Finding cheap online storage is not easy when you need more than a few gigabytes of storage space. Of course, the price of a cloud storage service primarily depends on the amount of space needed.
We have compared the best online storage options and analyzed their prices. We can therefore offer you the best online storage for the amount of storage relative to the price, hoping that it will be useful to you!
The answer to the question of the cheapest cloud storage depends on your needs. In this article, we focus on what we call light storage, located between 200 and 500 GB of space.
What is lightweight storage?
The general purpose of lightweight storage is to synchronize only a part of your data.
Utility of lightweight storage
For example, the goal may be to synchronize work data and personal documents that you want to be able to access at any time.
But in addition, you may want to synchronize multimedia data: photos, videos, music.
These files are much larger than simple text documents. Their accumulation quickly saturates the few gigabytes of free space offered by most cloud storage providers.
Who is lightweight storage for?
The lightweight storage category is the entry-level category for most users in the world of paid cloud storage. It allows many of us to access our files from all our devices. And this, without worrying about saving the used storage space, which removes a lot of frustration.
It proves to be very useful by offering considerable flexibility, although less than the 1 or 2 terabyte category aimed at replacing a hard drive.
The cheapest lightweight online storage?
1st. pCloud
pCloud is the online storage that we have ranked as the best cloud storage. One of the reasons is its pricing policy which makes it an ideal choice for its offer of 500 GB.
LIFETIME PAYMENT: a unique offer among the competition
pCloud is simply the only cloud storage service that dared to offer a lifetime payment for each of its plans.
pCloud is a serious company and has many clients. We have no concerns about the sustainability of the service.
For a one-time payment of 175 €, you get 500 GB of storage space at pCloud usable for life.
Is it profitable?
The question of the time required to make such a payment profitable is crucial, and we have therefore done the necessary calculations.
The 500 GB lifetime offer from pCloud pays for itself in less than 3 years of monthly payments, or a little over 3 and a half years of annual payments.
It is therefore an excellent choice for those who want to pay less in the medium or long term.
NOTE: The site of pCloud lists this price of €175 as a reduction from the original price of €480. We do not know how long this discount is expected to last.
Monthly or annual payments
For more traditional payments (monthly or yearly), pCloud offers some of the best prices.
Monthly billing (payment every month, with no commitment) costs €4.99 per month. This price amounts to about 100 GB per euro invested for a month. That’s about 30% more storage per euro than the closest offer from Google Drive, 3rd in this ranking (200 GB at €2.99 / month).
The annual billing (one payment for 12 months of use) costs €47.88 per year or the equivalent of €3.99 per month, which is a savings of 20% compared to monthly billing over a year.
Conclusion on pCloud
pCloud logically comes first in this ranking of the cheapest lightweight online storage for its 500 GB offer.
This is primarily explained by the unique possibility of making a one-time payment to use their services for life at a price that pays for itself relatively quickly (about 3 years).
The rest of the proposed payments (monthly and annual) are either cheaper or, more rarely, equivalent to the competition, hence a well-deserved first place.
If we add to this the fact that a refund is guaranteed for 10 days if you are not satisfied (the 2nd also offers a guaranteed refund, but not the 3rd), pCloud deserves its first place.
2nd. Sync.com
Sync.com is the second online storage in our comparison of the best cloud storage. It’s no coincidence that it ranks second in this ranking also for its lightweight storage offer of 500 GB.
It is behind pCloud for prices because, unlike the latter, it does not offer a “lifetime” payment for its services. The lifetime payment is of course an unmatched solution for saving money over time.
On the other hand, in terms of traditional annual payments (Sync.com does not offer annual payments), it is slightly cheaper than pCloud and much cheaper than other competitors.
Annual payments
The annual billing (one payment for 12 months of use) costs $49 per year.
At the current exchange rate (at the time of writing this article) of the dollar to the euro, this amounts to approximately 44 € per year or 3.67 € per month, which is slightly cheaper than the same offer at pCloud for a year.
Given that Sync.com only accepts payments in dollars and that the dollar rate fluctuates, it is safer to consider that the prices are equivalent to those of pCloud.
Conclusion on Sync.com
Sync.com offers an unbeatable price in the lightweight online storage category for its plan at 500 GB for $49 per year.
Moreover, a “satisfaction or money back” period of 30 days makes it a low-risk choice.
However, it is under pCloud because the payment on Sync.com has too many constraints:
- only annual payments (no monthly billing, let alone lifetime billing like pCloud),
- payments in dollars only.
3rd. Google Drive
Google Drive is well known as the online storage service of the web giant Google.
In use, it has significant drawbacks for the security and confidentiality of the data entrusted to it. However, Google Drive offers an interesting pricing policy that places it in 3rd place among the cheapest cloud storage for the “light storage” category with its 200 GB offer.
Monthly or annual payments
The lightweight storage offer from Google Drive provides 200 GB instead of 500 GB like the top two in this ranking.
This makes the comparison more complicated, but we will calculate the number of gigabytes available per euro paid to provide a basis.
The monthly billing offered by Google is €2.99 per month for 200 GB. This amounts to 67 GB per euro paid, much more expensive than the monthly billing of 500 GB from pCloud which amounts to 100 GB per euro paid.
This said, it is normal for the price per gigabyte to decrease for an offer that provides more storage space. But Google does not offer any other light storage option, the next offer goes from 200 GB to 2 GB and thus falls into the “hard drive” storage category.
The annual billing is €29.99 per year, which is a 20% saving compared to monthly billing. It’s exactly the same saving offered by pCloud for its annual plan.
Conclusion on Google Drive
Google Drive ranks 3rd in this ranking of the cheapest lightweight online storage options.
The price offered for its 200 GB plan is interesting, but does not equal that offered for 500 GB by pCloud and Sync.com when considering the number of gigabytes per euro paid.
It is a pity that Google does not offer an intermediate plan between 200 GB and 2 TB, which might have allowed it to offer a more advantageous rate.
Conclusion and ranking
This category of online storage between 200 GB and 500 GB has the top 3, from cheapest to most expensive: pCloud, Sync.com, and Google Drive.
Although the first two are neck and neck in terms of their price, pCloud wins the duel for the cheapest storage as it offers many more payment options (Sync.com only has an annual payment), including a one-time lifetime payment!
