mutually accessed files. Read our comprehensive Dropbox pricing guide to learn more.
We won’t look too deep into how the business plans are priced, as those are targeted toward companies and, well, business users. Dropbox’s Professional plan is the only business plan that’s fit for a single user, offering 3TB of storage for $16.58 per month. The other business plans come with upwards of 5TB of cloud storage and advanced user administration features but aren’t fit for personal use.
There’s also a Dropbox Enterprise plan, but this is a customizable solution for large businesses, so you’ll need to contact Dropbox for a quote. It may be worth your while to check out Dropbox’s business version if that’s your use case, as Dropbox Business is an excellent enterprise cloud storage.
Looking at the OneDrive storage plans, you get cheap cloud storage, plus access to other Microsoft apps, but the cap for storage is low — only 1TB. There’s only one OneDrive subscription option, with 100GB for just $1.99 per month, although this doesn’t come with access to Office apps. To get more storage than that, you have to get a Microsoft 365 plan.
Like Dropbox, Microsoft 365 offers a personal and a family plan. The Personal plan costs around $5.83 per month for 1TB of storage, plus offers access to the Microsoft Office suite. The Family plan covers up to six users for around $8.33 per month, with each user getting 1TB of OneDrive storage and full use of the Office suite.
Microsoft’s OneDrive has two business packages that aren’t part of Microsoft 365 and come without any auxiliary apps. However, the Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan is much more attractive, costing only $5 per user and adding useful apps, like Microsoft SharePoint and Teams, as well as the obligatory Office apps.
In addition, it offers 1TB of OneDrive file storage per person. You can read our SharePoint vs OneDrive guide to learn how the two compare.
Google Drive offers the cheapest file storage of the bunch, so it’s a no-brainer between Dropbox prices vs Google Drive prices. Plus, unlike Microsoft’s Office, Google’s document editors are completely free to use (though the less-capable online versions of Office apps are free).
The simplest way to increase your Google Drive storage is to purchase a Google One plan. This lets you share your account with five other users, as well as access some bizarre offerings, like discounted stays at certain hotels. You can upgrade your Google Drive storage to 100GB for around $1.67 per month, 200GB for $2.45 per month or 2TB for $8.33 per month.
For an improved collaborative experience, you can upgrade your Google account by grabbing a Google Workspace plan to share with co-workers. With Google Workspace, you can get 2TB of Google Drive storage per user for $12 per month per user. However, you can increase your storage to 5TB per user for $18 per month per user or get a custom Enterprise plan by contacting Google.
If you’re looking for unlimited cloud storage, we recommend taking a look at the best unlimited online storage providers. All three providers in this comparison offer what they call “unlimited storage,” but that isn’t necessarily the full picture.
Google Workspace’s Enterprise plan promises “as much storage as you need,” but Google seems suspiciously obtuse about what exactly this means. The Dropbox Business Advanced and Enterprise plans use similar wording, with no clarity as to whether both offer truly unlimited storage.
Likewise, the OneDrive Business (Plan 2) offers unlimited storage but with asterisks upon asterisks that indicate you’ll have to jump through several hoops before getting full use of that storage.
Since Google Drive offers the largest amount of free storage and the cheapest 2TB personal option, Google Drive is the winner on pricing. 
Dropbox is the company that first popularized the sync folder model used by all three providers. It sets up a sync folder on your computer for you to use, with any files or folders placed in that folder synced to the cloud (read our guide if Dropbox is not syncing).
All three providers offer selective sync. This allows you to choose which folders sync to your hard drive and which remain solely in the cloud to save space on your drive. Unsynced folders will not be visible on your computer.
Dropbox gets around this with its Smart Sync option, which is available for all paid plans. It’s a great feature that helped Dropbox get to the very top of our list of the best cloud storage with sync. It allows you to set files as “online only,” meaning the files will show in your sync folder on your computer but won’t take up space on your drive (read our full guide to what Dropbox Smart Sync is).
OneDrive has a similar system called Files On-Demand. If you download an online-only file, it will remain on your hard drive after you close it. You’ll need to right-click and choose “free up space” to return it to online only.
Disappointingly, Google Drive doesn’t offer an option like Dropbox’s Smart Sync. If you don’t want files taking up space on your hard drive, you won’t be able to see them in your Google Drive folder.
One of the most important factors when choosing a cloud storage provider is the sync speed and whether or not the provider you choose uses block-level sync. This splits up each file into smaller pieces. When you make a change to the file, only the part that you change syncs, which removes the need to sync the whole file again.
This can significantly speed up sync times, especially for large files. If you’re using your storage more for smaller files, then check out our list of the best cloud storage for documents.
Both Dropbox and OneDrive use block-level sync. OneDrive used to only use this method for its own Microsoft Office file formats but now applies block-level sync to most major file types. Google Drive still doesn’t use block-level file copying, however.
Version history is another useful feature of cloud storage. It allows you to revert files to previous versions if you’re not happy with the changes you’ve made. Dropbox offers version history for up to 30 days on its personal plans, while its business plans get 180-day versioning. In fact, Dropbox makes our list of the best cloud storage for versioning, alongside Sync.com and Google Drive.
OneDrive limits version history to 30 days for personal accounts. For business accounts, the default is to store up to 500 versions. Google Drive keeps previous versions of files for up to 30 days or until you reach 100 versions. However, you can also select individual versions to keep forever.
Dropbox also offers a feature called “rewind.” This allows you to revert to a previous version of your entire Dropbox account if you have issues, such as a virus. OneDrive has a similar feature called “files restore” included in personal and business plans, with a maximum limit of 30 days.
Google Drive doesn’t offer the same capability. You can see a list of recent activity across all of your files and revert to earlier versions of individual files, but there’s no way to restore the entire drive to a previous state.
Both Dropbox and OneDrive offer smart syncing and rewind features, which Google Drive can’t match, although it does offer versioning by file. Google Drive also fails to use block-level sync, unlike the other two providers. There isn’t much between them, but with a longer file history on offer, Dropbox is the better option.
All three providers make file sharing simple by creating shareable links. Dropbox and Google Drive even squeaked onto our list of the best cloud storage for sharing, although other paid providers like pCloud beat it.
Each service gives you the option to determine whether the recipient can edit or view a file. Google Drive also allows you to set who can comment on the document. Check out our guide on how to share files in Google Drive if you want to know more.
Dropbox and OneDrive also allow you to password-protect your links and set expiration dates to provide temporary access. This isn’t something that Google Drive allows you to do unless you have a paid Google Drive for Business account.
File sharing through links is a simple but effective method that makes things easy for the sender and recipient. This is one of the reasons why all three providers appear on our list of the best cloud storage for multiple users.
When it comes to sharing large files, there are some differences in the maximum file size you can upload. If you’ve got a lot of large files you want to store, then take a look at our rundown of the best cloud storage for large files.
OneDrive will let you upload and share files up to 250GB in size (see our OneDrive file size limit guide). Your recipient won’t need a Microsoft account or have to sign in to see the file.
Google Drive lets you upload files up to 5TB in size unless these are documents, spreadsheets or presentations, where other file limits apply.
Dropbox has a special option for large file sharing, called Dropbox Transfer. It lets you send files up to 100MB in size by default or up to 250GB with the Creative Tools add-on. These files aren’t kept in your Dropbox account and don’t take up any space. Learn more in our comprehensive Dropbox file size limit guide.
Thanks to its extensive sharing features, as well as its file transfer service, Dropbox wins this round.
OneDrive and Google Drive offer desktop apps for both Windows and macOS, but neither has a Linux desktop app. OneDrive comes preinstalled on Windows 10, but you’ll need to sign in to use it.
No matter what operating system you’re using, you’ll find a Dropbox app for it. Unlike Google Drive and OneDrive, Dropbox also offers a Linux client, and it’s of the best cloud storage services for Linux users, alongside MEGA (read our Dropbox vs MEGA guide and our MEGA review).
All three providers use the same tried-and-tested method to sync folders, with an accessible system tray or menu bar icon that allows you to quickly change settings. The experience is pretty similar across all three platforms.
However, a small issue we have with this is iconography. In a stunning sign of originality, Google Drive and OneDrive both use icons in the shape of a cloud, and these look (to our eyes) fairly similar. If you use multiple clouds, this may cause a fair bit of confusion. Dropbox, at least, uses a fairly distinctive box icon.
Dropbox used to have an issue for Mac users, in that it doesn’t list folders first and instead listed every file and folder alphabetically, regardless of type. Luckily, Dropbox seems to have fixed this, so that folders show up first before files, and all are listed alphabetically.
Still, you might still want to look elsewhere if you’re a Mac user. With near-flawless interfaces, OneDrive and Google Drive are better, although OneDrive wins here for its Windows integration.
All three providers offer mobile apps for Android and iOS. On the whole, these all appear fairly similar, although the Dropbox app has a serious flaw in the iOS version, as we’ll see shortly.
We’ve seen solid performance from all three apps on Android, with all three making our best cloud storage for Android short list. All three cloud storage services also have stellar iOS mobile apps.
In the Google Drive mobile app, the “home” tab shows suggested files, according to your usage. You can also view your My Drive folder, any synced computers, shared and starred files, as well as any shared drives if you’re on Google Workspace.
The Dropbox and OneDrive apps are similar and include a photos page that allows you to search your photos. You can install Google Photos (a free online storage for photos) if you want more similar functionality for your Google Drive images. The OneDrive and Dropbox apps also include an account section, where you can see relevant information, such as how much storage you’re currently using.
For general use, all three apps are fairly similar. However, Dropbox and OneDrive offer useful scanning features that Google doesn’t. With more functionality and slightly better features, OneDrive nudges past Google Drive to be the winner here, although all three apps offer a pretty good experience on mobile devices.
We’ll start this round with a clear point: it doesn’t matter where you sit in the OneDrive vs Dropbox vs Google Drive debate because none of these services are brilliant for security. We’ll explain why (you can also read our piece on Dropbox’s security issues, though).
