We are the Dropbox generation. But what happens if your account is getting full or (heavens forbid), you meet someone who doesn’t “do” Dropbox? At Red Desk we’ve been looking for alternative online storage options, and how to maximise your Dropbox space so you can avoid upgrading to a paid for account.
Online Storage Options
Google Drives
15GB should be more than plenty if you are just backing up documents and emails (in fact 5GB should be sufficient). However you should know that this 15GB is split over 3 services: Google Drive, Gmail and Google Photos.
We’ve used Google Drives with clients who have Gmail accounts and who like Google docs (their equivalent of Word, Excel etc). Google docs can be handy if there is more than one of you working on a document at the same time (as conflicting copies in Dropbox can be a tad annoying).
If you exceed the 15GB free allowance then costs start at $1.99 for 100GB per month.
Box
We’d not heard of this one but it seems that this is similar to Dropbox, in that you can install a desktop app to sync between the cloud and your hard drive. You get 10GB for free but with clever planning you can get up to 16GB in total via referral links (for each sign up you’ll get 500MB).
Slightly pricier per month for paying accounts starting at £7 per month (for 100GB), it is aimed more at the business market.
One Drive
Known in a former life as Sky Drive, this is Microsoft’s cloud-based storage option. You’ll need a Hotmail or Live email account to qualify but you can set these up easily for free. You’ll get 5GB for free (lucky students 1TB).
To upgrade to a paying account, you can get 50GB for £1.99 per month and then there are deals if you are Office 365 customers.
There are countless other online storage options which have been listed by Money Saving Expert.
Dropbox
One of the first online storage options, 2GB back in 2008 seemed plenty. However since more and more business is done online and remotely, we quickly realised that we are going to need more than 2GB.
We’ve managed to boost our Dropbox accounts by referral links (up to a maximum of 16GB). Unwittingly one of our VAs managed to get an enormous 23GB for free for 2 years! Sadly that boost of 23GB is now coming to an end so we think we will be upgrading to the 1TB account.
There are creative ways though to boost your Dropbox free capacity though:
- Make sure you sign up for the 500MB referral link. Each time you refer a friend you get 500MB of free space (up to 16GB)
- Get 250MB by following the getting started process
- For 500MB, follow on Twitter (125MB) or Facebook (125MB), connect your Twitter account (125MB), tell Dropbox what you love about Dropbox (125MB)
A few other tips
- To keep on top of your precious memory space, leave shared folders if you aren’t actively using them (it all eats into your space)
- You can recover deleted files (within 30 days) by clicking on the show deleted files
Which is your favourite online storage option?