Basic information about OneDrive

Supported by Microsoft, OneDrive is one of the most popular cloud services around the world. The most prominent advantage of OneDrive is tight integration with the Office (Online) suite and the latest Windows 11, one-click addition of email attachments, sharing, and collaboration features.

Generally, OneDrive offers 5 GB of free storage space to each user so that users can upload their files to OneDrive for free. And if they need more storage space, they can upgrade their storage plan. Meanwhile, OneDrive also provides users with multiple apps to help users backup and access files on different devices with ease.  

Why do you need OneDrive alternative?

If you’re a Windows user, OneDrive is a great choice for file backup and storage that can bring benefits to specific groups of users. However, in some aspects, OneDrive doesn't meet all your needs. For example, OneDrive does not offer the feature for scheduled backup. Therefore, if you are using OneDrive but you are not satisfied with it, please be aware that there are many other options. Choose the one that suits you best. 

Top 5 alternatives to OneDrive or OneDrive for Business

In the following contents, we will introduce the 5 best OneDrive alternatives from different aspects. You can read to learn detailed information about each cloud service so that you can choose the most suitable one.

CBackup

If you pay more attention to backup, the CBackup is undoubtedly the best choice. CBackup is a professional cloud backup service for Windows PCs, which offers an easy-to-use PC client to help users backup PC files to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and CBackup Cloud. And it provides each user with 5 GB of CBackup Cloud free storage space, you could also upgrade space to 1TB at a very low price.

What’s more, besides the PC client for PC cloud backup, CBackup also offers a free web version that specializes in cloud to cloud sync. It supports many mainstream cloud drives such as OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and so on. You can just add your accounts of these cloud drives on CBackup and create a backup task to backup files between cloud storage quickly and easily.

Pros: free and paid large storage space - 5GB, 1024 GB, or 5120 GB CBackup Cloud, free web version for the cloud to cloud backup, 50 GB free data traffic for data transfer, easy-to-use PC client, useful backup settings like File Filter and Email Notification, huge backup space at a low price, no limitation on backup versions, no restriction on backup speed.

Cons: Not available version for Mac or mobile devices.

Availability: Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8,7 XP.

Google Drive

Google Drive is one of the most popular cloud storage providers that perfectly integrate with all of the other Google services such as Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Photos, and so on. It offers a massive amount of free space that up to 15 GB. Paid plans start from $1.99 per month for 100 GB storage. Although space is shared with Google services including Gmail and normal resolution Google Pictures photos, space is larger than most cloud services.

In addition, Google Drive released desktop clients for both Mac and Windows, as well as mobile apps that have excellent synchronization/upload speed. The maximum upload file size is 5 TB, and you can directly preview various different types of file formats or share files and folders with viewing and editing permissions.

Pros: Sizeable free tier storage (15 GB), Deep integration with Google services, Google docs don’t count towards storage, 30 days file history, preview support for many file types, official and third-party add-ons.

Cons: Chrome sign-in generally required for the majority of add-ons, No referral system, Non-availability of the sync client for Windows Phone.

Availability: Windows, Mac; iOS, Android.

Dropbox

Dropbox, the pioneer of cloud storage, is very simple to use. Although the free storage space initially provided in the free tier is only 2 GB, you can easily expand it up to 16 GB by quoting and completing some simple tasks. And the paid plans cost $11.99/month for 2 TB storage space and 3 TB for $19.99/month.

It has many advantages like utterly simple file sharing, revision history for 30 days, virtually no file size limit, innumerable productivity-enhancing add-ons, and so on. In addition, it encrypts your data in transit and at rest, and offers two-factor authentication. Teams that use Dropbox for business can all see, edit, and share each other's documents. Great for collaboration but not so great for privacy.

Pros: Reliability, consistent upload, and sync speeds, no restriction on file sizes (300 MB for uploads through the website), availability of sync clients on nearly every desktop/mobile platform, hundreds of add-ons, easy sharing.

Cons: Low initial free tier storage (2 GB), somewhat non-polished web front end, almost useless mobile web UI.

Availability: Windows, Mac; iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Kindle.

pCloud

pCloud is the perfect alternative for personal use, which puts an emphasis on rock-solid security. Like the others, pCloud offers both desktop and mobile apps to make syncing and accessing your files easy. The interface of these apps are seamless and the tools are well developed.

Meanwhile, pCloud allows you to access your files on any device, share and collaborate with others, and rest easy knowing that all of your files are encrypted. If you need to share files with your team members or clients, you might want to consider pCloud Business. pCloud also offers an incredibly generous 20 GB of free storage. And after that, their plans are still fairly affordable. Paid plans start at $3.99 per month for 500 GB of storage.

Pros: Strong encryption, zero-knowledge-protection policy, easy to use software.

Cons: The encryption service, called pCloud Crypto, is hidden behind a paywall.

Availability: Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Tresorit

Tresorit has been regarded as one of the safest and most private cloud drive services that focuses more on businesses. If you are seeking an alternative to OneDrive for business, Tresorit may be the best choice. Tresorit focuses on two key aspects through its cloud storage service: security and simplicity. Tresorit has pricing for individuals and teams, and a free service called Basic, with 5 GB of storage space.

Tresorit takes military-grade encryption and public-key cryptography measures to protect your data.

The file-sharing security measures of Tresorit are significant. You can share files with others easily but it’s much harder for someone else to transfer the ownership of your data. The interface of various Tresorit applications is undoubtedly one of the advantages of this service. These apps are clean, tidy, and modern, and you will not encounter any problems when using them.

Pros: Military-grade encryption, public-key cryptography, secure file sharing, neat, intuitive apps, solid connection speeds comply with GDPR rules.

Cons: Relatively expensive, few add-ons/extras.

Availability: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

How to Use the Best Free OneDrive Alternative Easily?

To Sync files to OneDrive easily, you could use the best free OneDrive alternative - CBackup to get things done:

1. Please install and sign up for a free CBackup account and sign in to CBackup desktop app.

2. Click Storage > OneDrive > Authorize Now to add OneDrive to CBackup.

3. Select Sync > Sync PC to Public Cloud in order.

4. Choose local files to sync in the Source section, and expand the OneDrive to select a folder as the target, and press the Start Sync button to sync files to OneDrive.

Tip: You could set up the Settings for your sync task, like Scheduler to perform the OneDrive schedule sync daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Besides, you could use the email notification and file filter to save your time and cloud storage space.

Conclusion

This article has shown the top 5 best alternatives to OneDrive and compared the 5 OneDrive alternatives from several aspects including security, pricing, file sharing, and so on. If OneDrive can’t meet your requirements in any aspect, you can choose an alternative from the above cloud storage. If the cloud storage above still cannot meet your requirements, you can also compare more before making your choice.