Dropbox vs G Drive

The way people work is constantly changing. More employees need access to documents and files even when they aren’t at their desk. For that, they need a remote location in which to store their data that is accessible from anywhere something like the ever-present cloud. With so many cloud choices, we have decided to take a deeper look at Dropbox Vs. G Drive’s business offerings.

Plans and Pricing

Both Dropbox and Google Drive have tiered service plans that allow users to pick the best options for themselves. Both companies offer personal and business platforms to best meet client needs. However, they do differ slightly in overall features and pricing of these tiers.

Dropbox

Dropbox’s service features make them a leader among cloud storage service providers. All their plans include:

Access from anywhere
Offline access
Automatic Updates
Office 365 integration
Commenting
File Requests

All options offer versioning recovery for files stored in Dropbox. However, the length of time for version roll back varies. Dropbox’s professional plans allow users to store up to 120 days of version history.

Business tier plans come with a few extra features. Smart Sync and team folders are only a couple of the extras available. Professional plans also have HIPAA compliance, granular permissions, and an account transfer tool.

Dropbox’s professional pricing plans are:

Name	Size	Cost Annually	Cost for Month to Month
Standard—business	2 TB	$150 per user	$15 per user
Advance—business	As much as needed	$240 per user	$25 per user
Enterprise—business	As much as needed	Call for quote	Call for quote

Google Drive

Offices using G Suite automatically have access to a Google Drive. As with Dropbox, Google Drive has much to offer in the way of features.

Anywhere access
Large file sharing and storage
Offline access
Link sharing
Collaborate with others
Two-factor authentication
Sync between different locations, e., desktop, web, and mobile
Productivity tools

As part of G Suite for business users, Google Drive has additional features including:

Audit report
Data loss prevention (Enterprise level only)
eDiscovery
Smart search across G Suite with Cloud Search
24/7 support by phone, chat or email
Shared calendars

Unlike with Dropbox, however, Google does have some space saving solutions. For the most part, anything stored within the Drive counts against the storage space. However, there is some instance where files within the drive do not count against the storage space. These include:

Files in “Shared with Me” in which you are not the owner of the document. These only take up space in the owner’s drive, not yours.
Google Photos stored using the “High Quality” setting.
Photos and Videos backed up from a Pixel phone.

Google Drive storage may also vary between the web based application, desktop, and mobile application. Shared items do take space on your hard drive on both your desktop and mobile devices while they do not take space on the internet. Additionally, Google Drive does not sync items stored in the web application’s trash to your desktop or mobile application.

Google Drive is offered as part of the G Suite service package. Each license you purchase has access to individual Drive locations, not just a centralized dumping space for entire team. The different tiers depend on what your need are. While both the Business and Enterprise plans offer the same Google Drive storage, there are other features offered for G Suite users that may need.

Google Drive with G Suite

Name	Size	Cost Monthly
Basic	30 GB	$5 per user
Business	Unlimited (or 1TB for fewer than 5 users)	$10 per user
Enterprise	Unlimited (or 1TB for fewer than 5 users)	$25 per user

Google Drive’s business plans do have a size restriction. For teams and companies with over five users, the storage size is unlimited. However, for businesses with fewer than five users, the storage space is limited to 1TB per user.

Security

Security is an important consideration. You need to be certain that the documents you store are protected from malicious attacks. Both Dropbox and Google Drive offer security features to keep your data safe.

Dropbox

Dropbox is proud of their ongoing security features that help to protect your data from malicious attacks. Their security features include:

256-bit AES encryption for storage
SSL/TLS transmission protocols
File versioning (30-day for personal plans, 120-day for business plans)
Remote device wipe
HIPAA compliance (business level options only)
Two-factor authentication
Password-protected and expiring link sharing

In addition to their built-in security protocols, Dropbox routinely tests their system for vulnerabilities. They currently work with third-party companies and the security research community to find bugs and holes in the system and report it back to them.

Like many cloud services, Dropbox does allow third-party applications to connect to your account, with your permission. To help protect information, they utilize OAuth, a standard authorizing protocol which allows you to grant granular permission to apps you wish to connect.

Google Drive

Like their competitor, Google Drive has security measures in place to ensure safe storage of your data safely. Some of the safety features they have included:

SSL/TLS transmission encryption
256-bit AES security
2048 RSA encryption keys for validation and key exchange phrases
Certified by SOC1, SOC2, and SOC3 by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant
Certified ISO/IEC 27001

Google uses Perfect Forward Secrecy to encrypt content during moves between servers. While stored on their servers, the information is walled off from others who may share the server, in much the same way that banks separate accounts. This separation protects your files from intrusion by other Google account holders.

Like Dropbox, Google uses outside contributors to keep their security protocol in check. In fact, they were one of the first companies to offer a Vulnerability Reward Program to their web account holders.

Apps

There are several ways for you to access both your Dropbox and Google Drive. Each cloud service has a desktop and mobile apps in addition to web access.

Dropbox

If you sign up for Dropbox from your desktop or laptop computer, one thing you will notice prompts to download the desktop application. With this application, a dedicated folder appears on your computer. That folder gives you a direct link to files stored inside your Dropbox account. The desktop application also provides you access to Dropbox files when you are offline. Once you go back online, the folder automatically syncs.

Dropbox allows you to take your files on the go with their mobile apps. You can get mobile applications for Apple, Android, and Windows devices. As with the desktop application, this tool allows you to stay in sync with all files in your account and any shared with you from other accounts. You can use your document scanner to upload images such as white boards and convert them to easy to use PDFs.

