The best cloud storage 2019

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Welcome to Creative Bloq's guide to the best cloud storage solutions in 2019. Cloud storage services are extremely useful for creative professionals. They provide somewhere for you to store all your files safely, no matter how many there are or how large they are. They also mean your files can be accessed easily wherever you might be, as well as making it simple to send large files to clients.

Finally, having your critical files backed up on a cloud storage solution means that if you suffer a serious tech failure or are the victim of a catastrophic human error (happens to the best of us), your work can easily be retrieved.

Whether you're a freelancer or in charge of your own design business, it's increasingly essential to have some kind of cloud storage in place. Finding the best cloud storage solution can be a challenge, though, especially now there are so many different services to choose from. 

To help you make your decision we've picked out six of the best cloud storage solutions on the market right now. Our selections cover a range of options, from no-frills online backup right through to much more heavyweight offerings, with all the options your company will ever need. Read on for our guide to the best cloud storage solutions in 2019.

Save 80% on CB's best cloud storage option: 2TB for $13.90 for 1 year

We think IDrive is the best cloud storage solution overall right now. If your main priority when it comes to cloud storage is having a reliable online backup system in place, then this is a strong contender. It'll continuously sync all your files, even the ones on network drives, and if you're on its Personal or Business plans it provides a potentially life-saving free backup service called IDrive Express: if for whatever reason you lose all your local files, it'll send you an actual hard drive containing everything that's been backed up.

You'll also be pleased to note that if you accidentally delete an important file, it won't be automatically deleted from the IDrive server, and it'll retain up to 30 previous versions of all backed-up files. Another cool feature is a facial recognition system that makes it easy to organise photos, and of course there's the option to share your files by email, Facebook or Twitter.

pCloud's lifetime premium subscriptions give you either 500GB or 2TB of online storage for a pretty reasonable one-off payment. Anyone who's been online for any length of time should naturally be suspicious of any service that offers a lifetime subscription – after all, how many web companies from just 20 years ago are still around today? However, this looks like a good deal to us.

With no apparent limit to the file sizes you can upload, pCloud is a great option for sharing large media files, and it features a built-in video player and streaming, plus an audio player complete with playlists. For peace of mind, this cloud storage solution hosts five copies of all your files across different servers, using 256-bit AES encryption. For a small extra monthly payment you can also add pCloud Crypto to your service, enabling you to password-protect your files.

pCloud subscription options:

• 500GB: $3.99/£3.59 per month or $175/£160 lifetime
• 2TB: $7.99/£7.09 per month or $350/£320 lifetime

If you're a Windows 10 user, Microsoft's OneDrive offers an easy way to get cloud storage. It comes built into File Explorer, so you can get started straight away with 5GB of online storage for free, or bump up to 50GB for a low monthly fee. However, if you want to share files you'll need either need to use one of Microsoft's Office 365 plans, starting at $69.99 per year with 1TB storage and including a full suite of Office apps, or look at OneDrive business plans. 

Note, with this service you're not limited to Windows any more: there are now apps for both iOS and Android. There's also an app available on the Mac App Store, although in typical Microsoft style it doesn't seem to work as well as the Windows version.

OneDrive subscription options:

• 50GB: $3/£1.99 a month
• 1TB: $8/£5.99 a month
• Unlimited: $11/£7.99 a month (as part of Onedrive for Business)

Like its Microsoft rival, Apple's iCloud gives you 5GB of free online storage – not nearly enough to back up your iPhone, but plenty of space for stashing your photos. However, its paid plans come at a very reasonable price.

As you'd expect from Apple, iCloud integrates well with the MacOS and iOS ecosystems, making it easy to store files through Finder, and documents from the iWork suite are saved to iCloud so that you can access them from all your devices. There's also a Windows client, which seems to perform better than the Mac version of OneDrive.

The downside, though, is this is strictly a storage solution – there's no option to share files outside of Apple's Family Sharing. If you want a cloud storage service that you can also use to send files to friends or clients, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Subscribe to iCloud: Paid plans from $0.99/£0.79 a month

For Android or Chromebook users, Google Drive is the best cloud storage choice as it's built into both systems. However, assuming you have a Google account – and it's hard not to these days, even if you don't use Gmail – then it's well worth looking into. You get 15GB of storage completely free, as well as access to Google's G Suite range of online office apps.

There are desktop apps for both Windows and Mac, enabling you to sync and share files with a few clicks, and there's also a web interface that can be a bit of a pain to use, but gets the job done. If you need more than the free 15GB (it fills up quickly once you start using it) there are paid plans starting at $1.99 a month for 100GB and going all the way up to a whopping 30TB for $299.99 a month.

Subscribe to Google Drive:

• 100GB: $1.99/£1.59 a month
• 200GB: $2.99/£2.35 a month
• 2TB: $9.99/£8 a month
• 10TB: $99.99/£74 a month
• 20TB: $199.99/£148 a month
• 30TB: $299.99/£236 a month

Want loads of free storage? Mega's the place to go; its free service gives you a whole 50GB to play with. This cloud storage service's paid plans are similarly generous: they start at $6 per month for 200GB, and go up to a whole 8TB for $35 a month.

With both mobile and desktop apps enabling you sync and upload files, Mega is easy to use wherever you are and whatever you're doing, and the service also boasts impressive security credentials. It maintains historic versions of your uploaded files, and claims that everything you store is encrypted on your device before it's uploaded to its servers. Mega also publishes all its source code and cryptographic architecture, so you can be sure that if there were any vulnerabilities in its systems, they'd quickly be spotted.

• Subscribe to Mega from $6/£4.50 a month

Related articles:

• The best free tools for sending large files
• What's the difference between cloud hosting and shared hosting?
• The best VPN for creatives

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