iCloud vs. OneDrive comparison
OneDrive vs iCloud Pricing
Pricing is one of the main factors that we check when comparing different services, others being flexibility, additional capabilities, etc. Before checking out OneDrive, let’s check out iCloud that is priced in July 2018 as follows. That was about iCloud. Now let’s check up OneDrive pricing as in July 2018. This was about standard pricing options among iCloud vs OneDrive. Let’s now check out features that make OneDrive stand out among all the cloud service providers.
iCloud vs. OneDrive Features
First, let us look at iCloud – which acts just as storage space on the cloud. On occasions, you can set it to sync local folders by dragging and dropping local folders to an iCloud folder on your Mac or iOS device. You can’t do anything more. As I said earlier, Google Drive is better than iCloud but not better than OneDrive. It is because Google Drive lets you create, collaborate, and share files that you stored on Google Drive. But it is not as flexible as OneDrive because the file formats are an issue. You can access and edit online documents, but the file formats are changed. If you don’t use Microsoft Office, you and your collaborators can simply use Google Docs to open and collaborate on the document. That’s a drawback of Google Docs. The process is a bit tedious. There is this Google Drive Plugin for Office that helps you with many Office related tasks, but that involves installing additional artifacts to your computer. Coming to OneDrive, the integration is easier. You’ll find cloud apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote with the free version and the storage only version which means you can still create, edit, and share files directly from your OneDrive storage. With the 1TB and 5 x 1 TB schemes (both are sold as Office 365 plans), you get to download the latest versions of Microsoft Office. Users can download these apps directly to their computers – be it Windows or MacOS or iOS for full functionality of editing. This also means offline editing that is not available with Google Docs. iClouds doesn’t provide anything to edit files. When using iCloud, you’ll have to open files using software or apps that support the format. That works in a way that first a copy is downloaded to the local machine, changes are made locally, and the final file is then uploaded to the iCloud. When you are using the cloud, mobile, or desktop apps available from OneDrive plans, you save directly to OneDrive. There may or may not be a local OneDrive folder dependent on whether you installed the OneDrive sync app. Otherwise, you can open files directly from OneDrive, edit them, save them to OneDrive directly, and then share them if you wish. Unlike iCloud, OneDrive is built to work easily with Microsoft Office apps – whether on the cloud, on mobile, or on the desktop. All of them directly operate on online files. These features make OneDrive better than iCloud. That’s why, in my opinion, OneDrive is much better than iCloud when it comes to cloud storage for any operating system. Using iCloud on Windows is quite tough and doesn’t have built-in editing features. iCloud is integrated into MacOS and iOS but is still just an extended storage space. Since almost everyone tends to use Microsoft Office, OneDrive should be the default choice for cloud storage as its processes are built into the Office apps.