The gold standard for security in cloud storage is zero-knowledge encryption. This type of encryption means that your provider doesn’t store a copy of your encryption key. So, the cloud storage service can’t decrypt your files even if it wanted to, which is the case with one of our favorite cloud storage providers, Icedrive.
Sadly, none of these three providers offer zero-knowledge encryption. If you’re looking for additional security, check out our guide to the best zero-knowledge cloud services. Another option is to use third-party encryption software, such as Cryptomator, which can encrypt your files before you upload them to the cloud.
Although none of our providers offer zero-knowledge encryption, they do all offer industry-standard levels of security in other areas. OneDrive for Business uses AES 256-bit encryption for data at rest and SSL/TLS connections for data in transit. For personal accounts, data is encrypted in transit and at rest, but Microsoft doesn’t specify exactly what encryption it uses.
Google Drive uses both AES 128-bit and AES 256-bit encryption for data at rest, although it’s not clear when it uses each protocol. In addition, data in transit is encrypted with the TLS protocol (learn more in our Google Drive security guide). Dropbox uses AES 256-bit encryption for data at rest and SSL/TLS for data in transit.
Even with services that offer zero-knowledge encryption, your account is only as safe as your password. We always recommend using strong passwords, which may be more difficult to remember, but you can keep them safe by using a password manager to save them. Take a look at our list of the best password managers for information on options like Dashlane.
Another layer of protection you can use is two-factor authentication, which all three cloud storage services offer. When you log in, you’ll need to provide a second layer of proof that it’s really you to access your data.
OneDrive has recently introduced a new feature called “personal vault,” which forces you to use a PIN number, fingerprint, face or an SMS message to open it. It will also automatically lock after 20 minutes of inactivity. “Personal vault” files on Windows 10 sync to a BitLocker-encrypted area of your hard drive. There’s no similar protection for Mac, however.
In terms of security, none of the providers offer zero-knowledge encryption, so neither is ever going to be the best cloud storage for encryption in our eyes. OneDrive ekes by with a win in this round, thanks to offering extra protection via its “personal vault” (read our piece on how safe your files are with OneDrive security).
As with security, none of the providers here have a great reputation when it comes to privacy, either. If you’re looking for a cloud storage provider that respects your privacy, then there are better options out there.
The Google privacy policy states that it will “collect the content you create, upload or receive from others when using our services” and includes emails, documents you create and comments you make on Google platforms like YouTube. Google states that it collects this data to provide better services as well as personalized ads.
OneDrive is a little less intrusive. The Microsoft privacy policy states that it doesn’t “use what you say in email, chat, video calls or voicemail, or your documents, photos or other personal files to target ads to you.” Despite this, with no zero-knowledge encryption and files based in the U.S., Microsoft engineers can access your files if required to do so.
Dropbox’s privacy policy states that it collects your data for a number of reasons, including “investigating and preventing security issues and abuse of the Dropbox services or Dropbox users.” It also admits that the data analyzed includes “your stuff,” which is “what you decide to store in your Dropbox account” — meaning your files.
Not only that but it also discloses your data to “trusted” third parties that include Amazon Web Services, Google and Zendesk. Dropbox was also famously hacked in 2012, with a leak of nearly 70 million user passwords, although it has upped its game since then.
This means that whichever service you use, you might have a complete stranger sifting through your files, which is not an appealing thought.
In 2013, Edward Snowden disclosed classified NSA documents to The Washington Post and The Guardian. Part of the revelations included information about PRISM, an NSA surveillance program, and the companies that were part of the program. These companies included Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, YouTube and, most importantly for this comparison, Google and Microsoft.
The leaked documents claimed that PRISM allowed the NSA to collect the contents of emails, calls and files stored in the cloud. All the companies named were quick to clarify the situation. Microsoft stated that it allowed access to customer data  “only in response to government demands, and we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers”.
Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, responded by saying he hadn’t even heard of PRISM, and that “we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process.” If that scares you, look elsewhere.
Dropbox was not listed as one of the companies participating in the program, but the leaked documents did state that there were plans to add Dropbox as a partner. The company’s response was to say that it was “not part of any such program and remains committed to protecting our users’ privacy.”
Even without PRISM, American legislation, such as the Patriot Act, allows agencies to request data from cloud storage services. Since none of these providers offer zero-knowledge encryption, any information disclosed will be fully accessible by those agencies.
Finding a winner is tough, as none of the providers paint itself in glory when it comes to privacy. Google and Microsoft are notorious for harvesting and using your data, and Dropbox is the only one of the three to have had a major hacking incident.
This might just be the toughest round to call. We’d generally advise any privacy-minded individual away from all three services and steer them toward a safer choice, like Icedrive, pCloud or Sync.com. That said, we’ll call this one for Dropbox, simply because it doesn’t make a business out of selling your data to advertisers.
Moral of the story: if you’re worried about privacy, encrypt your files with encryption software.
Dropbox and Google Drive offer email, phone and 24/7 live chat support. During tests, Dropbox live chat responded almost immediately (find out how to delete your Dropbox account).
The quality of the support was reasonable, although they were unable to offer a resolution to the Mac and iOS app issues other than suggesting that we put it forward as a feature request.
Google also responded in less than a minute. The responses were useful, in general, although they were unable to tell us what kind of encryption the service used. They also sent follow-up emails that offered some more useful information relating to the query, which was a nice touch.
OneDrive is far less helpful. Your first port of call is a less-than-useful virtual assistant. When you request to talk to an agent, you can request a live chat.
During working hours, we had a response within five minutes, with a link to chat with a Microsoft OneDrive expert. According to the company, these are “skilled professionals” chosen to answer questions rather than Microsoft employees.
The first time we tried this, we received a useful response. The second time, we received out-of-date information. You’re better off searching on Google.
Both Dropbox and Google Drive offered round-the-clock live chat support, but trying to chat with a human on OneDrive was quite a challenge. With immediate support and helpful follow-up emails, Google Drive takes this round.
It was always going to be a decision based on the smallest of margins. If you’ve read this in full, you’ll see a pattern: almost all of our categories had near ties, and with a result of 3-3-3 for Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, the situation is still unclear.
With three points each, the competitors of this Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive battle remain tied. In the end, it really depends on what you’re looking for in a cloud storage provider.
Winner: Three-Way Tie
If you’re worried about pricing, Google Drive is a great option, with more storage and services offered for the price you pay, as well as a good free plan at the bottom. In other areas, like file syncing and sharing, Dropbox and OneDrive shared the glory, with both providing full account versioning and easy link sharing.
OneDrive offers block-level sync for files, with a “personal vault” for your most sensitive documents, which is why it nudged ahead in our security round. It also did well in plenty of other areas, including offering the best interface for mobile and desktop users, with Google Drive closely matching it.
For customer support, Google was the winner there, with Dropbox offering a strongly useful alternative and OneDrive falling behind. You can read our IDrive vs Dropbox comparison to see the two compare.
If you need to move files or images from one service to the other, be sure to read our complete guide on how to transfer files from Dropbox to Google Drive or how to transfer files from Google Drive to Dropbox. We also have a full guide on how to migrate from Dropbox to OneDrive.
We’re always keen to hear your thoughts on any of the providers in this Dropbox vs Google Drive vs OneDrive comparison. Which is your favorite? Do you agree with our judging, or would you rather see a different winner? Leave your comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.
Ben Stockton

Aleksandar Kochovski (SEO and Briefings Editor)

After a brief stint in architecture and a tango with teaching, Aleksandar is now dancing to the beat of his own drum as a tech writer, merging his passions for technology and literature. When he’s not hidden behind his computer screen, you can find him photographing the streets of Skopje or cooking quesadillas for his friends at home.
Learn more about our editorial team and our research process.
177 thoughts on “Dropbox vs Google Drive vs Onedrive: Comparing the Big Three in 2023”
In the world we leave in today, more and more people store more and more data, there is a great need for larger online cloud storage. With the automatic backup capability of google drive on all device that a user typically owns (iphone, macbook, wintel laptop, including other family members’ devices, etc.), storage can grow quickly. 1 tb is no longer enough. With the amount of photos and videos from mobile phones and cameras being taken year round, google is the only one providing reasonable storage at a reasonable price.
Yes, this is the problem with DropBox. I am an individual contractor, so I don’t need a multi-user business plan. For individual users including their individual professional plan, Dropbox limits to 1TB. That’s not enough. That leaves me with two options: (a) buy a 5-person Dropbox business plan for one person; or (b) switch to Google Drive. Dropbox needs to allow the purchase of additional storage space for individual professional plans.
Not only that, it is also THE ONLY one that provides the ability to select which ever folder you want on your drive to get backed up. That option only leaves the others out of the game.
Both Dropbox and OneDrive allow you to limit which folders get replicated, but DropBox makes it very hard to do.
(We use both at work and will likely transition to Onedrive as it is more integrated with Windows)
I’ve worked with all three, and I agree with the analysis and comparisons made.
There’s one major flaw of OneDrive the writer didn’t pick up on though: it’s incredibly unreliable when it comes to syncing large and complex data, e.g. folders containing hundreds or thousands of subfolders with hundreds or thousands of files. The desktop client might stop syncing altogether, leaving you no option but to manually reset it, and it frequently misplaces files with the same filename, i.e. it will swap a file named “01.docx” with a different file named “01.docx” that’s contained in a different folder.
Google Drive occasionally has some issues with syncing too, but the worse that can happen here is you end up with a few duplicate files that you can easily remove later.
Dropbox is the best by far in this area. It syncs everything just fine, and simply works.
Agree, that’s the major reason I still pay for drop box, in spite of holding office 365 membership…
Same for me.
Agree!
That OneDrive flaw makes it worse than useless for serious storage of data. I just stumbled on a mess of empty folders after noticing that OneDrive had hung when uploading a folder with just 4 GB of data. Spread the word: OneDrive is a hazard!
