Best Cloud Storage for Mac

Why you need cloud storage on Mac

Cloud storage services can help you save space on your Mac hard drive, but the main benefit is that you can access your files from practically any device with an internet connection. For example, you could create a file on your Mac and then access it from your iPhone.

A note from our experts:

 

Although most cloud storage services give you a certain amount of free space, once you run out, you’ll have to pay if you want more. Whether you’re trying to avoid filling your free allowance or want to get the most from your paid subscription, the last thing you need is duplicate files.

 

Delete duplicates with MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder tool:

1. Download and run MacKeeper. Select Duplicates Finder from the side menu.
2. Click Start Scan.
3. Look through the list of duplicate files and select anything you want to delete. Click Remove Selected.
4. Click Remove, and then Finish.

Top cloud storage for Mac

So what’s the best online storage for Mac? You have many different options, but here are the ones we recommend from our experience:

1. iCloud
2. Google Drive
3. Microsoft OneDrive
4. Sync.com
5. Dropbox
6. Icedrive
7. MEGA

1. iCloud

iCloud is the natural default for many Apple customers. All modern macOS and iOS devices come with this feature built in, and it lets you easily do things like back up your MacBook to iCloud.

If you upgrade your free iCloud account to iCloud+, you have several storage options, which can all be shared with up to five family members:

• 50GB for $0.99 a month.
• 200GB for $2.99
• 2TB for $9.99
• 6TB for $29.99
• 12TB for $59.99.

iCloud is a breeze to use, thanks to its close integration with macOS. You can access your iCloud Drive directly from Finder, and anything you drop into it is uploaded to the cloud. Folders and files with a cloud icon next to them are currently stored in your iCloud but not on your Mac. This may include items from your other Apple devices.  

You can also remove items from your Mac but keep them stored in your iCloud. This is a simple way to stop iCloud drive taking up space on Mac.

From your System Settings, you can also make iCloud back up your passwords, photos, emails, passwords, messages, and more. This goes far beyond what other cloud storage services can do.

As great as iCloud is, it has one major flaw—it’s only for Apple devices, so it won’t work with Windows PCs or Android phones. You can access your iCloud from icloud.com, but it’s a much more limited experience.

2. Google Drive

Anyone who has a Google account gets 15GB for free, shared across all their Google services. If you want to go beyond that, you can sign up for a monthly plan or save up to 16% with an annual one. You can share any of these with up to five people.

The monthly plans are:

• Basic: 100GB for $1.99.
• Standard: 2TB for $9.99.
• Premium: 2TB for $19.99.

If you sign up for annual billing, Basic is $19.99 a year and 2TB is $99.99. There are bigger plans available for existing users too, which offer 5TB, 10TB, 20TB, and 30TB.

From drive.google.com, you can access online software like Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, but you can store anything in your Google Drive, and it can open many file types including Microsoft Word documents and PDFs.

The Google Drive app is available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, which is a plus point. When you install it, you can choose exactly what folders you want it to synchronize. It can also back up your photos and movie files to Google Photos.

The app makes Google Drive accessible from Finder, and it separates your main Google Drive storage from synchronized folders on your Mac and other devices. As with iCloud, you can keep files on your Mac or save space by storing them only in the cloud.

3. Microsoft OneDrive

OneDrive is closely tied to Microsoft 365, a complete collection of productivity tools. That makes it particularly useful to office workers, who use software like Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook.

Everyone gets 5GB free, 15GB of separate mailbox storage, and access to the free web and mobile versions of Microsoft’s productivity apps. For $1.99 a month, you can upgrade to Microsoft 365 Basic, which gives you 100GB of storage and Outlook. You can sign into five devices at once, but this is only for one account. Similarly, the next plan up, Personal, offers 1TB of storage but has the same user limitations. However, it also gives you access to the full set of productivity tools.

To share your OneDrive storage, you need Microsoft 365 Family, which offers 6TB and the entire productivity suite for just $12.99.

The OneDrive app is available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Accessible from Finder, it will show you the contents of your online OneDrive account, as well as files backed up from other devices. OneDrive can back up your Desktop and Documents folders too, but you can’t pick other folders on your Mac to back up.

4. Sync.com

Sync.com is a privacy- and security-focused cloud storage service, with apps for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Anything you store in your account is zero-knowledge encrypted, so it can’t be read by anyone other than you.

The free plan gives you 5GB, but you can sign up for an individual or team plan to get more. The individual plans are:

• Personal: 200GB for $5 per month, billed annually.
• Solo Basic: 2TB for $8 per month, billed annually.
• Solo Professional: 6GB for $20, billed annually, or $24 a month billed annually.

