UX & Product Designer

Chi Wai Li



Work I've done

Battle of Cloud storage: Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and the loser Skydrive.



Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and Skydrive. With so many possibilities and options it’s not easy to know which cloud storage service would be right for you?  I’ve spent over 2 days testing out these services with the aim of finding the best tool for online storage and file backup:

TL:DR

The short answers

  • For a simple, none technical solution – Dropbox
  • For making online backup – Dropbox
  • For collaborative work – Google Drive
  • For a full blown enterprise cloud storage system – Box
  • For those who are too lazy to sign up for something decent – Hotmail

The long version

Dropbox

My personal favourite, Dropbox was THE cloud service platform that got everyone else started in this game. Famously validated their idea with only a video and NO actual product. Founder Drew Houston tells a great story at http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2983
dropbox
I enjoy dropbox so much I’ve even did the unthinkable of paying for it and trust it as back of my backup strategy. It’s incredibly easy to set up, just download the app from the website, install it on your computer and fill in a simple form with any email address and That’s it! Once you’ve done that you can start dragging files into your new Dropbox folder and wait for it to sync online. Once it’s completed, your files now live on “The Cloud” where it can be accessed on multiple platforms (PC, Mac, iPad, Android tablets, Smartphones) The most beautiful aspect is any changes you’ve made on one platform will be automatically updated on all your other devices.
You can also share folders with your friends, families or colleagues. or send them a simple link to download your files – Genius!
Dropbox includes version control even for the free option, meaning changes made from your previous saves will be kept as backups for up to 30 days. Here’s an example: You’re brother accidentally deleted your report – no problem! Realise your design from 3 weeks ago was best – easily roll back! If you are willing to pay for their “Pack-Rat” you will even get unlimited version. Each of your saves will be kept FOREVER!
Dropbox comes free with 2GB and one of the sweetest thing is their referral program, for every referral you make you get an extra 1GB free while your friend would get 500MB free up to 32 GB. They are rather generous. If you think Dropbox is for you, here’s my referral URL http://db.tt/9mn2gB2o 🙂

Google Drive

The impressive and always evolving solution from Google is another favourite of mine. Disclaimer, I am a big fan of Google and feel they will only get bigger and more successful, here’s a blog post to why I feel that way Why I think Google Will Win, I also hold shares in Google
Not as simple to use as Dropbox, but hardly rocket science. You will need a gmail account to get started (as oppose to any email address for Dropbox). It can function like part of your computers local folder or be accessed via it’s web based interface, which comes witha  few more functions.
One big advantage it has over Dropbox is how well it is integrated with Google’s web app based Office document solution Google Docs / Google Drive. Imagine you are working on your report that consists of a text document and a spreadsheet both with Google Docs, than all you really need to carry on working is a device that can connect you with the web. Where is in Dropbox’s case you would need to make sure the computer you are working on all has the right programs installed, such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, not to mention you need to make sure they are compatible versions, MS Office 97 might not be open your MS Office 2013 luxury all signing and dancing files.
Google Drive has much more comprehensive collaboration abilities, you can be very specific with exactly which file and/or folder you would like to share with others. You can grant them only viewing permission, edit abilities or completely hide one file from a shared folder. Along with the ingenious commenting abilities on just about anything (A sentence in a word doc or a single cell in a spreadsheet) it is very handy at letting others know exactly where you are in a project or if you need them to answer a question.
Google Docs/Drive is the obvious solution when you would like to tracke changes and see modifications on the go by the other collaborators. But be careful with large files (Like a book) as it is likely to have performance issues and crashing your browser.

Side note: Why not use both?

I actually have set up my computer to use Google Drive INSIDE of my Dropbox folder, this means anything I have inside Google Drive will be backed up TWICE! It takes me a tiny fraction longer to sync files but the safety factor is well worth it.

Skydrive

Microsoft’s attempt isn’t awful, it’s free, has ample storage space at 7GB Free, much more than the others and if you have any sort of Microsoft account (hotmail, msn, outlook…etc ), it’s all set up and ready for you to use with very few clicks. It’s also integrated with Microsoft’s Free Office Webapp. You can link your office docs in your email to share online instead of via attachement.
My biggest grit with their service is it really is not built with sharing or collaboration in mind. You cannot connect your folder to someone else’s Skydrive account, since my original mission was to find a way for our team to share files effectively this kicked Skydrive out of our review
 

Box

A fabulous product from the frightenly intelligent co-founders Dylan Smith and Aaron Levie (Great interview with Jason calacanis on This Week In Startups) Box started of as a consumer product but quickly pivoted toward the Enterprise market as trends toward cloud base solutions started to expand in the corporate world, supposedly used in more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies.
box-screen
Overall functions are amazing and are always improving, the free version comes with slightly fewer features than what dropbox has to offer.
Impressive collaboration features for paid users include Comments on files via web interface, integration with Google Apps and Salesforce and the ability to assign tasks to other users. So already you can see how it is designed as a productivity and collaboration.
Paid personal packages starts at $9.99 USD per month for $25GB, against Dropbox’s 100GB for the same price. Whereas business packages starts from $15 USD per user per month against dropbox’s $795 USD per year for 5 users (Roughly equivalent of $13.25 per user per month). As you can see it’s a little bit more expensive than dropbox but depending on what your business needs are, the extra penny might be worth it.
Box is also known for it’s aggressive promotions for consumers, often offering a whopping 50GB of free storage via various promotions, such as download the Android App this week. Its a pretty good deal if you manage to find them at the right time.

Conclusion

As I’ve mentioned at the very start, what you need depends on you, more specifically depends on how lazy you feel and how much collaboration you intend to use your cloud storage platform for.  The short answers once again are:

  • For a simple, none technical solution – Dropbox
  • For making online backup – Dropbox
  • For collaborative work – Google Drive
  • For a full blown enterprise cloud storage system – Box
  • For those who are too lazy to sign up for something decent – Hotmail

(At the time of this article Kim Dotcom’s Mega.com 50GB free solution has been made available, but I have not had time to give it a try.)

Update: 2nd May 2013

I recently discovered another bonus feature with Dropbox over Google Drive – the initial download!
I had just set up my new iMac at work and naturally needed both Dropbox and Google Drive to be in sync (Google Drive inside Dropbox for extra backups). Since I already had all my files backed up on a USB drive, I can simply pause sync, copy and paste the file over and it would take Dropbox mere minutes to notice the files are all there and that’s it – Done!
Where as with Google Drive, this is NOT POSSIBLE. Copying the original files over would mean a duplicate of each and ever file. You have no choice but to wait for it to re-download what you already have, wasting valuable time, in my case it was 4 hours on 1.2MB broadband.
I’ve also discovered Google Drive tends to have a lot more syncing issues, so for now I’m preferring Dropbox much more and will happily carry on as a premium customer.