There is nothing worse than having to shell out every month for a cloud storage subscription, and all things considered, you'll probably end up paying thousands over your lifetime just to store your important files.
Enter the best lifetime cloud storage deals, which I have rounded up so you can pay more to pay less, if that makes sense. These services offer a one time payment for unlimited access to a set storage amount for as long as your (or the company) shall live.
You've probably noticed that the biggest providers, such as Google and Microsoft, offer nothing of the sort and are happy to charge you month after month after month. Maintaining access to your storage might seem worthwhile, but its easier than you think to migrate your files to a new provider.
It's February 2025, and we've rounded up the best deals we could find from major household names and niche providers alike, to help you find the best unlimited cloud storage for your and your wallet.
Why not have a look at our best unlimited cloud storage deals, too?
- We always appreciate hot tips on lifetime cloud storage providers, and heads up on when a deal or provider is no longer current. If you’ve got anything for us, ping us an email on desire.athow@futurenet.com.
What is a lifetime cloud storage?
As the name implies, it is a pay-once-use-forever, fire-and-forget offer with no recurring charges.
Although the initial cost can be high, it is amortized the longer you stick around - a $500 lifetime cloud storage, for example, ends up costing about $4 per month if you stay with it for 10 years (or 120 months).
Just bear in mind though that lifetime, in this case, is often as long as the company operates or chooses to fulfill this particular offer.
This is why it is often imperative for users to have a backup plan (usually by having multiple local copies of the files available).
We know of at least one company that pulled out its Lifetime offer and two household names - Amazon and Samsung - that have pulled completely out of personal cloud storage.
Why do companies offer lifetime cloud storage?
We approached a few companies, asking that particular question. Anonymously, they told us that they often do it to get more exposure and that the numbers do work out.
“Lifetime deals are not really sustainable for us as a company, but they are great for the users.” one noted. “We generate a lot of publicity from lifetime deals, which is great for us as we are the newcomers in the cloud storage space.”
Lifetime cloud storage is also a great way to bring in revenue almost immediately, which helps prop up your balance sheet, removing the risk of customers stopping payment and moving their custom elsewhere. pCloud for example, will not refund you if you cancel the subscription.
Lifetime Cloud Storage: What are the pros & cons
Pros: Lifetime cloud storage is designed to help you save money in the long run as well as remove any headache that might be associated with, well, life's little mistakes like cancelling a credit card or bank account tied with a cloud storage subscription.
With no recurring payments, you don't have to worry about account suspensions or bumped prices further down the line.
Cons: Putting all your eggs in the same basket can have unintended consequences.
Companies can go bankrupt, or change their business model like Zoolz did in 2020 when it phased out its lifetime offer because it was unsustainable.
Cloud storage has some fixed costs like the price of the hardware and some operational costs (e.g. incoming and outgoing bandwidth, the price of electricity etc) so while a lump sum can help reduce the cost of the former, it does only cover a little bit of the latter.
- We've built a list of the best cloud storage for photos out there
- Here's our list of the best cloud backup available
- Also check out our list of the best file syncing solutions around
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