Best Cloud Storage for Mac: Which Online Storage Choose for Your MacBook?

Must-have cloud storage for Mac computers: space expansion and cross-device access

Cloud storage services not only effectively free up space in Mac hard drives, but more importantly, it allows you to access files on almost any connected device. For example, you can create a file on your Mac and then access it on your iPhone.

Recommended best cloud storage for Mac computers

There are a wide range of cloud storage services on the market. Here are some of the ones we recommend:

1. iCloud
2. Google Drive
3. Microsoft OneDrive
4. Sync.com
5. Dropbox
6. Icedrive
7. MEGA

1. iCloud

For many Apple users, iCloud is a natural first choice. This feature is built in to all modern macOS and iOS devices, which allows you to easily back up your MacBook to iCloud.

Upgrading to the iCloud paid plan, you can choose from multiple storage spaces that can be shared with up to five family members:

• 50GB, $0.99 per month.
• 200GB, $2.99 ​​per month
• 2TB, $9.99 per month
• 6TB, $29.99 per month
• 12TB, $59.99 per month.

iCloud is easy to use, thanks to its tight integration with macOS. You can access iCloud Drive directly from Finder and drag and drop any file into it to upload to the cloud. The folders and files next to them with the cloud icon are currently stored in your iCloud, but not on your Mac. This may include items from your other Apple devices.

You can also remove items from your Mac but keep them in iCloud. This is an easy way to avoid iCloud Drive taking up space on Mac.

In system settings, you can also let iCloud back up your password, photos, emails, messages, and more. This goes far beyond the capabilities of other cloud storage services.

Despite its powerful capabilities, it also has one major drawback – it only works on Apple devices, so it is not for Windows computers or Android phones. You can access your iCloud via icloud.com, but the experience is much more limited.

Users with Google accounts get free 15GB of storage, which is shared across all Google services. If you need more space, you can sign up for a monthly paid plan or choose an annual plan to save up to 16%. You can share any of these plans with up to five people.

The monthly paid plan is as follows:

• Basic version: 100GB, $1.99 per month.
• Standard Edition: 2TB, $9.99 per month.
• Premium version: 2TB, $19.99 per month.

If you sign up for annual billing, the base version is $19.99 per year and 2TB is $99.99. Existing users can also use a larger plan, offering 5TB, 10TB, 20TB and 30TB of storage space.

With drive.google.com, you can access online software such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, but you can also store anything in Google Drive, which can open many file types, including Microsoft Word documents and PDFs.

The Google Drive app is available for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, which is a plus. After installation, you can select exactly the folder you want to sync. It can also back up your photos and movie files to Google Photos.

The app allows you to access Google Drive from Finder and separate your primary Google Drive storage from the sync folders on your Mac and other devices. Like iCloud, you can keep files on your Mac or save space by storing files only in the cloud.

OneDrive is closely related to Microsoft 365, a complete collection of productivity tools. This makes it particularly useful for office workers using software such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook.

Everyone gets 5GB of free storage, 15GB of separate mailbox storage, and access to Microsoft's free online and mobile productivity apps. Upgrade to Microsoft 365 Basic at $1.99 per month, which offers 100GB of storage and Outlook. You can log in to five devices at the same time, but this is limited to one account. Similarly, the next plan Personal offers 1TB of storage, but with the same user limit. However, it also allows you to access the complete suite of productivity tools.

To share your OneDrive storage space, you need the Microsoft 365 Family, which offers 6TB of storage and a full productivity suite for just $12.99 per month.

The OneDrive app is available for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. You can access it from Finder and it will display the contents of your online OneDrive account as well as files backed up from other devices. OneDrive can also back up your desktop and document folders, but you can't select other folders on your Mac for backup.

Sync.com is a cloud storage service focused on privacy and security, providing applications for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. Anything you store in your account is zero-knowledge encryption, so no one can read it except you.

The free plan offers 5GB of storage, but you can sign up for a personal or team plan for more storage. The personal plan is as follows:

• Personal version: 200GB, $5 per year.
• Single player basic version: 2TB, $8 per year.
• Single-player Pro: 6TB, $20 per year, or $24 per month.

The team plan starts at $6 per user per month and 1TB of storage per user. There are also options for unlimited storage for larger teams and businesses.

By GB, Sync.com is not as cheap as other cloud storage services, but it offers many advanced features including remote shared wipe and remote device locking. It also provides an online vault for storing your backup files without syncing them to other devices. These features make Sync.com especially suitable for corporate and security-oriented individual users.