The team plans start from $6 per user per month for 1TB each. There are also unlimited storage options for bigger teams and businesses.

Per gigabyte, Sync.com isn’t as cheap as other cloud storage services, but it offers a lot of advanced features, including remote share wiping and remote device lockout. It also comes with an online Vault to store your backup files without synchronizing them to other devices. These kinds of features make Sync.com particularly suited to businesses and security-conscious individuals.

When installed on your Mac, Sync.com will synchronize a single folder on your Mac. Anything you drop into this folder will automatically be uploaded to the cloud. Similarly, anything you upload to the Sync.com website will automatically be downloaded on your Mac. This makes it a poor choice for saving space on your Mac.

5. Dropbox

With apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, Dropbox is a handy way to share files between lots of different devices.

While Dropbox is among the best cloud storage for Mac, it doesn’t offer the best value. The free plan gives you a paltry 2GB, and if you want more, you have to navigate a dizzying array of options.

If you choose monthly billing, your options are:

• Plus: 2TB for $11.99 for one user.
• Essentials: 3TB for$19.99 for one user.
• Business: $18 per user for three or more users. Starts at 9TB for the team.
• Business Plus: $30 per user for three or more users. Starts at 15TB for the team.

You can also choose annual billing to save money. Dropbox Plus works out at $9.99 a month, Essentials is $16.58, Business is $15, and Business Plus is $24.

The thing we like most about Dropbox is how control it gives you. You can drop files into the Dropbox folder to upload them, but you can also back up folders on your Mac, which won’t sync with other devices. You can set it to automatically back up your external drives when you plug them in too, as well as photos and screenshots. Once installed, Dropbox will also add options to your macOS context menu, so you can right-click on any file and access various options, including uploading to the cloud.

6. Icedrive

Icedrive is another service that offers zero-knowledge encryption on its paid subscriptions, so it’s great if you’re concerned about data privacy.

The free Icedrive account gives you a generous 10GB of space, while the monthly billed plans are:

• Lite: 100GB for $4.99.
• Pro I: 1TB for $7.99.
• Pro III: 3TB for $14.99.

Yearly plans work out at $3.99 a month for Lite, $5.99 for Pro I, and $10.99 for Pro III. Icedrive also offers lifetime licenses—512GB for $2.99, 2TB for $479, and 10TB for $1,199. These should eventually work out cheaper than regular plans, but we’re not sure we’d want to make such a big commitment to one company.

In terms of compatibility, Icedrive works with Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Interestingly, Icedrive lets you access your online storage as if it were a physical drive on your computer. On a Mac, this means you’ll also need to install the separate freeware tool MacFUSE. This isn’t done automatically, so it’s not as user-friendly as it could be.

Once you’ve got Icedrive up and running, you have to click the Mount button to access your storage. In Finder, it will appear like it’s an external drive. You can add any content you like to your Icedrive, and you have the option to back up content or do a full sync.

While this is good in theory, we found it didn’t work that well. After making changes to the Icedrive folders on our Mac, they weren’t automatically reflected on the Icedrive website until we refreshed the view. Similarly, the Icedrive folder on our Mac didn’t update until we unmounted and remounted it.

7. MEGA

MEGA is a privacy-focused online storage option with zero-knowledge encryption. It offers apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Right out of the gate, MEGA gives you a very generous 20GB of free storage. As with other services, you can also pay for monthly or annual plans. The monthly plans are:

• Pro: 2TB for $10.45.
• Pro II: 8TB for $20.92
• Pro III: 16TB for $31.38

Paid annually, these work out at $8.72, $17.44, and $26.16 per month. Note that these are estimates, as you will be charged in Euros. As well as cloud storage, all of these plans come with MEGA VPN, MEGA Pass password manager, and an encrypted video chat tool.

With the MEGASync app for Mac, you can synchronize your computer with other devices or just back up your Mac. You can also sync your entire MEGA Cloud or just part of it.

In our tests, MEGA first told us that we’d used up our free 5GB transfer limit for the day. Thankfully, this resolved itself after a few minutes, and the sync function worked well. The changes we made on our Mac were automatically updated in the cloud and vice versa. It wasn’t as seamless as iCloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive, but it wasn’t bad at all.

Make the most of your storage

There are many different candidates for the best cloud storage on Mac, and they all have pros and cons. A lot of people will choose iCloud because it works so well with Mac, and it offers good value, but third-party options are good too, and they may also be able to help if your Mac says not enough disk space but there is.

Whichever cloud storage you choose, make sure you’re not backing up wasteful duplicate files. A quick scan with MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder will help with that—in just a few clicks, you can find and delete unnecessary data for good. If you want to know how to optimize storage on your Mac, MacKeeper can help, too.