Google Drive vs iDrive

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud-based storage and syncing service that lets you create, edit, store, and collaborate online documents. Google Drive’s online design is the most intuitive we’ve seen. You start on the main Drive page, which shows thumbnails of documents in the middle and a menu of your folders, shared files, photos, recent, favourites, and trash along the left. On the right are buttons for sharing, getting a link to and deleting files.

You can also choose to use file synching services for your desktop. With file-syncing services, you simply download and install a program on your computer and a Google Drive folder will appear, automatically syncing all files and folders between devices and the web version of the service. This means that if you’re working on a file from the office, and then go home and want to pick up where you left off, you can do so without having to email it to yourself or load the file from a USB stick.

As expected, Google’s framework is very secure, however, it doesn’t use zero-knowledge encryption, so we generally recommend that you don’t store sensitive data on Google’s servers.

Google Drive is truly impressive in how it can help you store, back up, create, edit and collaborate files. However, with all Google services – be it search, Google Photos or Google Drive – you’re pretty much giving the company full access to your devices.

Pricing

Pricing options start at just $1.99 for 100MB

Google Drive’s Top 5 features

• Real-time online collaboration
• Auto file synching option
• Very cheap for most users
• Part of Google’s framework to work seamlessly
• Many third-party integrations

Google iDrive

iDrive is the undisputed champion of backup and can back-up all types of devices and operating systems. So, whatever you’re using, whether a Windows desktop or Macbook and external hard drives, you can back it up with iDrive. No matter how many devices you have, 2 or 20, iDrive can sync them all. It integrates with File Explorer in Windows and Finder in macOS and can add backup options to context menus.

One of iDrive’s greatest strengths is the ability to create a snapshot of any historical moment of your backup set and lets you recover files at any point along the timeline. This could protect you from ransomware threats, should anything harmful occur to your hard drive.

iDrive security includes at-rest encryption, two-factor authentication and military-secure data centres but significantly different to Google Drive, it also allows you to use zero-knowledge encryption. This means that no one has access to your data except yourself.

Our main issue is that it lacks robust file-sharing features and that files in folders synced by iDrive were slow to upload. As expected, there are no collaboration tools like Google Drive, and is best to use as a backup and transfer service.

Pricing

The Team and Business plans start at $99.50 per year and $199.50 per year, respectively

iDrive’s Top 5 features

• Nice user experience
• 24×7 chat and email support
• Easily manage multiple devices
• Disk image backup
• Apps for iOS and Android