Totally agree. I had the same experience and have pulled my hairs more than once for services which are sold to bring peace of mind…
I have to disagree. I used Dropbox to back up my files while my laptop was being fixed. I borrowed a friend’s laptop, only to find that I couldn’t access all of my saved files. Checking online, I wasn’t the only person to have the same syncing issues. I could only access all of the data on the original laptop. I’ve no idea why. I’m hoping Google Drive will sync better and be easier to use.
If your laptop broke before it could finish uploading the newly added files to the Dropbox server, surely you won’t be able to access these files from a different PC
That hardly sounds like the case.
Probably your files were higher than 2Gb using a free account
I had the same problem with two computers. On one computer, Dropbox was not syncing files and I didn’t find that out until my hard drive failed. Just like you, I looked online for those files only to find they were not there. They were on my hard drive but only until it failed and was replaced. Once that happened, no more files. On the other computer, I wiped the hard drive clean at the suggestion of Apple support only to find that Dropbox never functioned properly after that. I always had the blue “about to be synced” icon instead of the green check mark. I just left it because I hardly use that computer and thought I could download whatever I needed. I just didn’t count on new files not syncing.
Thank you for pointing this out – much appreciated!
You’ve helped me to make a decision.
Same here, I have sync problem w/ OneDrive & OneNote, while it works fine on Dropbox + Evernote.
Agreed. I have used Onedrive and Dropbox simultaneously for over a year now. Onedrive does only ways sync correctly and cant always read your changes. It often forces a person to manually rename file instead of just reading changes and make update on existing file. Dropbox comes on top here.
totally agree. Never want to ever again sort out several hundred GB of business files in folders incorrectly synced by OneDrive
Agree fully: in a corporate world, try to retain/gain access to an employee’s OneDrive when they are leaving the company. I cleaned up our project folders which involved deleting, moving etc. That synchronization/transfer is still running and is busy putting in thousands of duplicate files everywhere for me to find and delete. OneDrive looks good at first sight and is sold well, but it also hides the deficiencies well. Once you are committed, you are in the proverbial. We have OneDrive for Business and that is one confusing setup.
Agreed. OneDrive is unreliable when syncing especially noticeable when using multiple computers. I lost irreplaceable documents when transferring them from google drive to One Drive. One Drive saved all the folder names but didn’t store the content. 3 months of design work, gone. Never had an issue with google drive or drop box like this. Why microsoft, why?
What a through comprehensive and very helpful assessment. Well done. I use Dropbox (1TB) and Google Docs (15GB), and I have a OneDrive account but don’t need it) and was weighing up whether it was worth settling on just one of them. Answer is to probably stick with what I have! 🙂
One problem I encountered with Google Drive is the requirement to use only the default C:GoogleDrive folder: a while ago I added a 125GB SSD to host only the (Windows 7) OS. This meant that all my data and non-system applications had to be moved to D: – including the G-drive folder. Since then, I have experienced continuous synching problems. The response from G-Drive support was “read the policy fine print”: we don’t guarantee it will work using other folder paths. The best kludge was to have a Google Drive folder link on C, to the actual destination. But now I’m too scared to store stuff there…
I disagree. You CAN point the Google drive in any drive and folder name.
Dropbox can have terrible UX though & the company doesn’t care.
After manually uploading large files into my Dropbox & having the app ignore the active WiFi connection in favor of the LTE connection (& burning through my monthly data plan in the process) and then being told by their support team that this was not a problem & was done on purpose I stopped paying for Dropbox Pro in favor of Google Drive.
Your Excellent Assessment is Deeply appreciated. Looking at buying a Microsoft Surface specifically to leverage the power of Onenote and get an Office 365 Home Subscription. If it were not for your assessment One Drive’s lack of data-at-rest encryption for consumers would have got by me. For now my storage stays with Google. Again – Thanks-A-Million!!! Jay
Some issues with Google Drive:
Not being able to download folders for offline work or using in other apps on android/iOS. Also no way to give ownership of a file in Google Drive personal means that you can use up your storage on business files. Not sure if those apply to the others.
And what about the AWS offering?
??? “Not being able to download folders for offline work or using in other apps on android/iOS.”
That is basically one of the main reasons I use Google Drive. You can work on anything while offline and sync the next time your online.
Thanks for doing this exhaustive work! We use all 3 in our company, but will likely move mostly to OneDrive (for Business). It does offer encryption at rest for business. Not sure how important it is for most consumer level storage, but everyone has their own opinion.
Interestingly, we would never have consolidated Dropbox usage into Onedrive until Microsoft fixed the idiotic lack of co habitation of OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. Now, its seemless, and its free (included in 365) compared to the ever rising costs of Dropbox.
Thanks again for the work you did on this
Interesting. We are also using all three, and want to move away from DropBox. We had a major hickup after testing DB Business, then switching three accounts back to DB Plus. After deleting a team of DB Business (which unexpectedly deleted a team folder), a whole 120GB of files were suddenly deleted too! After one week of talking to support until we finally could explain our problem, we could recover our data. Since then, for the last 3 months, we have major syncing issues, some lost date, duplicated files and folders. A serious drama and hundreds of working hours lost on fixing issues with DROPBOX. I felt I needed to become a DB specialist to figure out how to fix our issues. Nightmare. Now I am testing Google Drive (too slow sync of large files!) and OneDrive.
Nice and thorough review, but one thing to add is that as a new user some services are more intuitive than others. I admit that I have not used Google Drive, but between Dropbox and OneDrive I found Dropbox to be the easiest to adopt. Plus, with the Premium 1TB annual subscription you have live support.
I recently switched to OneDrive due to the 5TB included with a 5-user Office 365 Home subscription. OneDrive has, so far, been extremely frustrating to set up and sync with multiple devices. Plus, OneDrive offers no live support either by phone or chat. The Virtual Assistant is worthless and I found that a Google search bar is more efficient in finding answers. I have not bothered with sending an email, so I cannot comment on Microsoft’s response time. In my opinion, when it comes to support, OneDrive takes a distant second to Dropbox.
I have been using one drive on about 5 machines so far and it’s flawless. Setting it up is simple. Install the app, log in and away you go. I haven’t encountered any of the problems you have described.
that 5 TB storage is actually only 1 TB storage per user and so where they say 5 TB storage is the total storage for all 5 user – well that is how I interpret it – hoping I am wrong on that
Great comparison, thanks. Here’s my remaining question. When looking at Dropbox, the comparisons don’t address the cost of Word via Office 365, which is the only seamless and “free” partnership with Dropbox. I have standalone Word 2011, and it keeps crashing. Ok, its time to update. Normally I’d buy the standalone Word. Dropbox doesn’t integrate with Google Docs and it works best with Office 365, not the standalone. I looked at cloud managers for a workaround, but then there’s yet another fee! I’m going to have a hard time using Google docs with my one gov’t client. If I buy Office 365, in effect, it doubles the price I pay to use Dropbox! Are there options I’m not seeing?
Hi, Pam! Yeah, buying Office 365 makes it hard to justify spending on Dropbox. Dropbox does integrate with Office Online, though, which is Microsoft’s free version of Office 365. The main difference is that you have to work from a browser-based word processor (like Google Docs) and that takes some getting used to. Once you do, though, you won’t even notice. Hope that helps. Best of luck with your business 🙂
One of the better well written reviews of any types of offerings I have seen in some time. Thank you for taking what must have been a large amount of time to do this!
Incremental sync and sharing management (and, more recently, file requests) puts dropbox a long way ahead in usability and ease of collaboration. Incremental sync has been along for such a long time that it’s hard do understand why the competition hasn’t picked it so far.
I’ve been using Dropbox for our staff to access our shared files/docs. The problem we’ve had is that when two or more people are editing at the same time – or just have the same document open – we get conflicted copies, which take our staff a lot of time to resolve.
Great evaluation of all three cloud options, but this issue wasn’t mentioned. Do the other two options avoid this issue?
That’s because Dropbox is constantly changing this function, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t…Right now if you want more than two people working simultaneously on a doc, you probably want to use Google Drive.
It also depends on the version of Dropbox you are paying for. If you are using Dropbox Plus with 1TB of space and sharing the same login info, then you will always have conflicted files because Dropbox would only see that, in essence, there is only on person logged in.
If you were to upgrade to Dropbox Business or Have multiple Plus accounts, you wouldn’t have this issue any longer. The reason being that Dropbox offers a feature called Dropbox Badge with Office files. This feature allows you to see anyone else viewing or editing a file. You can leave realtime comments on the file as it is edited, and if someone makes changes and saves them all other parties viewing the file are updated on the changes and prompted to update the file to the new version.
This feature alone makes Dropbox leaps and bounds better than the competition when working with word documents and files.
You can also directly open Adobe files within Dropbox online as well sign PDF’s within the web client.
i know – just another nightmare!. I have been using Dropbox for 10 years. .
Dropbox support absolutely non existent.
We are long term business users of dropbox. We have subscribed to a 30 user business plan for many years. it has gone through a lot of changes of name over that time. Each year renewal was a simple process. Thsi year however has bene quite different. For reasons unknown we have bene unable to review. We raised a ticket with support who were unable to help much but in the middle of troubleshooting our count was downgraded to a free one. needless to say this meant that effectively dropbox stopped working for us. It also meant we lost access tot the admin panel and hence the support.
Since then we have tried and tried to get this problem sorted. There is zero response form sport and finding a human to talk to is impossible.
The pre-sales team open a chat quickly and have repeatedly promised to “escalate to management” but no response at all
We have been dead in the water for almost a week.
Shopping for alternatives now
Use OneDrive for sharing with China !
If you need to share files from US to China (we manufacture there) you better be using OneDrive. anything else will have you pulling out your hair. I can’t say that this applies to OneDrive personal, only for OneDrive Business.
