Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. OneDrive vs Google One in 2018

1. Dropbox

Our number one choice and has been from day 1 is Dropbox.

Good

• Quick
• Reliable
• Easy to use
• Never fails
• Share large files immediately they are placed in your local Dropbox folder (before it even syncs)

Bad

• Expensive in comparison to others
• Custom sync (aka Smart Sync) is only available on the Professional (expensive) option

2. Google Drive

Since moving emails to Gsuite, we switched to Google Drive for business. After using Dropbox for years, this one felt (and feels) slow and unpredictable.

Good

• Affordable
• Easy to access, especially when used together with Gmail / Gsuite
• The new Drive File Stream lets you choose what to sync locally and what to keep online (big plus!)

Bad

• Need way too many clicks to share a file
• Can’t share a file until it’s fully uploaded (no such issue with Dropbox)
• Unreliable when heavily used. Here are the type of errors we often get when working with large files in Adobe. Never has such issues with Dropbox. To workaround, we need to save it as a copy each time. Gets pretty damn annoying.

3. Microsoft Onedrive

Never properly used this one. I guess if you are an Outlook user — this would be the preference over Google Drive. How reliable this is, how well it performs under pressure and so on — you can only tell with heavy usage. It would be unfair for us to judge this without running multiple projects on it for at least 3-6 months.

We signed up to use it as a backup for some small jobs. Priced competitively, cheaper than Dropbox that’s for sure.

4. Google One

This is brand new. Coming soon – recently announced by Google. We aren’t going to review something that we haven’t used yet, but the specs look good and affordable. However, paying for something that is reliable vs cheap is not an option when it comes to work. This looks like a product for personal use. How does this differ from Google Drive? Who knows, Google loves launching and cancelling products, just Google “google products that failed”.

Eventually, you should be getting something like this:

So it’s not a competitor to Google Drive (obviously), it’s a replacement. Which makes sense, but what about Gsuite owners? And the newly announced Drive File Stream?

Make up your mind Google! Seriously!