3 – pCloud – Best for Lifetime plans

Pros
Good-value lifetime plans
10GB free storange
Cons
Charges extra for end-to-end encryption
Free (more storage from $4.99 per month)

pCloud doesn’t have the office suites, video content or other extras offered by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Instead the Swiss company sticks to what it knows best: keeping your files safe, secure, and available across all your devices.

The free tier gives you 10GB of storage, although 3GB needs to be unlocked by completing tasks such as downloading the mobile app, uploading a file, or sharing the service with friends.

There are no restrictions on file size, so you can upload anything that your storage space allows, and versioning means files can be restored back as far as 30 days.

Security is strong with pCloud stating that it keeps five copies of each files, distributed to different servers, with 256-bit AES encryption applied on the servers. Additional client-side encryption is also on offer (meaning your data is encrypted before it leaves your device) for a fee of £4.49 / $4.99 per month or for a lifetime fee of £115 / $125.

Pricing is unusual, in that you can pay a yearly fee for 500GB or 2TB, but the real draw is the Lifetime option which costs £159 / $175 for 500GB or £309 / $350 for 2TB. It means that the service is effectively free after you’ve used it for about four years.

Bottom Line: pCloud is a stable, fast storage service with optional encryption. The lifetime pricing makes it good value.