I would agree that One Drive would place last in this fight, but even with the thorough analysis, it seems a stretch to call Dropbox a winner here. As other users have mentioned, customer support is terrible and 2GB free vs Google’s 15GB is crazy in 2017. I have single photos and audio docs larger than 2GB, making a free dropbox account essentially worthless, so for the average user, I’m not sure what the draw to Dropbox would be. You mentioned that the 15GB is also linked to photos and Gmail, but do note that if your settings are correct, uploaded photos can be (unnoticably) compressed so they don’t count against your quota. Same goes for Google Docs/Spreadsheets/Slides – they don’t count against your limit. I’m not sure I agree with your assesment on sharing options – though you can’t create “timed” access with an expiration, you certainly can have the equivalent of password protected files and folders just by adding or removing people (or groups) from a shared file/folder, since access depends on a login to a Google account already. A password protected link seems a bit redundant, since anyone who shares the link can just as easily share the login information.
Agreed: Dropbox customer support TERRIBLE. I had to become an expert reading hundreds of DROPBOX manuals to be able to ask the right question and finally tell them what needed to be done to fix my problem! Nightmare!
Well… rats. As a recent subscriber to Office 365 Personal, I was looking for comparisons like this in the hopes that I could justify dropping the cost of Dropbox and switch to the included 1TB of OneDrive. Based on the information in this thorough review, and some of the comments that followed, it looks like I’m better off sticking with Dropbox, even if it costs me an extra $15 a month.
Not great news financially, but at least I feel more educated and have justified my decision. Thanks!
You should add a comparison category for which plays the nicest with other applications. DropBox insists on glomming onto 10 of the 15 shell extension icon overlays available in windows, disabling the icon overlays for other software (think source control). Which is why I am here looking for an alternative…
That’s….a very good idea. Keep an eye out, we’ll see if we can get something together over the next few weeks.
Thanks,
Fergus (chief editor)
Not familiar with that terminology. Can you explain what you mean and the negative impact that has?
If your dropbox files are downloaded too much, they lock your account for longer and longer amounts of time. They won’t/can’t tell you how long you will be locked, and there is NO way to know how close you are to the limit. Once you go over, they lock you, and then you just have to wait. Which is really frustrating if you use this to share with business customers
I spend $100cdn a year for 5 terabytes (1 terabyte per family member) of storage and Office 365 for the entire family. I save hundreds of dollars a year compared to Dropbox or iCloud. With 2 of my kids in University, the included Office 365 is a big bonus.
I would like to know which one of these services are best for cloud storage, meaning that I don’t have to download/store everything on my laptop. Can any of these act as purely a cloud storage?
Yes, all of them will fit that bill.
Can I use all 3 for their free space? Personal in one (photos, emails), Current business in another, and misc/old business in 3rd?
Great article, but it doesn’t address the main issue we have with Google Drive – When changes are made online to Word/Excel files it creates a new document in google doc format. So for Mac users, unless you sync an entire folder (which takes up too much space), you can’t edit a Microsoft Office file within that folder. Also, if we currently use G-Suite for business email, but want to use Dropbox for storage/collaboration are there any alternatives besides purchasing business plans for both???
Having the same issues with new documents being created. I just purchased Drive for my team and like that’s integrated with G-Suite business email but am reluctant to pull the plug on Droxbox bc of the synch issues. What did you decide?
Dropbox allows you to download files to the SD card of your smartphone ( even with android 4.4)
None of the others allow that.
Which site is best for downloading multiple full-resolution photos? I know each site will store uncompressed images, but am not sure which allows me to download large numbers of photos at once without losing any image quality.
Many thanks.
I have used Dropbox for several years with my team all located in 4 different states. We do pay for the 1T service and have never been disappointed. I used Google drive for a period of time, great syncing but poor integration with MS Office products at that time.
as per price i think one drive is pretty ok. but in order to get strict security for normal customers one should get Mega nz cloud for keeping very important files.200 gb mega storage would be way enough for storing only important files.
I’ve been wondering whether having various cloud based apps syncing is causing my devices to slow down more than just using one, and whether this means I lose track of duplicate files that would be easier to sort out with one cloud application.
I was tempted to pay for more space on Google Drive but downloading multiple files from Google Drive zips them up incredibly slowly even for small file sizes. I like Dropbox for it’s speed and convenience but the extra space subscription is too pricy.
I had one very unfortunate incident recently sharing files with Google Drive.
A user uploaded a couple of new files into folders owned by a central account which everyone was sharing. Fine so far.
A little while later the original user deleted his GoogleDrive account because he had ended up with two, and was cleaning up. As a result the shared copies of the documents, which he still ‘owned’ as far as GoogleDrive was concerned disappeared from the shared folder. Worse no one noticed for more than 30 days so they were unrecoverable.
After testing, Dropbox handles ownership differently, and this does not happen.
Have enjoyed Dropbox until the iOS app seems unable to release the cache – and is using up valuable storage. This makes me shop around – hence reading this article. Was thinking about OneDrive until I learned the personal version doesn’t encrypt at rest.
Hi Tony,
Yes, there’s that, and the fact that OneDrive is U.S.-based, which may not be the smartest play at this very moment with all the goings on. Not sure what your current situation is, but if you’re looking for a SMB solution I’d suggest checking out our best EFSS article or, if it’s just you and maybe one or two others, our general storage article. I’ll link both below, but I have a feeling you’d like Sync.com for its excellent security.
https://www.cloudwards.net/best-enterprise-file-sync/
https://www.cloudwards.net/comparison/
Thanks a lot for the review. I use all three services, and it’s very true: OneDrive is far behind the other two services re sync speed and reliability. I would really like to hear from MS themselves, what’s their vision for winning the strong competition from Dropbox and the ever evolving inter-connect-ability of Google Drive.
Cheers from Israel.
Google Drive’s “Backup and Sync” has been giving me problems, every time I shut down the computer it blocks the shutdown process, and if you don’t kill the application during the shutdown process the computer returns to the desktop.
This issue has been around for a very long time, and affects millions of users, but Google seems to do nothing about this bug.
I used all three of them. There is nothing to debate: the analysis is correct.
Just check if you have had problems.
Dropbox: never had problems, even when a big “accident” happened, and 1000’s of files where deleted, recovery was a blink of an eye. While the same thing with Gdrive takes days. I didn’t dare to try with OneDrive.
Conclusion (random order) : Gdrive: I’ve had my part of troubles
OneDrive: the same, not very reliable
Dropbox: NEVER, had a problem, their service is also very quick and resolvable.
if you are a home user and user Office and some photos, stick to your free OneDrive.
To all professionals, even the small ones: Dropbox is the only totally reliable cloud sync space.
Needless to say: ALWAYS keep backups (I use ViceVersa, with a schedule to keep all files, and never lose one)
Hi, I would like to hear something on two issues. Does anyone has something to say? Thanks in advance
1. which one of these three work better with time machine backup sync;
2. what about speed rate on the different cloud services (i tried One drive and I found it scary; it take a lot of time even to browse jpeg images…)
Thanks
I am a mortgage broker in Canada looking for a solution to my biggest problem. I am not that tech savvy so don’t laugh if I don’t know all the correct terms. Currently my 100+ annual mortgage clients email or text me their paystubs as photos (jpegs) and I need to upload them to the bank’s mortgage broker portal in .pdf format. I often have to print them first and then re-scan in my computer as pdfs. It is time consuming and they often become hard to read. Here is what I want to be able to do:
buy cloud storage where I can create an individual file for each client, send them a link that is password protected so they can upload their documents (paystub, letter of employment, Bank statements proving they have the down payment, etc). I need to be able to convert the documents into .pdfs so I can upload them without having to print them off and re-scan into my computer. For clients living far away, I would then like to be able to send the clients the mortgage approvals and have the ability for them to sign electronically if they prefer. I’d also like to be able to organize the mortgages I completed in a given year and create a list of the mortgage customers for future CRM. Any suggestions which provider would be best for me? Thanks for your help.
Hi, Laurie. Thanks for commenting! For converting files, I like to use a tool called CloudCovert, a free add-on for Google Drive.
However, I think you’re going to want to use Dropbox since Google Drive doesn’t have a file request feature and Dropbox does. You can create shared folders with Google Drive and invite your clients to add files to them, but that would require them setting up a Google account which is probably more work than you want to ask of them.
Dropbox also has a built-in PDF converter that you can use so you don’t have to spend all that time printing and scanning 😉 … Dropbox integrates with DocuSign, too, though its a “bit” trickier to use than DocuSign with Google Drive (imho).
Dropbox also integrates with Office Online (free), so you can use Excel to track your mortgage customers. As far as organizing your mortgages, you can create folders and subfolders in Dropbox to do that.
On a final note, if you did want to use Google Drive, you could just set up a WeTransfer account and have customers send you files that way. Its a good file transfer service with some customization options that let you easily build your own personalized webpage for customers to send you files. Then, use CloudCovert and DocuSign on Google Drive, and Google Sheets to track your clients.
I want to upgrade my Dropbox account, but now I see that you need a “Professional” account to be able to use “Password-protected and expiring shared links”.
You also need a Pro account to get “Live chat support”
Plus: $ 9.99 / month
Professional :$19.99 / month (too much I think)
Thanks for this comparison. Since Dropbox Support has ruined 2 restore operations causing us countless headaches, we have to find another option. Google’s Team Drive doesn’t allow sharing of a subfolder, so that is out. Which leaves OneDrive (for Business), which is looking pretty good right now. Hopefully it will be more reliable than Dropbox.
Dropbox is terribly inconvenient. It is impossible to see the size of your file, directory. There is no normal directory tree. Unable to download the archive of the directory or several files. After trying to work after google drive I just did not pull my hair out – so it’s all hard on the dropbox. Now I’m considering the options between ondraiv and google.
I had paid use of dropbox for few years but recently changed to onedrive because it was free with my office 365. Terribly disappointed… My needs are small :what I save in my home computer must be automatically available from my work computer as well as my mobile, and vice versa, assuming all are connected to internet (I have about 40Mbps connection, not an issue).
But it is not syncing in time.
Very frustrating.
I need to go back to Dropbox, I guess! They said they will not delete my account and storage till my paid subscription is over in August. Good.
