With your computing devices getting smaller and smaller, people almost prefer using the smartphones to Laptops. It would ruin your experience if you had to carry a portable storage device with you everywhere. The online storage or cloud storage as it is popularly known is the solution to this. Ever since this technology has come up, our world has got lighter. There are many popular online storage solution providers notable among them being, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, DropBox and Apple iCloud. Today we will take a look at the Google Drive and the Dropbox, and determine which one is a better choice.
Comparison – Google Drive Vs DropBox
File size restrictions
As far as file size restrictions are concerned Google Drive offers 5 TB (yeah, Terabytes) whereas Dropbox offers a measly 10 GB. While 10 GB is not a small size, Google Drive offers file size that is 500 times bigger than what Dropbox offers. Needless to say, here who the winner is?
With 10 GB file size restriction, any file uploaded to Dropbox should not be bigger than 10 GB. However, this is only applicable to files that you upload from websites directly. Otherwise there is no limit to the file size.
File Support:
File support feature enables you to edit your files (read documents) online while using the cloud storage service. Dropbox does not give support to any file type. For example if you have to edit a word document you have to download the file first and use the Microsoft Word or any other compatible text editor installed on your computer. But Google Drive support 30 file types. This means you do not need Adobe Photoshop installed on your computer to edit the file. You can directly edit the file from web page. This is especially useful on the go. The very reason you go for online storage is because you want to access the file from different systems.
Here again, it a victory for Google Drive.
Free storage:
Once you sign up for Google Drive or Gmail, you get access to a 15 GB online storage space, whereas the free basic account of Dropbox gives you just 2 GB of online storage space. The Google drive offers you more than 7 times the free space offered by Dropbox. No questions asked – Google Drive is a winner by huge margin.
Upload document from a web page
When it comes to uploading files directly from a web page Google is a clear winner among the two, although this feature is offered by other service providers too. This leaves us guessing why Dropbox does not offer this feature?
Additional options
Using the basic account of DropBox you can only share files and folders, you cannot set permissions on the, so shared files can be edited or deleted by other users with whom you have shared the file or folder. In Google Drive, irrespective whether you are using a basic version or a paid version, you can set access rights for the files that you share individually for each user.
Google Music another service allows you to store a whopping 50,000 songs in the cloud for free. The space occupied by these music files not count against your Drive storage space.
Pricing:
The paid plan of Dropbox comes at $10 per month for 1 TB of online storage space. Google Drive also charges $10 per month for 1 TB of cloud storage space. However, Google Drive also offers a lower plan priced at $2 per month for 100 GB of all inclusive online storage space. Though both the Dropbox and the Google Drive have priced their 1 TB per month plan the same, the Google Drive gains by having a lower plan at a price that can be afforded by almost everyone. Among the customers using the online storage space, there are big boys as well as small. Google Drive does well to cater to the needs of both.
Google photos
The Google drive app can automatically backup photos from your smartphone. In fact earlier photos lesser than 2048 x 2048 resolution and videos shorter than 15 minutes did not account in the online storage space. Now, Google offers the same feature as “High Quality” and “Original”. High Quality does not use up your online storage space, whereas “Original” does. With no such levy available DropBox appears less flexible.
Support for Google services
Unlike DropBox Google Drive offers the support for other Google services like Gmail, Docs, YouTube, etc.. This means when you sign up for Google Drive you are automatically availing all the Google Apps for that particular ID. So this also means that you already have a Gmail ID you do not have to sign up separately for Google Drive. DropBox does not provide any other services other than the storage space.
Google Drive for business
Google Drive offers two plans for business use. The cheaper one has 30 GB storage and second one offers 1 TB per user if number is users is less than or equal to 5. An interesting tool is Google Vault used for eDiscovery, an option not available with DropBox. Also because Google Drive is integrated with the other business services offered by Google this gives you a more complete package for business use.
The versatility of Google
With Google touching our lives in some form or the other, and its seamless integration of all of its services, Google Drive becomes a household name to anybody possessing a Gmail account and hence is widely used. On the other hand, the drop box though support many platforms, is still handicapped by the magnifying presence of the Google services.
Having reviewed these features, there is enough reason to opt for Google Drive. Well, we’ve given our verdict. Now, it is up to you folks to decide.
