The cloud is a lucrative market in 2024, and the demand for small businesses and sole traders to have their critical data available wherever, whenever, on the best cloud storage services, has never been higher.
Over the years, our freelancers have tested and reviewed a staggering number of cloud storage services, but our metrics for what makes a provider best-in-class are constantly evolving.
We've also tested the best free cloud storage.
Does the cloud storage service meet demand for the business use case?
As much as possible, I direct testers to simulate a business environment as much as possible, which necessitates focus on features relating to organization and secure collaboration between internal colleagues and external partners.
Though I value the requirements of freelancers and sole traders (who I think can be very well served by any number of the services here, but some better served by my best cloud storage for photos guide), I want to showcase cloud storage providers that offer a seamless, low-cost multi-user experience.
Sync.com have made considerable strides to become a genuinely viable alternative to the ‘big three’ in this area, with robust collaboration features and administrative controls geared for small teams right up to the biggest enterprises making it one of the best collaboration platforms for teams. The company has also made overtures towards offering HIPAA compliant cloud storage, and toeing the line on data residency laws in other territories too, such as the European Union, United Kingdom, and Canada.
Similarly, while Crashplan does cater to the individual, it’s businesses that will most benefit from the company’s extensive backups with ransomware protection in mind, unlimited file versioning system, unlimited cloud storage and 90-day file retention for deletions.
How much does the cloud storage service cost?
How much a service costs for you, and whether a provider can sustainably offer economies of scale, is going to be the biggest consideration for most sole traders and businesses.
This automatically puts larger service providers like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive ahead: these are already massive companies offering cloud services as part of a larger ecosystem of collaboration tools.
However, this doesn’t mean they automatically win out. They have plenty of flaws in other areas that our reviewers factor into our review coverage and overall star ratings featured on our buying guide pages.
For long-term use, we usually find that the best overall savings are to be found while investing in lifetime cloud storage services, and particularly those that allow purchased allowances to stack; allowing your storage capabilities to scale as your business does without the recurring pressure of a subscription cost.
For this reason, we’re proud to say that some of our favorite lifetime cloud storage providers, like Internxt and pCloud, take pride of place as best-in-class on our main buying guide, and we’re always interested in uncovering more of them.
How secure is the cloud storage service?
The low price of a subscription from a tech behemoth’s relative side hustle in cloud storage may be enticing, but, for a truly careful consumer, and especially for business customers, security is vital.
Google Drive is cheap, but it’s also notorious for not offering end-to-end encryption: a client-side solution that ensures that the only access to your files are you and whoever you have shared them with in and outside of your organization.
There are levels of encryption beneath this: Google Drive uses AES 256-bit encryption, which it justifies by running phishing and malware scans on files shared outside of your organisation. It also allows them to uphold an Acceptable Use policy, while insisting that files are private unless shared.
As a privacy-conscious consumer myself, when we test cloud storage services, AES256 is absolutely the bare minimum I’ll consider when declaring any provider best-in-class.
Some providers are vague about the kinds of encryption they offer, couching it in marketing speak, so I’ll always advocate for end-to-end encryption from the likes of Internxt, Proton, Nordlocker, and others who explicitly incorporate it into their brand identity.
Does the cloud storage service offer robust customer service?
While my roundups of the best backup software and the best free backup software sometimes allow for customer service to be either community-led or non-existent in the case of software being open source, that’s not something that washes in the cloud storage space.
These are paid services that you’re trusting your data to. Regular server-side cloud storage backups are vital, but I don’t consider it enough that these processes are automated. In the event of a critical failure in the backup process that puts your and your customers’ sensitive data at risk, someone will need to step in at some point.
Being completely honest, I take a dim view of providers that emphasize their community’s role in addressing issues. It’s okay for general queries about user interfaces and feature sets, but nothing when it comes to addressing actual issues with the service. Cloud storage customer service has to be personal, then, but it also has to be reliable and instantly accessible at all hours - when it isn’t, that’s a failure.
I’ll give you an example. I’m looking into a new provider at the moment that I quite like for its multiplatform support and generous free allowance, but, as of the time of writing this, the support avenue isn’t up and running; the site does not connect to a server. This is, frankly, unacceptable, and makes it hard to stomach reviewing the service for the site, as it’s impossible for me to earnestly endorse it.
In conclusion
These are the most important questions that I encourage our cloud storage service testers to ask themselves when writing their verdicts, and that you may wish to ask yourself when it comes to choosing one.
For mini-roundups and links to longer coverage of my favorite cloud storage services, plus extended discussion of factors you may wish to consider when making your decision, you can always dive into our best cloud storage guide more thoroughly.