Dropbox is COMPLETE trash. DO NOT EVER USE DROPBOX!!!!!! It has deleted a bunch of files that are for my classes, and I can’t recover them- my lab final is in 2 days and I am missing a huge chunk of my study material because of Dropbox!!! Never again!!!!
@Spideroak: Good and well-priced for backups, but cannot recommend for synchronization of large filesets.
For me the spideroak client frequently stalls, leaving devices unsynchronized without warning. And once it detects a synchronization conflict (i.e. file changed on both devices without sync in between) it simply chooses the newer version, meaning that the earlier work is lost.
As a side-effect, this also means that it is safe (but not recommended) to synchronize .git directories over Dropbox, but they frequently break when synchronized by Spideroak.
As personal user only thing which adds every day on my phone is pics and videos. What best way to view them and have google run all kinds of AI n facial recognition. So Google Photos makes it tilt my decision
How about adding two factor authentication support and usage on mobile devices.
I’ve found dropbox to work better with regards to this.
I have very bad experience with Dropbox. I am using it for my company data but dropbox is supporting Windows Server 2012 though it was running flawlessly for certain time. Two months before, it stopped and crash and till now not able to start again. Dropbox says more than 300K files syncing will degrade the performance. Due to Windows Server 2012 and more than 300K file, dropbox support team raised their hands to solve this issue. Now looking for alternate as G-drive or OneDrive.
Or use all 3 and to have more free storage.
For me it all comes down what you need the cloud storage for and how you intend to use it.
Google Drive Dose it for me, cause am more consider with storage and I can access my files from my Machine PC or Mac.
Thank you, very helpful. I was considering switching over to OneDrive from Dropbox, but with the security concern, I’ll stick with Dropbox.
Great article, many thanks.
One update is that One Drive on their business plans now offers encryption at rest. I personally will stay with Dropbox because it just works without any issue, but thought the update would be useful.
Thanks for the comment, Matthew. We did mention in the article that OneDrive Business encrypts at rest. For home consumers, it’s definitely worth encrypting files privately using Boxcryptor or another service.
I have used DropBox for probably 10 years or more. In 2012 or so it came as a suggested cloudstorage with a new SAMSUNG Note device, giving me 70GB of storage for free for a year. I loved that! All my photos were almost instantly available on my PC, laptop, etc when came back to my office after taking pictures at a business meeting.
When my free subscription run out I upgraded to PLUS. As my business grew and I needed access for my team to my huge storage I now bought a second PLUS ACCOUNT in 2016. That worked quite well too, except the syncing issues when working on same EXCEL files, resluting in Sync Conflicts, We resolved this by only ever having one person working on one file at the time.
DROPBOX pestered me in 2017 to try DropBox BUSINESS one month for free. I needed a third account anyway, so I decided to give it a try,
I should NEVER have done that!
Dropbox BUSINESS disables the Photo syncing of mobile phones – for GOD’S SAKE? Hello?
That’s why I got into DropBox in the first place. Great marketing over years to lure me in, and then the DESTROY the work of their marketing team in a click of a button!
It took me and my team TWO weeks to figure that out that the syncing had stopped because of DROPBOX BUSINESS. We changed settings, waited, etc. only after a support call did we figure out the mistake with them.
Ok. So I changed back to have 3 PLUS accounts for me and my team. OH GOD, now we had PLUS accounts and new 3 personal accounts!!!
Then I started cleaning up my files and deleted a TEAM left over by DropBox Business. What I did not realize, that deleting a team, the TEAM FOLDER was deleted too! And with 125GB of FILES: My God, I took 1 week of talking to support for ME to figure out how to get my 125GB of deleted files back.
I will be leaving DROPBOX. Maybe I will keep one account, for the phone syncing option. Testing Google DRIVE. Not usable for large files! For small files it is ok. But every time I make a change in my 125GB folder it takes a week to sync and using my PC juices, slowing it down and heating up the harddrive.
Microsoft ONE DRIVE is the next candidate to test. We really liked that the DropBox syncing issue in Google Drive and Microsoft is resolved. And Google PHOTOS uploads the photos from my phone into a free cloud storage.
But the speed of the syncing is of course is an important issue for my team and me. And DropBox compared to Google is by far the faster option when it comes to syncing.
But DropBox Support is lacking. They always send you to read a manual and follow the instructions there. Honestly, I can find the manuals myself. What I need is human help. And only after insisting, chats and dozens of emails, is the problem finally escalated to a person who actually understands DropBox better than me after I had rad a ton of manuals. We had huge problems for the last 8 months!
I started the switch over to Google Drive. The price was right and I trusted the system. I was wrong. Google Drive can’t seem to handle large amounts of files. I used it to backup my Lightroom files. I had 100,000+ thousand files, not including photos. Not only did it drop all of my Lightroom files, it killed them on my computer via the sync. The files were not in the trash. I lost all of my edits for 60,000+ photos. I’m going back to dropbox. The new features are great and the reliability is significantly better.
great analysis, but it should have accounted for one more issue: tech support. I have only used dropbox and I have no point of reference on the other two. DB customer service, although it seems to try its best, sucks. It is obviously outsourced to third world countries, which to a degree is a security issue, and the reps are most of the time low IQ and English challenged. DB is saving a few bucks at the expense of service quality and possibly security, not to mention the fact that it is sending jobs overseas.
You forgot to add in this article that Dropbox takes your space even if somebody shares files with you. I haven’t had any single file uploaded by me and yet had my quota “exceeded” because somebody shared many files with me, then bombed with emails/notifications to buy more storage. This is just plain stupid and this “feature” alone is sufficient for me to not use nor recommend Dropbox to anyone.
For me, the best answer seems to be all of them! Professionally I tend to use Google Drive more, while OneDrive and Dropbox are more for personal files, the former for text/PDFs and the latter for video/audio. I’d rather have a larger quota in one application than sharing storage across three of them, but I’ll take my storage any way I can get it.
I purchased Dropbox Business Advanced so I could share folders with my assistant (did not like having to pay for a third subscription which I did not need). While we were preparing for a major presentation both my assistant and I were working on different documents and saving them to a shared dropbox folder – or at least we thought we were. It turned out we were both working on/saving documents to the folder which the other person could not see. We ended up having to email large documents to one another during our final push to get the presentation completed. It was crazy and hard to keep up with latest versions of documents. Dropbox could not help me fix the problem while it was happening, but suggested I unshare the folder and then reshare to see if that worked – it did not. There are still documents in the shared folder that only one of us can see. Dropbox explanation was “that just happens sometimes” when a lot of documents are shared to a folder over a relatively short period of time. No fix in the works. For what I pay $$$$$ I expect better. Now I am looking for other solutions because I need all documents in a shared folder to be visible to all the individuals sharing the folder.
I see others describe sharing/syncing problems with onedrive, which would be my #2 choice, so I’m hesitant to make a move to that. I have never used google docs for file management and don’t use gmail for business emails, so I am hesitant to move to google business. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve used Dropbox for years, possibly since it’s start. It mostly worked well on PCs, but currently it seems to be a significant resource hog on MacOS. I have the Pro Plus version with virtual files/folders because I do most if my image editing on a older MacBook Pro and hard drive space is limited. But Dropbox syncing seems to bring the notebook to its knees — especially on startup.
I agree with your comment regarding eating up storage on a MacOS. I have been a Dropbox subscriber for 5-6 years with no problems. I now have a MacBook Air and unable to use my Dropbox account as I did in the past due to storage issues.
I’ve used all three and still try the two I don’t use routinely – Google Drive and Dropbox – just to see if they’ve improved on the things I don’t like about them. As a freelancer I have to do my own IT work, so I’m always looking for the most intuitive, easiest to use service that’s also packed with value and easy for clients to use. That’s why I use OneDrive over the other two for my business. I’ve had zero issues through the years, and every client that’s ever used it remarks on how much easier to use it is than the other two. The fact it integrates so seamlessly with online app versions of Word, PPT, Excel, etc. and sync beautifully if you’re working off a desktop version and syncing to the cloud – to the point you can often see revisions in real time – is a bonus. Hands down, it’s OneDrive over either of the other two for my purposes.
I have used all 3. I still have my Google account and Office 365 account.
The price and arrogance of DropBox is what really moved me away. The web UI is confusing at best. Creating a shared folder for people to drop stuff in uses a file request, as in you are requesting files from them. So much easier with both Google Drive and way better with OneDrive now that the person does not need a OneDrive account (Google requires a gmail account). Also DropBox just has no real value add like both Google and especially Office 365.
At times all of them have had bad sync speeds. All of them basically have the same sync speed to me now. Google does get hung up more but not often.
OneDrive sync was so messed up 2-3 years ago it was not usable to be honest.
However I do know they had a massive internal merger so to speak. The consumer stuff from the hotmail/live/outlook/skydrive stuff was running on legacy acquisition infrastructure. The business side was all Microsoft running on Exchange/Sharepoint. All of it now runs on the latest versions Exchange/Sharepoint running on Azure. The One Drive Sync client in its current form (October of 2018) has the most options with sync on demand etc. I have it setup on 3 Windows computers, a Mac, a iPad and my iPhone. Each is set to sync different parts local with my home desktop syncing everything local so I can back it up to a local drive and backblaze.
The fact that you get full Office with either the personal or Home is the thing that pushed me to OneDrive. I like Google Docs, but 85% of world uses MS Office still.
I’m a commercial and event photographer using the Dropbox Business plan but now I’m running into an issue with Dropbox limiting the monthly API calls to my Synology box.
Because of the number of photos, I can take during the busy season months, and the use of Adobe Lightroom, Dropbox stops working for me. I’ve been in contact with Dropbox Business support many times and there are two issues they cannot solve.
