Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive: which one is right for you?

If you’re looking for free (or cheap) online storage, you have a bewildering assortment of options.

For Windows users, though, three services stand out from the crowd.

Dropbox, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, and Google Drive are superficially similar: You get several gigabytes of free storage just for signing up. By installing a small Windows app you get the ability to synchronize that storage with the hard drive on your PC, where you can manage them using Windows Explorer. You can sync files and folders with other PCs and Macs, access them from mobile devices, and share them with other people.

But when you dig deeper and get past those similarities, you can see important functional differences between the three services. Reviewers love to turn this sort of comparison into a horse race where they can declare a winner. But depending on how you plan to use an online file storage service, one might be a better fit than others. In this review, I look in detail at all three services to help you make the right choice.

See the companion screenshot gallery: A deep dive into Dropbox, SkyDrive, and Google Drive

In this analysis, I focus on the way each of these services (and its associated apps) handle four common online storage scenarios. Each of the three services has a different approach, with strengths and weaknesses and design choices that make sense when you think about each company’s business model.

Backup, sync, and remote access

The simplest scenario of all is personal file backup. Keeping your important files in a folder that is continually synchronized with an online storage service gives you a backup security blanket. If your local drive crashes, you can recover those files quickly and easily.

A side benefit of this approach is that it allows you to access files easily from multiple devices. If you have a desktop PC and a notebook, for example, you can start working on a file in your office. Whatever changes you make are synchronized to the online copy. Grab your notebook, head off to the airport, and you can pick up where you left off—as long as you have access to an Internet connection. Because all three services have apps that allow access from mobile devices, you can accomplish the same task with a tablet or a mobile phone.

Document creation and editing

Both Google and Microsoft offer the ability to create and edit a variety of document types directly in a web browser. With Dropbox, you can view common formats but you need third-party apps to enable the same editing scenarios.

Online viewing and editing means you don’t need to worry about whether you’ll have the right app installed—if you can open your online file storage location in a browser, you can get your work done.

This capability enables some important collaboration scenarios as well. Each of the three services allows you to share a file with another person (or a group of people). So if you’re passing around a presentation or a spreadsheet, each member of the team can make changes and add comments.

File sharing

The ability to set up sharing for specific folders and control access to those folders on a per-user basis makes it relatively easy to share files online with friends and co-workers.

The simplest benefit, of course, is replacing large email attachments with simple links. Having a password-protected central folder makes team-based collaborative scenarios possible as well, with fewer version-control headaches.

And, of course, the ability to make a shared file available to the general public makes it possible to use an online file-sharing service as an FTP alternative.

Photo uploads and galleries

Both Dropbox and SkyDrive have made substantial investments in their respective services’ capabilities for uploading, organizing and sharing digital photos. These capabilities include strong links to social media services such as Facebook and Twitter. Google Drive is a laggard in this respect. It offers very good photo-sharing capabilities in Google+, but those features aren’t integrated with Google Drive, and Google’s integration with other social media is weak.

I’ve put together a gallery showing off the capabilities of each service. On the next page, you’ll find facts and a capsule review of each service.

Page 2: Facts, figures, and features -->