All the businesses today want a central place to store their data while being able to access it on the go. Cloud storage is a great option since businesses don’t want the extra overhead of storage and hardware maintenance costs.
Through the cloud, they get wide availability and fixed storage which can be expanded according to their needs. Though business cloud storage also comes with its own set of challenges which start right at security breaches. There could also be sudden outages which could prevent you from accessing your data. But even with so many issues, the cost and convenience benefits are more than enough to convince businesses to take the plunge and move their data to the cloud.
In this post, we have put together some of the best cloud storage for businesses to help you make the right decision for your organization.
Ultimate List of Cloud Storage for Business
1. Dropbox for Business
The dynamite of cloud storage services, Dropbox has always been a crowd favourite. And with Dropbox for Business, the service wants to please the all those organizations which couldn’t use Dropbox just before because it didn’t follow the industry level compliances.
With Dropbox for Business, you get support for multiple users, centralized administration and collaborative features through Dropbox Teams. Not to forget, Dropbox also teamed up with Microsoft and you can now use Microsoft Office Online to edit your Dropbox files. The only thing missing from this service is real time collaboration.
Price – $15 per user per month
2. Box
Box for business offers some really strong administrative features. You can add or remove users from a folder, assign special rights to a user and monitor uploads and downloads. The special feature of Box is that it has a wide range of third party apps to add functionality to the cloud service and this includes Chatter, Asana and even Microsoft Office. The problem Box is – it isn’t as quick and easy-to-use as Dropbox and not that well integrated with Windows either.
Price – $17 per month per user
3. Google Drive
Google Drive needs absolutely no introduction. It might still be a newcomer in the cloud service market but it isn’t a newbie. With its powerful Google Docs integration, there is nothing left to be desired. The interface is extremely easy to use – you can add different users, give each of them separate permissions and share files easily. But the most powerful feature of Google Drive has to be real time collaboration which isn’t provided in any of the other services listed here. Though it isn’t as great as Microsoft Office, Google Docs is slowly growing on users.
The issue with Google Drive? It’s Google and it’s monitoring everything that you share, including your company’s sensitive files.
4. OneDrive
Microsoft’s SkyDrive was transformed into OneDrive in a hope to revive company’s cloud storage service. Though it is relatively new and it doesn’t have anything revolutionary on its own but its deep integration with Windows and Office 365 is what makes it stand out.
Microsoft Office is still the preferred client for majority of users and even with Google Drive’s real time collaboration, it’s hard to beat Microsoft Office’s ease-of-access. Though OneDrive does provide real-time collaboration, it’s only for Office 365 subscribers.
Till last year, Microsoft was offering unlimited storage for OneDrive business users but that scheme was cancelled a few months ago.
If you are not a Windows user, OneDrive will fail to impress you. The interface isn’t as good, file syncing is slow and of course, Microsoft has an open door policy for NSA.
Price- Plans start from 100GB costing $1.99 per month
5. SugarSync for Business
SugarSync for Business is an extremely powerful cloud storage and syncing service. With this, you get your own personal website through which you can access all your data without having to install SugarSync on any device. The special feature of SugarSync is its ‘magic briefcase’, it is a folder which is automatically created where you can drop files. All the files inside this folder are directly synced and can be shared. There is also a great plugin for Outlook which lets you directly attach files from SugarSync to your emails. The only downside to this is that it doesn’t backup open files.
Price – Plans start at $55 per month for 1-3 users. The price increases as the number of users expand
Final Word
It’s pretty clear that each of these services has something different to offer. But, the perfect cloud storage for your business depends on your requirements, the strength of your employees and the kind of data you want to store on cloud storage. We hope we have helped you make the right decision.
