Gone are the days when everyone relied on tape disks for storing data. Cloud storage has completely revolutionized the way we stored data earlier, like Dropbox VS Google Drive. When it comes to cloud storage, there are a huge number of providers these days, but four providers have made a strong impact and are considered industry leaders: Box, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
But users are often baffled when faced with choosing among these four. We have already compared Box vs. OneDrive, so here we’ve put together a comparison between Dropbox and Google Drive to ensure you get all the information you need to make the right decision.
The competition between Dropbox and Google Drive heated up when Dropbox partnered with Microsoft last November to offer their customers Office Online integrated with their Dropbox accounts. It should heat up again now, as Google announced on Google Photos last Thursday, on Google I/O.
Let’s see the main differences between these two services.
Pricing and Features
Dropbox
Dropbox offers three plans for both individuals and business users. Here is a summary of the features it offers along with pricing.
Dropbox Basic
It’s a free plan and some of the features it comes with are:
- 2GB storage space
- File sharing
- Reliable backup
- Access from anywhere
Dropbox basic is a perfect plan for those who are just starting out with cloud storage. If you need more storage space, then it has another plan available named Dropbox Pro.
Dropbox Pro
Here are the features it comes with:
- Costs $9.99 per month
- 1 TB storage space
- 30-day file versioning
- 256-bit AES and SSL encryption
- Additonal sharing controls
- Remote wipe
For business users, Dropbox specifically comes with a business plan:
Dropbox for Business
Here is a quick snapshot of its important features:
- Costs $15 per user per month starting with five users
- Comes with a free trial for 14 days
- Unlimited storage space
- SSO and Active Directory
- User-activity monitoring
- Unlimited file recovery and revision history
- Remote wipe and account transfers
Google Drive
Like Dropbox, Google Drive also comes with plans for both individuals and business users.
It offers 15GB of storage space for free, and if you need more than that, it offers five plans starting with 100GB storage at $1.99 and going up to 30TB at $299.99.
Total storage | Monthly rate |
15 GB | Free |
100 GB | $1.99 |
1 TB | $9.99 |
10 TB | $99.99 |
20 TB | $199.99 |
30 TB | $299.99 |
This puts Google Drive a bit ahead of Dropbox as it offers more storage for free as compared to the 2GB Dropbox offers, and it offers a wide variety of storage options, making it a highly tailored plan for those who may need more than 15GB storage space but not as much as 1TB. However, both providers offer the same pricing for 1TB storage space: $9.99 per month.
Google also offers a business plan, Google Drive for Work. Here are the features it comes with:
Google Drive for Work
- Costs $10 per user per month
- Unlimited storage space
- 30-day free trial as against the 14 days offered by Dropbox
- Round-the-clock customer support
- eDiscovery, and real-time collaboration
- Customers get 30GB of storage space, and if they need unlimited space, they can upgrade to Google Apps Unlimited to access this feature.
Similarly, Google Apps for Work administrators need to purchase a Google Drive storage license for additional storage space.
Security
Security is a concern for all types of users, so let’s find out which provider has a better security system.
Dropbox
Dropbox has a sto