Of course, you can still access your Dropbox account via the internet. Once you browse to their website, sign in. From here you can preview, download, and upload files. Any changes you make automatically sync with your desktop and mobile apps.

Google Drive

As with Dropbox, Google Drive has a desktop application. This folder syncs files that you choose to sync to your computer’s hard drive, you choose which objects and folders to sync and which to leave exclusively online. Any file not synced cannot be accessed via this application.

Google Drive’s mobile app works their desktop software similarly. With the mobile app, you can:

View content
Access files
See file details and activities
Access Google Photos
Use camera to scan documents into PDF
Set content permissions

Of course, you can always access your data on the web. By logging in to your Google account, you can view, edit, and set content permissions. Moving items into the trash online will remove things from your sync folders. However, the trash does not show up in the synchronized folders.

Whether you choose Dropbox or Google Drive, you need to protect your data with a backup and recovery solution. CloudAlly’s G Suite backup service includes Drive with unlimited storage at a cost of $3/month or $30/year per user. CloudAlly’s Dropbox backup service will be available Q4 2017 at a cost of $2/month or $20/year per 5GB of data.

Box for Business vs. Dropbox for Business Backup – The Five Most Important Things You Need to Know

Has your business already moved to the cloud for storage and related services? if so, then chances are you’re already familiar with cloud storage services such as Box and Dropbox for business.

There are many similar features offered by the two services, but also enough differences that it’s worth taking a closer look at both services to determine which one is the best fit for your business.

Both services started out primarily targeting individual users, but have now developed specific services catering to the business market. In this article, we’ll compare and review the business products of both companies and look add how they can add value to your business.

Comparison of Box and Dropbox for Business Backup

Security

For easy access to the cloud, both offer single sign-on facilities for users with two-factor authentication, which ensures secure login to both services.

Box offers enhanced authorization in the form of email validation, even when you log in from a new IP address. This ensures secure access to your enterprise cloud platform at all times. This email validation feature for new IP addresses is not provided by Dropbox.

The standard security technology, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), is provided by Box and Dropbox, along with AES-256 bit encryption. Only Box is HIPAA compliant, ensuring the protection of sensitive patient data. While both offer multiple data centers, only the Box data centers are SSAE 16 Type II compliant at this time.

Another key security benefit of Box is that it allows you to password protect your key documents and folders.

Syncing and Sharing

While Dropbox offers strong support for LAN syncing, there is no such provision with Box. Dropbox also provides comprehensive support for syncing of videos and photos, both of which are lacking on Box.

Both Box and Dropbox enable you to control what your business team users can share with others (even the ones who do not have an account).

Both services also allow you to transfer ownership of a particular folder to someone else, which is especially useful when your responsibilities change or as a backup during your absence.

Collaboration and Integration

While both solutions offer good file and folder sharing options, you also need to compare their collaborative features that enable your team members to work together in real time.

Team members can comment on files while working together on shared files, and Box also allows you to collaborate with outside users as well as providing simultaneous collaboration. DDropbox lacks some of the collaborative editing abilities found in Box.

Integration with third-party applications is an important feature of any cloud services, and both solutions integrate well with standard apps such as Outlook and Office 365. At this point, Dropbox has a larger list of 3^rd party app integrations than Box.

The Box API is fully customizable, which makes it easy for you to manage files, share them and collaborate efficiently.

Dropbox provides multiple APIs with specific purposes such as Dropbox Chooser (for integration with the web app), Sync API (for online and offline syncing) and Core API (to build your own app containing Dropbox features).

Backup and Data Recovery

Both services sync your files and folders across any computers and mobile devices that you have installed the app on. This feature creates a backup of sorts across multiple devices, but keep in mind that deleted items will be deleted on all synced devices so it’s still possible to loose data on both services.

Deleted items are moved to the recycle bin in both Box and Dropbox, but this is where DropBox has a distinct advantage. Box purges items from the recycle bin after 30 days by default, or by the period specified by the Admin. Dropbox on the otherhand offers unlimited file recovery of deleted items and unlimited version history for both it’s Business and Enterprise Plans.

Of course the Dropbox unlimited recovery feature is a great service, but keep in mind that items can still be hard deleted by the end user. So while this is a very useful feature, it does not eliminate the need to backup your data to protect against accidental or malicious data loss.

As file sharing services, both Box and Dropbox are prone to malware viruses such as CryptoLocker so we still strongly recommend using a 3^rd party backup service such as CloudAlly to fully protect your critical business data.

Plans and Pricing

Box offers 3 business plans; Starter, Business and Enterprise as follows:

	Team Size	Storage	Box Content API	Maximum File Size	Pricing	Advanced Features
Starter	Three to 10 users	100 GB	25K actions per month	2 GB	$6 per user per month	Document encryption, granular permissions, user management, external collaboration, shared links, and so on.
Business	Minimum three users	Unlimited	50K actions per month	5 GB	$17 per user per month	Starter features along with Office 365 integrations, mobile security controls, custom branding, active directory, single sign-on, Box for Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), and so on.
Enterprise	Minimum three users	Unlimited	100K actions per month	5 GB	Not Revealed; Varies as per your requirements	Business features along with workflow automation, metadata management, help desk, custom terms of service, and so on

Dropbox offers a standard Business plan outlined below and also an Enterprise plan with deployment support, training and a dedicated account manager.

Minimum five users
Pricing at $15 per user per month
Unlimited file recovery and third-party integrations
As much space as required by starting off with 1 TB
Microsoft Office 365 integration
User controls and permissions
Email and phone support
Password protected links
Free 30-day trial

We hope this article has helped to clarify some of the primary differences between the two services.

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