Operating in North American and International markets, Amazon provides its services through websites such as amazon.com and amazon.ca. The next generation of file storage is in the cloud. With more consumers owning more computers, tablets, smartphones, and other electronic devices, it is no longer practical to keep all your files in one computer that you can't bring with you wherever you go.
Amazon recently announced two new unlimited storage plans to encourage users to store all their photos and files in its cloud. The first plan — just for photos — costs $11.99 per year and the second "everything" plan costs $59.99 per year. Amazon's offering free three-month trials for both.
“Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don’t know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up,” said Josh Petersen, Director of Amazon Cloud Drive, in a statement. “With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers don’t need to worry about storage space–they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place.”
As Compare to Google Drive
Google Drive started as a handful of online office tools called Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Today, Google Drive for Work has become a powerful online collaboration tool to allow people from different places of the world to work together without having to meet up in person. For $10 per user per month, Google offers unlimited storage for all sorts of files, even Microsoft Office files, and allows users to preview and edit these files on the web or on the iOS and Android apps for Google Drive.Again, the editing feature also includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Sharing is easy and lets you share files with other people, even people who do not have a Google account. It also allows you to work on a document together in real-time, using a commenting system that gets rid of the hassle of exchanging emails back and forth. On the right side of the Google Drive setup, you'll see a list of the latest activities so you know who edited what at a certain time. Google Drive for Work is easy to use and is a great tool for collaborating online.
If you're not a business user, you can still get Google Drive free for 15GB, which covers storage for Drive, Gmail, and Photos, or you can upgrade to 100GB for $1.99 a month or 1TB for $9.99 a month. Dropbox was the startup that kick-started the growing cloud storage industry, and while Silicon Valley giants such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are encroaching on its territory, Dropbox continues to be a solid force to be reckoned with in the cloud storage industry.
As Compare to Dropbox
Dropbox for Business charges $15 every month for every user. For that price, Dropbox promises to use 256-bit AES and SSL encryption for all your files and throws in unlimited control over the way your files are shared and viewed, such as setting up passwords and expiration dates for files. There is also no limit to the sizes of files you can upload to Dropbox, although larger files can take hours to upload.More importantly, Dropbox lets you access and control your files from virtually any device there is, whether it runs on Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Fire OS, and Linux, and is a breeze to set up and manage, making it a favored choice by IT admins. However, 256-bit encryption is not necessarily better than the 128-bit encryption used by Google Drive, and for the additional $5 per user,
Dropbox does not really offer the robust collaboration features offered by Google and Microsoft, although Project Harmony, which lets users work on files at the same time, is in early-access mode. We have yet to see how Project Harmony turns out. Also, Dropbox's overly simple web client leaves a lot to be desired. Dropbox is for the power user who favors the ability to share large files to a large number of people using different devices. As long as you don't stay too long on the web client, you're fine. If you want real-time collaboration though, you're better off with Google Drive or OneDrive.
As Compare to OneDrive
If you're eyeing OneDrive, you can get 1TB of storage along with a subscription to Office 365 for $6.99 a month, or you can get OneDrive for Business for only $2.50 per month for 1TB of storage for each user. Microsoft tacks on an extra 1GB for $0.20 if you need more. That is a whole lot more affordable than what both Dropbox and Google Drive offer, but remember that you are limited to 1TB of storage for each user on OneDrive.By 1,062GB, this becomes the more expensive option than Dropbox. You won't need an Office 365 subscription to OneDrive for collaboration. Microsoft's suite of productivity tools is already baked right into OneDrive for Business. Microsoft Office has always been one of Microsoft's strengths, and Word, Excel, and PowerPoint offer plenty of advanced functionality that you won't find in Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
It has long been used by millions of people around the world, so you won't be worrying about taking time to learn the new setup. Consistent with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's plan to reach all users across all platforms, you'll also find that OneDrive is available across all popular OSes just like Dropbox, with support already included for less popular platforms such as BlackBerry and Linux.
OneDrive for Business comes with Office 365, which means you have access to a great productivity and collaboration platform to work together on files in real-time. It is also far cheaper than Google Drive and Dropbox, but it does not offer unlimited storage unlike the other two. Oh, and Microsoft makes it clear that it routinely scans your content to make sure you are using OneDrive in accordance with its policies, which prohibit the uploading of criminal content, such as child pornography.