1. Dropbox will not let you exclude certain file types – It they would all you to filter certain file types from syncing that would solve part of the issue
2. Dropbox sync (smart sync and selective sync) will sometimes crash with large folders (as others have mentioned with OneDrive – this forces Dropbox to try to sync the entire folder AGAIN and thus creating more API calls
So now I’m left trying to find another solution
I’m a writer (novels and technical) and I’ve used Dropbox for years and I’ve never lost a single thing. Which is why, despite have MS Office 365 Home and a terabyte of storage I never use, I’m still thinking about paying for Dropbox. I am going to try that google drive plug-in mentioned upstream, but in all likelihood I’m going to stick with Dropbox. I’m hoping it’s a sensible decision based on logic and not just a familiarity thing since I’ve used DB for so long. Great article and comments. Just wanted to add my data point. Cheers.
Thanks for the great review – I use all three, and working on multiple projects was paying for G & DB. Another strength of DBox and weakness for the others is if you have to travel to developing countries, or interact with weak internet infrastructure. DBox never lost a file in five years, whereas Google did, and OneDrive (and MS generally) assumes the ‘first world’ is the only world.
Really impressive, thorough review – great work. We’ve used paid DropBox accounts for a number of years now, and you totally nail both its beauty and its limitations. For me, the decider has been the decay of DropBox’s support service – for the premium price they charge, I expect better than the incompetent indifference I’ve encountered recently. Having seen OneDrive sort out its biggest issues over the same period, we’re going to give that a try (the bonus being that it’s free, since we already have Office365 Premium Business subscriptions). Thanks again for a great article.
For me, I’ve used dropbox for years, and upped to the sub plan of $99/yr for 1TB. However, I realized while I was paying for the MS Office that I also received 5 1TB online drives through OneDrive and that’s another $99/yr, so I figured as long as the syncing goes well and I don’t have issues, that perhaps OneDrive would be my solution. Even though Google One has 2TB for the same price, I’m trying to reduce costs currently, so since I need Word, Excel, etc. for my household, I might as well take advantage of already paying for it and just use the 1TB OneDrive for now.
This comparison seems to assume the whole world is using Windows. Surely a significant aspect of any online file storage/sharing service is how good their support is for non-Windows OSs. The Dropbox native client is first class on Windows, Linux and Mac. Good luck with OneDrive…
I also strongly disagree with the results of Round Two. I’ve used OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive extensively and OneDrive’s syncing is _awful_. Every day it gets into a state where the document I _just_ saved becomes read-only and I can no longer edit it unless I save it under a new name. Useless junk.
Hi Steve,
Cloudwards’ chief editor here. Well, to your first point, from a practical standpoint the whole world is, in fact, using Windows (I say that as a Linux user), unless you feel that a market share of over 90 percent is insignificant. Mac and Linux users are, however, well catered for on this site, with several articles dedicated to online software that plays nice with these OSes.
As for your OneDrive issue, that doesn’t sound like a problem with syncing as such, but rather something else. I googled your issue and this thread popped up as the first result, maybe it will help you? https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/forum/sdfiles-sdopen/why-are-my-onedrive-documents-opening-in-read-only/beff9672-72c4-4afe-a199-b029d400a45b?page=2
Kind regards,
Fergus O’Sullivan
In the PC world, sure – it’s Windows 90% of the time. In the phone/tablet world, not even close. iOS is the major in the U.S. – so iCloud should have been included in the comparisons.
We don’t like iCloud very much, as you can read in our review: https://www.cloudwards.net/review/icloud-drive/. That’s the reason why we’ve not included it in this very specific comparison article.
All these tools are really designed to stop working with our data in local servers, to move it on the WEB without limits in number of folders, files, easy sharing with users out of office, etc.
So moving all the company data to the cloud is good to optimize the sharing, mobility … but working with engineering documents, plans, spreadsheets every day is another song.
We are not there yet, the Internet access lines are not as fast, reliable, or secure, neither are web applications good enough compared to the desktop ones.
It is directly a contradiction: Let’s see … we have the fastest computers, with a lot of RAM, core i5-i7, SSD disks, local gigabit networks and now we need 10 seconds to open a simple file or Outlook to be able to work 5 minutes while it finishes to synchronize …… because we have saved it in Dublin?.
I work in some clients with Gdrive and OneDrive, with millions of files and thousand of folders…. it is simply, neither of them works properly, they are not reliable, they hang and data is lost if you work with Windows explorer (and users want to use Windows explorer). Finally we have adopted a hybrid solution because it is impossible to work depending exclusively on the cloud.
Without saying that in any case we need a backup solution; retention is not the same and is not reliable.
Thanks a lot for your opinions
I am a student who uses a Mac for most purposes, iPad to take notes in class, and Ubuntu for all my programming assignments. I need a cloud service that will sync all my devices. I have tried iCloud and OneDrive but found them to be unsatisfactory. Would Google Drive or Dropbox sync better with all my devices?
The difficulty is that you’re using Linux, which few storage services support. I’d probably go for Dropox or pCloud in your case, but check out our full list here: https://www.cloudwards.net/cloud-storage-for-linux/
Thank you for this comparison of the 3 cloud options. It was clear and easy for a non-tech person to understand. I am starting a blog and I am looking for cloud storage to back-up everything associated with the blog – the blog itself, images, posts alone, etc. I thought I would go with google drive until I read that it uses only the google office apps. I already have an Office 365 subscription (a personal one). I’d like to continue using those apps. I’m wondering if you have looked at google one (mentioned in the article) since it has now come out. Do you have a recommendation for me? I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks
Hi Susan, you can’t use storage solutions to backup, unless you want to keep track manually. I recommend you check out our article on this very subject instead, assuming you’re using WordPress. https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-backup-wordpress-blog-website/
One vital point missing here, if you need to conduct business in China or access your google drive in China, that is impossible unless you add a reliable VPN to your cost
Well, we have a whole article dedicated to China, so we didn’t mention it here. https://www.cloudwards.net/censorship-in-china/
There is another significant difference between OneDrive and Google Drive and that is how they handle uploaded photos. You can set your smartphone to automatically upload photos to either service (and never lose another photo to a damaged or lost phone), but Google Drive has a subset called Google Photos that treats them a bit differently. With Google Photos, you have unlimited storage but any photos over 16MP are compressed unless you choose High Quality. With the HQ setting, your stored photos then go against your free or paid storage limit. With OneDrive photos are not compressed.
Great article and a lot of valuable information. In the area of cloud storage security, there is a very effective and free solution that at least works with both OneDrive and Google Drive. VeraCrypt, a fork of the now defunct TrueCrypt, can be used to create a very secure encrypted folder within your local OneDrive or Google Drive folder (theoretical should work equally well on any other service). Once you have set up your VeraCrypt container, you just need to change the setting In Veracrypt to put the “Preserve modification timestamp of file containers” option turned off. The timestamp on the Truecrypt volume file is then updated when you unmount it. I used this solution with a financial advisor client and it works perfectly with OneDrive and properly syncs all changes to the encrypted container.
Yeah, VeraCrypt is pretty good, we did a small writeup of it here: https://www.cloudwards.net/best-truecrypt-alternative-services/.
VeraCrypt works best with Dropbox, because of the block level file transfer. I know with Google Drive if you make a change to a VeraCrypt container, it has to sync the whole large file, instead of just needed chunks like Dropbox does (I tested awhile back). I would assume that Onedrive would be the same as Google Drive for this.
Also, both VeraCrypt and Dropbox work on Linux if needed (which I need). Winner for me is Dropbox because of this.
“That’s a different encryption protocol than the one used in file transfer, which indicates a serious problem with Dropbox. The company decrypts files upon arrival at its data centers, then encrypts them again.” This doesn’t indicate a problem at all; it’s simply how things WORK. TLS is, as the name suggests, transport layer security. TLS protects the connection itself, agnostic of the data flowing over it. The “file” as we understand it is not itself encrypted, but the “tunnel” that it flows through is. When it reaches the other end, it’s no longer in that tunnel. It doesn’t magically retain the encrypted status of the tunnel, so it needs to be encrypted before being written to disk. This is a consequence of how networks work, not an issue inherent in Dropbox’s design. There are solutions that encrypt the file itself before sending it, but those are targeted for much higher security uses than you’re discussing here.
Nice comparison review. Was the recently imposed 3-device limit with the free version of Dropbox mentioned? Is so I didn’t see it. That’s the reason I’m jumping ship and reading this article. Eithe folder sync or cloud app on: 2 laptops, phone and work + personal tablets is what I need for personal documents.
I tested all 3 of these and iCoud as well. Dropbox was the clear winner because it was the only one of the 4 that maintained total fidelity and the integrity of my my filing system which is critical to finding what you need when you need it. It also was the only cloud service to allow me to open my saved url’s from any other PC or Apple device. Google, Microsoft and Apple all have an axe to grind and their cloud services clearly show their biases as they try to force your files into their world.
Dropbox is is agnostic and only has the users preferences in mind. If it stays that way it will become the User preferred app as users learn that they don’t have to put up with Apple, Google or Microsoft “unapproved and unsolicited improvements” to their own data and preferences.
Dropbox is useless.
Google Drive and OneDrive are the obvious winners, each with their own unique advantages, depending on their intended use.
Where to start with Dropbox-
Overpriced, a terrible UI design, dumb name. Currently under investigation for false and misleading SEC filings, a plummeting stock price- the list goes on. Get rid of Dropbox now and your life will dramatically improve.
The major hang up our team has been having with OneDrive has been folder sharing with our team of 7 people. I found folder sharing seemless and a total breeze with both Google Drive and DropBox. In both of those applications, if you shar a folder to some one you simply drag it to your main folder in the online app and then that shared folder ans all it’s contents show up on your drive stream on your computer so you can easily save to those folders and access them without having to go login online. But with OneDrive, we have talked to countless support pros and Microsoft and no one seems to be able to answer WHY no one on our team seems to be able to share folders with each other that show up on their computer streaming files. Does anyone have this same issue or a solution? We want to use OneDrive instead of the other two but for this main reason we have not been able to get things going. Google Drive has never presented this issue not once and it was so easy a monkey could do it…not sure why OneDrive make folder sharing on your computer so difficult? Perhaps it’s the security or slowness? Really hope there’s a simple answer that we’ve just somehow overlooked…and so has Geek Squad, and Microsoft support…
The office I work for is looking at switching to a cloud based system. We’re a newspaper and use InDesign for almost everything. Does anyone have any experience or insight on which of these would work best?
