Thursday, December 15, 2011

The best free cloud storage services

I wanted to write a quick post with an overview of free cloud storage services for some time now, but the things kept changing at such speed I decided to postpone it for a bit. Now I'm finally bringing you my thoughts and quick review of  free cloud storage providers. I quite well aware of the fact there are a lot of reviews of this type, but I'm not going to list all of them rather I'm going to present you with my narrowest choices of free cloud storage providers regarding offered space, file size limitations, security and supported paltforms (operating systems).

First of all I excluded any services which offer support for less than 5GB of free space with exception of SpiderOak due to specific nature of this service and also a possibility to increase available space to 10GB for free and no file size limitations, but more about it later. For your convenience I've included a list of currently available free cloud storage providers at the end of this post regardless I haven't taken them into consideration in this short preview.

I have set a very simple set of criteria for listing free cloud storage services here so here are they listed by priority:
  1. Total free space offered (more is better)
  2. File size upload/download limitations (no file size limitation is preferred)
  3. Variety of platforms supported (supported operating systems)
  4. Other (possible) specific features or characteristics of free storage provider

SUGARSYNC
Initial free storage offered: 5GB
Max file size upload: no limit
Extra free storage per friend: 500MB
Max free storage including referred friends:
32GB
Special features: Nothing special
CLICK HERE TO VISIT SUGARSYNC


GLIDE
Initial free storage offered: 30GB
Max file size upload: no limit
Extra free storage per friend: no referral program
Max free storage including referred friends: 30GB
Special features: Glide actually represents cloud operating system with storage as one of it's features. Be aware of the following note on their page - * Trans Media reserves the right, at any time without notice to any user or prospective user, to terminate the availability of the free Glide account and to modify the terms of use of the free Glide account.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT GLIDE


DROPBOX
Initial free storage offered: 2GB
Max file size upload: no limit
Extra free storage per friend: 500MB
Max free storage including referred friends: 19GB
Special features: Widespread cloud storage service on the Internet
CLICK HERE TO VISIT DROPBOX


SPIDEROAK
Initial free storage offered: 2GB
Max file size upload: no limit
Extra free storage per friend: 1GB
Max free storage including referred friends: 10GB
Special features: SpiderOak uses a layered approach to encryption, using a combination of 2048 bit RSA and 256 bit AES.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT SPIDEROAK

IDRIVE

Initial free storage offered: 5GB
Max file size upload: 500MB
Extra free storage per friend: 1GB
Max free storage including referred friends:
50GB
Special features: Nothing special
CLICK HERE TO VISIT IDRIVE


I cannot claim there is the best free cloud provider as all of them might have some specific limitation(s) which you might find as not acceptable, therefore it is solely your decision to pick which one suites your needs in best manner. Also keep in mind that all mentioned free cloud storage providers also offer paid subscriptions, so if you decide and accommodate to certain cloud space provider or more of them you can always extend your subscription from free to paid one.
Please keep in mind that none of the services listed here are operated by me and any of the mentioned values regarding both storage and referal bonus space can change at any time independently of information presented on this page.



If you found this post to be useful please consider encouraging me to keep up the good work. You can easily do it by signing up with Copy.com cloud storage provider. Just click here and you will get 15GB + 5GB for following my link absolutely FREE. This way I'll get 5GB too.

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