Once installed on your Mac, Sync.com will sync a single folder on your Mac. Any file you drag and drop into this folder will be automatically uploaded to the cloud. Similarly, anything you upload to the Sync.com website will be automatically downloaded to your Mac. This makes it unsuitable for saving space on your Mac.

Dropbox provides applications for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, making it a convenient way to share files across multiple devices.

While Dropbox is one of the best cloud storage services on Mac, it is not cost-effective. The free plan offers only 2GB of storage, and if you need more space, you have to browse a series of dazzling options.

If you choose monthly billing, your options are as follows:

• Plus: 2TB, $11.99 per user per month.
• Essentials: 3TB, $19.99 per user per month.
• Business: $18 per user per month, for three or more users. The team started with 9TB of storage space.
• Business Plus: $30 per user per month, for three or more users. The team started with 15TB of storage space.

You can also choose to bill annually to save money. Dropbox Plus costs $9.99 per month, Essentials costs $16.58, Business is $15, and Business Plus is $24.

What we like most about Dropbox is the control it provides. You can drag and drop files into the Dropbox folder to upload them, but you can also back up folders on your Mac that won't sync with other devices. You can also set them to automatically back up them when plugged into an external drive, as well as photos and screenshots. Once installed, Dropbox also adds options to your macOS context menu, so you can right-click on any file and access various options, including uploading to the cloud.

Icedrive is another service that offers zero-knowledge encryption in its paid subscriptions, so it's perfect for you if you're worried about data privacy.

Free Icedrive accounts offer generous 10GB of storage space, while monthly billing plans are as follows:

• Lite: 100GB, $4.99 per month.
• Pro I: 1TB, $7.99 per month.
• Pro III: 3TB, $14.99 per month.

The annual plan’s Lite costs $3.99 per month, the Pro I is $5.99 and the Pro III is $10.99. Icedrive also offers a lifetime license – $512GB, $299; 2TB, $479; 10TB, $1199. These should end up being cheaper than regular plans, but we are not sure if we want to make such a big commitment to a company.

In terms of compatibility, Icedrive is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Interestingly, Icedrive allows you to access online storage as if it were a physical drive on your computer. On a Mac, this means you also need to install a separate free software tool, MacFUSE. This is not done automatically, so it is not as user-friendly as it can be.

Once Icedrive is up and running, you must click the "mount" button to access your storage space. In Finder, it will appear as an external drive. You can add anything you like to Icedrive and you can choose to back up the content or do a full sync.

While this is good in theory, we found it to be ineffective. After making changes to the Icedrive folder on your Mac, they are not automatically reflected on the Icedrive website until we refresh the view. Similarly, the Icedrive folder on the Mac doesn't update until we uninstall and remount it.

MEGA is a privacy-focused online storage option with zero-knowledge encryption. It provides applications for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

From the beginning, MEGA provides you with a very generous 20GB of free storage space. Like other services, you can pay for monthly or annual plans. The monthly plan is as follows:

• Pro: 2TB, $10.45 per month.
• Pro II: 8TB, $20.92 per month
• Pro III: 16TB, $31.38 per month

Pay annually, these fees are $8.72, $17.44 and $26.16 per month, respectively. Please note that these are estimates as you will pay in Euro. In addition to cloud storage, all of these plans include MEGA VPN, MEGA Pass Pass password manager, and encrypted video chat tools.

With the MEGASync application for Mac, you can sync your computer with other devices, or just back up your Mac. You can also sync the entire MEGA cloud or only sync a portion of it.

In our tests, MEGA first told us that we had run out of the 5GB free transfer limit for the day. Thankfully, this problem solved itself in a few minutes and the synchronization function worked well. The changes we make on our Mac will be automatically updated in the cloud and vice versa. It's not as smooth as iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive, but it's not bad.

advantage	shortcoming
Can run on a variety of platforms. Powerful encryption protects your privacy. Huge free quota.	Daily transfer limit. Upgrade ads keep popping up. Not the cheapest.

Make the most of your storage space

There are many different best cloud storage candidates on Mac, each with its pros and cons. Many people will choose iCloud because it works well with a Mac and is cost-effective, but third-party options are also great, and they may help if your Mac prompts that there is not enough disk space but actually has space.

Regardless of which cloud storage you choose, make sure you don't have backed up wasted duplicate files. Quick scans with MacKeeper's repeat file finder can help you do this – with just a few clicks, you can find and permanently delete unnecessary data. If you want to know how to optimize storage space on your Mac, MacKeeper can help too.

The above is the detailed content of Best Cloud Storage for Mac: Which Online Storage Choose for Your MacBook?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!