pCloud Business

Avantages: The pCloud servers are fast. Uploading is fast, downloading is fast. That's one of the main prerequisites for a good online storage platform, isn't it? pCloud isn't a *backup* platform, it's a storage platform for selective storage and retrieval of files. You can have perfect end-to-end encryption via pCloud Vault. You pay extra for this, but when you have this, not even pCloud has access to whatever you put in the Vault. You can also share files from pCloud - and this is the feature that I use most often. I host video files in my pCloud Public area, presented through a video management service and then embedding them on my website. pCloud is fast, and I don't have to worry about how much storage space I'm using. Sure, you could use DropBox but you'd be paying more for the storage space you get. Finally, I also like the fact that pCloud is not an American company because of the legal & data access concerns that can come up for non-Americans like myself, my business, and some of my current clients.

Inconvénients: If pCloud believes there is copyright infringement with any of your files that are not in the Vault - whether in your regular "mostly-private" area or the Public area - they'll block off your account and they won't tell you why. I had this happen with one of my pCloud accounts. I had a lot of anxiety from that experience, and thankfully after a very thoughtfully-worded letter (explaining why I didn't think there was any copyright infringement in my files) *faxed* to their legal representative, I got that account - and access to the files there - reinstated. Part of my frustration was in their inability and/or unwillingness to tell me what content was deemed problematic by either (a) their automatic "sniffing" algorithms or (b) someone's complaint. How do you defend yourself against an accusation when you aren't given any specifics at all about the accusation? So beware of that possibility.

Commentaires: The very good speed in syncing. Good UI.

Avantages: I'll be honest in this review. Positives, and some suggestions for improvements. First of all: my sincere compliments go to the development team that managed to create dazzling sync speeds. Great! Uploads via Safari browser are really fast. Way much better than DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive and iCloud Drive. I tested the speeds of these cloud services intensively, having accounts on all of them, and cannot come to another conclusion: very good. The user interface (UI) in both macOS and iOS is OK. It is intuitive, fast, and does not go with the latest layout fashion of "much unused white space on the screen". The compact UI suits me very well. I wanna see information on the screen, not fancy white spaces :-). Good choice! I work with a lot of audio (productions and samples), video and graphics. Finding them on pCloud works good, and swapping through a list of pictures works really fast, on both macOS and iOS. The audio player on iOS is good and fast. Streaming audio and video works well, on both macOS and iOS. Good. The option to sync any folder on my Mac is just great. No longer the need to drag all folders and files into one sync folder (like in DropBox, OneDrive). I am an intensive user of DEVONthink Pro Office (http://www.devontechnologies.com), and I need speedy synchronization between several Macs in my working environment. I put a -so called- "syncstore" on pCloud Drive and did some severe testing. Conclusion: happy, very fast. To me this is important.

Inconvénients: The iPad app may need some polishing. E.g.: from time to time, Pages documents cannot be previewed: an error message appears. When I edit that Pages document and save it back to pCloud, then the preview is OK. Another improvement that would suit me very well is full text search. Google Drive and OneDrive (and the business version of DropBox) have this feature. It would be great to be able to search for data within a document, and have a highlighted search result.