Adobe has a cloud of its own, have you tried it? https://helpx.adobe.com/cy_en/creative-cloud/help/collaboration-faq.html
I have used dropbox for business since 2013 and now its end of 2019. I am moving to google drive only due to one reason. Dropbox do not support full sync of more aprox 300 000 files. in 2018 i wanted to do local backup as well since it took too much time to get out the files i wanted in my workflow. I have used about 100 hours to get hold of all my files before i had to pay a third party to help me out. I got 1,4 million files and 9,2 TB of data and it takes me 17 days to sync to google drive. Then i have to sync from google drive to my local drive. I have tried with help from dropbox support 3 times without any luck of fixing it. Even tried downloading 300 000 files in selective sync at a time. Even then i run into challenges. Even though it says that its updated not all folders and files are. Thats pretty annoying when you have used one week for only one go and then fail. This was my 4th fail and then I gave up. I just hope I am more lucky getting the files out from google drive. If not i have to move the data to a third party vendor that send a physical hardrive with the data. 17 days to wait for download is just too much time.
I feel like this was me writing this. I want to make the switch off Dropbox to Google Drive or One Drive. How is Google Drive working out for you?
I’ve tried all of them and Google Drive, despite good pricing, have a terrible sync app which is very slow. While in OneDrive and Dropbox i get +25MB/s upload speed, in google drive i max at 6MB/s and sometimes less. Also its very CPU consuming, takes forever to start syncing and crashes sometimes.
Currently Dropbox on my Mac ramps the CPU over 100% seemingly every hour and is currently using around 800 MB of memory.
Dreadful product, how can this be so badly implemented.
Thanks for the review. Do you know which platform supports directly opening Excel file with password protection?
I was with Dropbox for two years; liked the service but found their price too high. However, my alternative choice was Sync, and that proved disastrous: it stripped the dates off all my files, replacing them with the current date. An additional problem: Sync doesn’t do well with hierarchies. My file system goes down 3-4 levels and I find that changes to a lower level file don’t register. So I’m now looking for an alternative service. I’d like to try OneDrive, but don’t like the lack of security.
Sorry to hear about your trouble. Check out pCloud, might be the ticket for you.
A great detailed review. However, some of the information is out-of-date when it comes to OneDrive. OneDrive replaced their 50GB with a 100GB plan at $1.99. OneDrive also now has at rest encryption with an AES256 key.
I also find the apps more polished on Mac and iOS than Google’s offering. Offering features like biometrics to protect the app and fully supporting features like Dark Mode. Plus 1TB of storage and full Office apps at such a bargain price is hard to pass by.
The only place where I feel OneDrive lacks is in photos. I would like Microsoft to create a serious competitor to Google Photos and iCloud Photo Library. It is the only reason I still pay for 200GB of iCloud storage. Microsoft is definitely capable of building a good cross-platform app for photos.
Hi David, you’re exactly right regarding OneDrive’s pricing; this article has been slated for a rewrite, which should be up within the next two weeks.
What about David’s comment on at rest encryption with an AES256 key ? Is it really available for non business subscribers ?
The last time we checked, they had just implemented it.
Thank you Fergus. The entire analysis and your specific reply are very helpful. I know this may seem like a “moving target”, but with the rest encryption OneDrive would rank first in security and your comment “OneDrive’s greatest weakness is by far the absence of at-rest encryption for home consumers” would now not be applicabe, correct ?
By now, it’s probably been fixed, yes. We only found out that OneDrive didn’t provide it for home consumers because a support engineer went off the record. As for OneDrive winning the security section,in this specific case, probably yes, though there are better services out there. We’ll be updating this piece tomorrow or Wednesday, so all your questions should be answered then 🙂
For the same price as Google’s 2TB subscription, Microsoft gives you 6TB total OneDrive storage to share among a total of 6 family members. Your article says 5TB, but Office 365 Home subscription comes with 6TB of total cloud storage. That’s three times the storage of Google’s for the same price, which should bump Google out of first place in your price/storage category.
Also, OneDrive’s new Personal Vault folder in OneDrive offers a nice extra level of security.
Great article, though. Lots of useful info.
If I utilize the Office 365 Home subscription and only have two family users, do we still get 6TB to share between us, or are we each capped at 1TB?
Capped at 1 TB each. You would need to connect another account(s) to make use of the remaining TBs.
OneDrive just seems so …basic, almost like bottom level UI – UX design, with no usability considerations for the average consumer. I thought Microsoft was a top of the line organization. How hard would it be to allow user customization of folders, such as color or icon. Also, file sort retention. I would like to control the look and layout of my premium file storage. Plus I’ve noticed serious defect in the search functions, for example ALL of my OneNote files are on my OneDrive but searching for the file extension “.one” brings up no results. I also notice that files are often misplaced and duplicated. I pay for my office subscription so I get a TB of storage with it, if i t weren’t for that and the management of my extensive OneNote library. I wouldn’t use it at all. It can’t even get close to Google Drive. What a shame.
I’ve been using MS Office Home for over 3 years now and I think that it is the best option for those that want updated versions of the MS office suite of products along with ample cloud storage and features. $99 a year is a deal when you add up all the features, allow up to 4 other users to share all the features and have a need for current MS office products. For added security I encrypt all my sensitive files using third party 256 level encryption for a small annual fee. If you don’t use MS office products then other options may interest you more.
Be VERY careful with Dropbox. I have an issue and have just found out that many people have it too, recently.
Dropbox is disabling user paid accounts (Dropbox Plus), without reason, notice or warning. You simply loose all your files all of a sudden, specially if you use Smart Sync. My life in the past 8 years is in there. It RUINED my life.
There is simply NO SUPPORT whatsoever. I’ve got 2 open tickets that’s been waiting response for 33 days. They don’t provide support phone number.
After researching on Reddit, I found the exactly same problem with everybody: Disabled Account without notice, no response to open tickets. If you create another account (in order to be able to post and ask for help in their community), they BAN you. It’s ridiculous. Something is going on there.
I recommend, for the reliability of this website, that you do NOT recommend Dropbox, until they sort this problem out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dropbox/comments/ffqe6r/dropbox_account_disabled/
Thanks for letting us know, we’ll look into it.
I have several computers synced with the paid version and then leave them off. All my files are on each laptop. In the event something happens with the account fire up the laptop, stay off wifi and you have access to the files. At the same time my files are also on Carbonite……
i dont need office. and without a proper mobile phone offering and lack off apps, like in 2020 plex removed from windows store and xbox one. kodi hdr on android but not pc or xbox one s, add this to fact they want 59 pounds a year its a little too much for a platform im trying to leave by 2021. sorry but to many apps or software is now mising from windows eco system that it is time to give another company my money. its a shame as id love to stay on windows and love to use onedrive, its awsome but its the eco system its bad now and very unreliable.
Hi, I have around 600GB of data in my small office environment saved onto a small shared desktop drive accessed by around 20 employees. When I went to field for work, I need to gain access to the office files. I have got one gsuite account with our common office email which is being accessed by multiple persons at once. If I incorporate Drive into the same account then it might lead to internal data leakage by employees. Which cloud sync shall I go for and will be suitable keeping the cost to minimum. I have majorly excel, word & tally files.
Probably OneDrive if you need to work on those files on the go.
I use both Dropbox and Carbonite to insure files are backed up. If you have the pay versions both can be cleaned up to before a ransomware attack, as long as you notice it within 30 days…..
If any of these cloud services having issues are causing you to lose all your data then you seriously need to be looking at your lack of having an up-to-date backup. The cloud solutions reviewed here should not be seen as an alternative to a backup.
I loved dropbox until they put a restriction of “3 devices” for the account (which happened after this article was published). All of sudden I had to pick which devices could access my 1Password vault and my teaching files (I’m a professor). A terrible Sophie’s Choice situation. I didn’t want to pay the monthly fee for 1Password’s cloud (it ONLY works with dropbox). I can’t access dropbox everywhere and my password manager is broken. My university has 365 access to I’ve moved my most important stuff to OneDrive but I still use Google for photos (love Google Photos and their automatic sync with my phone’s pictures). And now I use LassPass which I love. Dropbox definitely has sync done correctly never a problem. OneDrive…a few problems over the last year but I backup A LOT.
I am even more confused. I don’t know which one to go for. I have a small accountancy practice with 40-50 clients who need to share their documents with me every month. Can anyone kindly suggest which should I go for? my storage needs are limited even 100GB would be more than enough for me.
They’re all solid services. OneDrive is the best option, but Google Drive is cheaper.
Sorry, this might sound stupid but my clients who will be sharing their documents with me through cloud storage would they be considered users? or only I will be considered as a user and not my clients
Hi!
You’d be consider a user. Your clients will need their own account.
Great article, but I think you missed a key piece of information: the support for search (specifically for searching in file contents). Dropbox is very good, with quick indexing and great search capabilities. Google is ok, but slow on index updating. Onedrive is useless as it does not support file contents search at all right now (Microsoft says it is a bug, but no fix planned).
Great review, however I’d suggest identifying which service suits which people better. Dropbox got one point but it suits many users better than OneDrive or Google – why? The ‘winner takes all’ outcome diminishes all the great work you’ve done in the review INO. Cheers
Well, that’s the editorial choice we made; we figure discerning readers can figure out for themselves which service would be the better choice for them, while we focus on our criteria.
I have been looking for a solution that automatically & incrementally syncs folders of my choice, on my computer drive or external HDD, to the clod. That way, if I make changes on my computer drive, the same is synced automatically to the cloud and vice versa. I have been considering between OneDrive and Google Drive, as they seem to be the most economical, and given that I recently subscribed to MS 365 for the Office suite. However, unless I’m mistaken, OneDrive does not offer incremental syncing from computer to cloud. Anything that you need in the cloud has to be dragged and dropped, but in case you makes changes locally, those files/folders need to be dragged and dropped again. With Google’s Backup & Sync, you can easily choose your folders (both on your computer drive as well as external drives) that you want to sync to Google Drive, and those folders will keep syncing incrementally, thereby you not having to worry to drag and drop all the time.
