How to choose a cloud storage provider
· 6 min read
Almost every “best cloud storage” list ranks products by how many gigabytes you get per pound. It is the easiest thing to put in a table and the least useful thing to decide on, because storage is the one part of the problem that is genuinely cheap and genuinely interchangeable.
What actually determines whether a move works is what happens to a file after it is stored. Here are the four questions worth asking instead.
1. What can you do to a file without downloading it?
This is the question that separates a storage bucket from a workspace. If every edit means download, open a desktop application, change, save, re-upload, then you have bought a folder in the sky and kept all of the friction.
Check specifically: can you open and edit a PDF? Can you sign one? Can you open a .docx and save it back as a .docx, rather than converting it into a proprietary format and converting it back on the way out? Conversion round-trips are where formatting quietly dies.
2. Which controls are on the plan you will actually be on?
Nearly every provider can put a password on a share link, expire it, and show you an access log. The question is never whether the feature exists — it is which tier it starts on.
Audit logs in particular tend to live on enterprise editions. If the reason you are moving is that you need to evidence who opened a document, price the tier that actually includes that, not the entry tier on the pricing page.
Our own comparison pages list this per product: NevTan Drive vs Google Drive, vs Dropbox, vs OneDrive.
3. Is storage counted once or twice?
If your files and your email are billed as two separate pools, you will over-buy one and run out of the other. Some suites share a single quota across mail and files; some do not. It is a small detail that shows up on every invoice.
4. How bad is the exit?
Ask this before you move in, not after. A provider that stores your documents in its own format has made leaving expensive even if it has an export button, because export is where the formatting goes.
The cheap test: upload a complicated document, export it, and open the export somewhere else. If it survives, you can leave whenever you like — which is the only thing that makes staying a choice.
So what should you do?
- Already deep in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365? Staying is usually right. The integration is worth more than the storage price.
- Need PDF editing, signing, link passwords or an audit log on a small plan? That is where most incumbents want you on a business tier, and where it is worth looking elsewhere.
- Legally required to hold data on your own hardware? Then you want self-hosted software, not any hosted service — see NevTan Drive vs Nextcloud.
- Mostly work in a browser already? Optimise for what the browser can do to a file, not for gigabytes.
Whatever you choose, run one real project through it for a fortnight before you migrate anything. Every product looks fine on a landing page.
A note on what a migration actually costs
The subscription difference is almost never the expensive part. The expensive part is the fortnight where half the team is looking in the old place, links in old emails point at files that have moved, and somebody has to re-create the sharing that used to just work.
Budget for that deliberately. Move one team or one client folder first, leave the old account live and read-only for a month, and only then move the rest. A migration that is reversible for thirty days is a very different decision from one that is not.
Common questions
How do I choose a cloud storage provider?
There is no single answer, which is why this piece is four questions rather than a ranking. If you are already inside a suite you are happy with, staying usually wins. If you need PDF editing, link passwords or an audit log without buying a business tier, that is the case where moving pays. For the head-to-heads, see the comparison pages.
Is there free cloud storage that includes editors?
Several providers have free tiers, and the thing to compare is not the gigabytes but what those tiers include. NevTan Drive has no subscription of its own: the editors, sharing controls and per-file audit log are on free accounts too, and only storage is paid.
Will I lose formatting when I move my documents?
Google Takeout exports Docs, Sheets and Slides as .docx, .xlsx and .pptx. Test it before you commit: export your most complicated document, open it in whatever you are moving to, and look at it. That one check tells you more than any feature table.
Try NevTan Drive freeThe editors, sharing controls and per-file audit log are on every account, free ones included. Only storage is ever paid for.