Google Drive vs iDrive

Take a read and find out which one is best for storing, sharing and backing-up your precious files in your business. Google Drive is amongst the best cloud storage services around, while iDrive is one of the best online back-up products. Both are best in their respective fields, but can you use just one for both cloud storage and online back-ups?

Google Drive was launched in 2012 and now hosts over 2 billion users and 3 trillion files. It’s safe to say it is one of the most widely used cloud storage services out there.

iDrive just does about everything you’d expect from a cloud back-up service. With a wide range of backup features you won’t find a better online backup service than the fast uploading and easy-to-use iDrive.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud-based storage and syncing service that lets you create, edit, store, and collaborate online documents. Google Drive’s online design is the most intuitive we’ve seen. You start on the main Drive page, which shows thumbnails of documents in the middle and a menu of your folders, shared files, photos, recent, favourites, and trash along the left. On the right are buttons for sharing, getting a link to and deleting files.

You can also choose to use file synching services for your desktop. With file-syncing services, you simply download and install a program on your computer and a Google Drive folder will appear, automatically syncing all files and folders between devices and the web version of the service. This means that if you’re working on a file from the office, and then go home and want to pick up where you left off, you can do so without having to email it to yourself or load the file from a USB stick.

As expected, Google’s framework is very secure, however, it doesn’t use zero-knowledge encryption, so we generally recommend that you don’t store sensitive data on Google’s servers.

Google Drive is truly impressive in how it can help you store, back up, create, edit and collaborate files. However, with all Google services – be it search, Google Photos or Google Drive – you’re pretty much giving the company full access to your devices.

Overall Google Drive Pros vs Cons

Google Drive Pros	Google Drive Cons
Generous free storage space	Privacy concerns
Excellent productivity-suite collaboration	No password-protection for shared files
Includes desktop-to-desktop file-syncing
Many third-party integrations

Google iDrive

iDrive is the undisputed champion of backup and can back-up all types of devices and operating systems. So, whatever you’re using, whether a Windows desktop or Macbook and external hard drives, you can back it up with iDrive. No matter how many devices you have, 2 or 20, iDrive can sync them all. It integrates with File Explorer in Windows and Finder in macOS and can add backup options to context menus.

One of iDrive’s greatest strengths is the ability to create a snapshot of any historical moment of your backup set and lets you recover files at any point along the timeline. This could protect you from ransomware threats, should anything harmful occur to your hard drive.

iDrive security includes at-rest encryption, two-factor authentication and military-secure data centres but significantly different to Google Drive, it also allows you to use zero-knowledge encryption. This means that no one has access to your data except yourself.

Our main issue is that it lacks robust file-sharing features and that files in folders synced by iDrive were slow to upload. As expected, there are no collaboration tools like Google Drive, and is best to use as a backup and transfer service.

Overall iDrive Pros vs Cons

iDrive Pros	iDrive Cons
Easy setup	Only basic sharing options
Unlimited devices per account	Storage isn’t unlimited
Disk image backup	Files in synced folder slow to upload in testing
Bulk uploads and restores via mail

Google Drive vs iDrive: Summary

While iDrive can share files, it’s basically just a glorified transfer service. Google Drive can share, collaborate in real time and do a host of other things, making it one of the best collaborative cloud storage service. And instead of just using Google Drive for everything, we recommend you use iDrive as the backup for all your important and sensitive files, while keeping Google Drive around for archiving files and online collaboration. The combination of iDrive and Google Drive gives you the best of both worlds and a match made in heaven.

If you are looking into leveraging iDrive or Google Drive to host your cloud environment, please feel free to get in touch with us on 0330 202 0220. We offer various ‘do-it-for-you’ and ‘do-it-with-you’ options, and with more than a decade of experience in building cloud environments, Venom IT is the logical choice to help you get started.

Check out our resources and dig deeper on the best support with cloud computing for your business.

Discover how you can make the most of cloud services to support, enhance, or protect your IT infrastructure. Get in touch with us for a free trial or demonstration.

iDrive’s Top 5 Features:

Nice user experience
24×7 chat and email support
Easily manage multiple devices
Disk image backup
Apps for iOS and Android

Pricing:

The Team and Business plans start at $99.50 per year and $199.50 per year, respectively

Google Drive’s Top 5 Features:

Real-time online collaboration
Auto file synching option
Very cheap for most users
Part of Google’s framework to work seamlessly
Many third-party integrations

Pricing:

Pricing options start at just $1.99 for 100MB

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A breath of fresh air!
“After years of poor service from our previous managed service provider, Dealing with Venom IT has been like a breath of fresh air, their service levels and reactive nature has been second to none. Since Venom IT came on board we have had a more coherent and strategic approach to our IT needs.”
Quick & Effective
“We are very happy with Venom IT’s service, every time we’ve contacted them, we’ve had a very prompt response, even out of hours and issues have been dealt with quickly and effectively.”
First Class!
“Venom IT are simply first class; for many years we have used them for system support, hardware and software. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the whole team at Venom IT to other Businesses, large and small.”
The Perfect Solution
“Venom IT provided us with the perfect solution for our Business. The migration of our SAP operating system was handled expertly, and we are delighted with the benefits of switching to the Cloud.”