I have tried to read up or find a similar feature in OneDrive but haven’t been able to. Is there a workaround available for OneDrive like Google’s Backup & Sync?
Thanks Ben for this article. I was looking for a choice base in privacy for my photos. I’m giving now a try in Sync after your tip. Thanks a lot!
I found this page cause I want to move away from DB. I have modest needs, use the free version just to be able to access files both from my PC and phone when needed and don’t store too much.
I’ve found that DB has been updating the App so often recently it has changed functionality that was easy before, such as batch upload of files other than photos broke. I’d select a bunch and have no way to tell DB to upload them all. When you have 30, clicking one by one is ridiculous.
Using Google Drive seems logical as I use Android, but I feel too tied to them and don’t feel like giving them access to analyze my files so they know even more about me.
I’ll try OneDrive.
We’ve been using DropBox for years. We just compared pricing on family plans, and decided to go with OneDrive because each family gets 1 TB for up to 6 people for less per month than DropBox Family, in which 1 account for $20/month (when paid monthly) affords 2 TB and access for 3 accounts. I’ve noticed that when you use the file-on-demand feature, where the file is stored in the cloud unless you use it or deliberately save it for offline use, OneDrive falters a bit during download, whereas DropBox is immediate, as if the file were already on your drive. Furthermore, we’ve been having a devil of a time working out the mess that got made by that pain in the neck aka OneDrive’s folder redirection system. If you mess up, you have to fix it in the registry, which I hate doing no matter how experienced I get at it, because there are always pitfalls that can trip you up no matter how careful you are.
I’ve been using Dropbox for at least ten years I’ve had my fair share of issues including hitting the 300,000 file limit which meant everything ground to a halt when transferring date from one drive to another. I’m not aware that issue has yet been sorted. Dropbox please respond! Separately, I realised that the only way to seriously use Dropbox was to name a folder ‘Dropbox’ and put absolutely everything inside it – Folders and their trees included. That’s how you can end up with the the 300k limit if you want to migrate everything to another drive or machine. Dropbox couldn’t handle that number of files. NOt sure it can now.
So, I still believe that is the way to go – Put everything (Data) inside a single Dropbox folder. The only thing that doesn’t go in their now are photos, which I put in a separate One Drive Folder. Since I’m using Microsoft Office 365 anyway I can justify the aditional cost. I also have Livedrive for storing very large Video files because its Backup is unlimited – but their lies the problem. If you want to move away from Livedrive ( it is slow and appears to use to many system resources) or any other Cloud storage supplier when you have very large (TB of data) files, it is a huge problem. I haven’t resolved this yet.
I think the equivalency in syncing here is grossly simplified (and feels biased). Dropbox, by far, has the best algorithm for syncing (read: reliable and fast). I have used all three and never had sync problems with Dropbox that were not my fault (e.g., not enough space, forgot to unpause sync, not connected to internet or turned off computer prior to sync completion, etc); with Google Drive, the syncing is HORRIBLE (it creates duplicates constantly, creates a huge temp folder that it forgets to delete, insists on resynching all computers even if the files are exactly the same ones..just HORRIBLE). OneDrive is better but locks up often during synching. Reliable sync is by far the most important part of a CLOUD service. This for me makes DB hands down the best solution. What use is a Cloud if it can’t do the most primary function of synching reliably?
As a professional photographer that does staff headshots for businesses, I store hundreds of images monthly. I have a NAS and use Backblaze to back up to the cloud. I have never found that dropbox would meet my needs. I have used apple cloud storage to store images I need from anywhere and a photo distributor to send my final images to my clients. I have never had any syncing issues with Appes’s icloud storage.
I have very simple needs for cloud storage. I used Dropbox and would have stayed if not for its cost. I dont need the 2TB they offer for the cheapest option and would have gladly availed if they have a 1TB option.
I tried Google Drive but syncing is horrible and slow. It was like it checks all the files before synchinh what needs to be synch.
Then I tried OneDrive. It is like in the middle of Dropbox and Drive. Has a lower cost 1TB plan and syncs fast – almost similar to Dropbox.
So I’ll not going to renew Google Drive and upgrade my OneDrive.
I have tried all three, and for convenience and simplicity of use, Dropbox is the hands-down winner for me by a country mile. From hotlinking to folder sharing, it does everything I need, and does it with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of convenience. Google drive is competitive with its bigger free storage capacity, and I’m afraid OneDrive is the worst of the three. Here is what I found wrong
1. Connecting it as a network drive was complicated
2. It does not reconnect automatically on computer restart (even though I tell it to remember my credentials)
3. Large files (over 50MB) will not “drag and drop”, they get to 99% then I get “Error 0x800700DF: The file size exceeds the limit allowed and cannot be saved”. I have increased the maximum allowed file size to 4GB in the registry… to no avail.
These problems make it essentially useless to me. When are Microsoft going to learn to make things like this user-friendly?
Lack of Customer Service is the reason we ditched OneDrive–
We used OneDrive for about 6 months for about 5 TB of data. I don’t think any of our team of 15 ever got everything working completely and we had various different problems between our team. What made it worse was that there was no good customer service to just help us out. We had to log a job request to our IT department and they didn’t really know the answers either!
We just started using DropBox and I already feel this working so much better. We’ve texted them with little issues and they have been so helpful right away. If OneDrive had that same support, it might have gone better.
Google Drive can be REALLY slow syncing files between different computers; it’s quite irregular and a major drawback of Google Drive. Further, if Google Drive can’t connect it gives no indication of this fact, and that is maybe the most atrocious problem. Because if you don’t know that Google Drive can’t connect, you may start altering a file that is already changed in the Cloud but not yet synced to your PC (because Google Drive isnt connecting). Why Google hasnt implemented a simple feature to alert the user that it can’t get a connection is beyond my comprehension; it would be so simple, just a simple red line crossing he Google Drive tray icon would be enough to indicate that it isn’t connected….
What I’d like to do is use a flash drive to back up about 1TB of data from my Google Drive then be able to use it as a second source visible/viable on a new Dell PC that has Windows’ One Drive installed. I can view my Google files but (I understand), the entire contents cannot be used unless I upload them (one at a time) or create synch. If I were to plug in my flash drive into the Dell PC, would I still need to go through the same synching procedure? I don’t want to max-out my PC’s storage capacity (much less than 2TB), so I’d like to be able to use the flash drive as a kind of third storage source that can be accessed while using Chrome as a browser on the PC. If this could work, I could then cancel my Google Drive cloud.
This may be out of date, but with Surface I tried that by mounting a SD card as a permanent drive. It worked for awhile, but a reboot left a mess.
I don’t know how people don’t use Onedrive. If you have a Costco membership, you can get the Family plan for $90 for 15 months. That comes to $1/mo per person for 1TB of space and all the office apps. For most people (docs, pictures, etc), 1TB of space is unlimited. That’s a no brainer. And, Onedrive is more and more integrated into Windows so you just set it and forget it.
Not a no brainer for Mac users. OneDrive was fantastic until macOS 12.3 was released. Apple’s forced all cloud providers to work with their files-on-demand API. Microsoft, utterly and completely destroyed the functionality of OneDrive for Mac users and caused years of headaches. Just search the official Microsoft forums and you’ll see.
Well, here’s one reason: you can’t go out of state and get access. How’s that for starters? I’m overseas at the moment so include that too. The run-around of security theatre keeps your data safe from … you. Endless security checks and validity checks and no human contact possible. At least the data is secure…
For an article supposedly updated June 7, 2022, you have yet again missed the fact that Dropbox has offered a PIN-protected vault for 2+ years. If you want Office apps and slow syncing, then get Microsoft 365. If you want rock solid, lightning fast syncing with Office “integration” (it’s merely a shortcut), then get Dropbox. If you want cheap, fast and unreliable syncing, then get Google Drive. IOW, get 365 and Dropbox, you won’t regret using the two if you’re an Office app user who uses cloud sync to replace home network management.
One point: pCloud is AFAIK the only major cloud storage provider which has a non-subscription payment model… You pay once and have it forever. That single fact is the reason I’ve switched to it on all my devices. Also It’s client works great on Windows, Linux and Android, it has several modes in it’s basic plan (backup, sync etc.)
At my old job we used Dropbox and Drive extensively. From that experience I knew that Dropbox was a disaster that I would not use again willingly. When trying to choose between Drive and OneDrive for personal use, I consulted this article. The article makes it seem like the two are a toss-up, so I choose OneDrive because it also comes with the Microsoft suite. GIANT MISTAKE! As soon as I started to upload folders and files it OneDrive, the weaknesses immediately appeared. You can select folders to sync, but only if they are the folders “Photos” or “Documents”. No way to change this to whatever folders you wish. When uploading, you could only drag a folder to upload one level deep, meaning if your folder had a couple of layers of sub folders, those sub folders and their files would not upload. In Drive, if you try and upload something a second time, Google will offer you multiple options of what to do (overwrite, keep both, put it somewhere else). OneDrive leaves you with a confusing mess of files and folders. If you are working purely in a Microsoft environment, then perhaps OneDrive works well. Otherwise, Google Drive is the most flexible and useful of these three systems.
If you like dealing with constant headaches, buggy and poorly written software and tech support who’s only answer is to reinstall the app every second week, then OneDrive is for you!!
For me its Dropbox all the way due to its market leading syncing – For me timely instant syncing is important to access documents quickly due to nature of my work. I also use bought a one off microsoft suite package (rather than 365) which appears to be a few microseconds less laggy and is quick. Also it saves considerable money and after 5 years if feel desperate (which i doubt) I can always purchase another one off package – happy days
OneDrive and Dropbox both let you restrict which folders are cloned, however DropBox makes it exceedingly difficult.


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