With Kim Dotcom’s new Cloud Storage site, MEGA, having launched last weekend to a mass of interest and over 100 million registrations in the first day, I wanted to see how it compared to other Cloud Storage providers out there in terms of how much free space you are granted just for signing up.
The chart below shows eight of the big players in this area, and how much free storage those companies give to users just for signing up. As you can see, MEGA gives out a huge 50GB of free storage just for registering, with Microsoft’s Skydrive coming in second at 7GB per user. Interestingly the least amount of free storage given to free registered users is Dropbox, who are arguably the most well-known out of all of them. However, Dropbox do allow their free users to increase their capacity to 18GB, which can be gained by referring other people, which will grant them 500MB (used to be 250MB per referral.
There are a few things though that you need to take into consideration when it comes to choosing which company you would like to go with including; security, mobile app support, desktop clients, synchronisation across multiple devices and file size limitations to name just a few. For me personally, I want to know that my data will be secure and that I am able to access it using various devices like my mobile phone, tablet or PC. Also, I don’t want to be limited as to the size of the files that I am storing. Currently the extra features that most of the providers mentioned in this article provide, like mobile apps, syncing across multiple devices and are absent in the new MEGA, although there are a ton of features planned, so hopefully we may get to see them soon. The main ones I am most interested in are the client applications, mobile app for Android and integrated on-site applications for things like Word processing, spreadsheets and calendar. There may also be a built-in messenger on the horizon to.
If you are thinking of using one of these companies and want to know how much they will charge should you want to increase your storage space, then check out the prices below. Please note that the prices below will change from time to time, but these are correct as of today (24 January 2013)
- 500GB – €9.99 per month (USD$13.20 approx)
- 2TB – €19.99 per month (USD$26.50 approx)
- 4TB – €29.99 per month (USD$40.00 approx)
- 20GB – £6.00 Per Year
- 50GB – £16.00 per Year
- 100GB – £32.00 per Year
- 20GB – £6.00 Per Year
- 50GB – £16.00 Per Year
- 100GB – £32.00 Per Year
- 200GB – £64.00 Per Year
- 500GB – £160.00 Per Year
- 1000GB – £320.00 Per Year (note that they don’t say 1TB which equals 1024GB)
- 10GB – $20.00 Per Year
- 20GB – $40.00 Per Year
- 50GB – $100.00 Per Year
- 30GB – $4.99 Per Month
- 60GB – $9.99 Per Month
- 100GB – $14.99 Per Month
- 250GB – $24.99 Per Month
- 500GB – $39.99 Per Month (special introductory price)
- 25 GB – $2.49 Per Month
- 100 GB -$4.99 Per Month
- 200 GB -$9.99 Per Month
- 400 GB – $19.99 Per Month
- 1 TB – $49.99 Per Month
- 2 TB – $99.99 Per Month
- 4 TB – $199.99 Per Month
- 8 TB – $399.99 Per Month
- 16 TB – $799.99 Per Month
- 25GB – £7.50 Per Year
- 50GB – £15.00 per Year
- 100 GB – $9.99 Per Month
- 200 GB – $19.99 Per Month
- 500GB – $49.99 Per Month
So what are the main things that you look for when it comes to choosing an on-line storage provider, and how many of the above have you either used or looked into.