Credits: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j9g5h8/i_left_dropbox_as_a_heavy_user_of_15_years/
I had everything in my Dropbox: all my legal documents, my work-related files, my photos from the last 20 years, and things people sent me that I want to look at again when I’m 80… I literally had my life stored in it (and of course locally on two machines and a extra backup disk). I also accessed it almost daily via my phone and uploaded files from my phone.
So, I tested several services in the range of ~100 Euros a year with at least 1,5 Terabytes:
Jottacloud:
- Good Desktop Client (Win & Mac)
- Very good iOS App
- Good service
- Pricey (144 Euros for unlimited storage)
- Downside for me: it doesn’t automatically convert photo uploads from my phone to JPG and doesn’t store them in a folder I choose – plus, the price is high.
Filen:
- Good Desktop Client (Win & Mac)
- Rough iOS App
- Good service
- Okay price (108 Euros for 2TB)
- Downside for me: the rough iOS App didn’t have a document upload with a scan function.
Nextcloud:
- Good Desktop Client (Win & Mac)
- Good iOS App
- No dedicated service; it’s Open Source, so some tinkering is required since you manage the hosting yourself.
- Weird price range (Hetzner, the cheapest host by far, offers either 60 Euros for 1TB or 200 Euros for 5TB, nothing in between).
- Downside for me: the price range.
kDrive:
- Good Desktop Client (Win & Mac)
- Very good iOS App
- Amazing service, document editing included, etc.
- Amazing price (60 Euros per year for 3TB)
- Downside for me: none.
So, I chose kDrive, even though I’d love to use Nextcloud because it’s Open Source and you can choose your own host. If I needed less than 1TB, I’d definitely choose Nextcloud.
And it should be said that all the services I tested offer free options with a few Gigabytes, if that’s all you need.


I’m having a look now, it says 5.19€ per month max and 0.0083€ per hour, with a page saying
https://docs.hetzner.com/general/others/new-billing-model
So in the case of a Nextcloud service, Hetzner would only bill the hours during which I sync files and makes calls for instance? Or would there be a base fee for storage (after all, the files stay on their servers all the time)
I would assume this is for services using computing power rather than storage. The Nextcloud storage probably costs what you say it costs.
For me it’s really just a matter of which Nextcloud provider I subscribe to, as open source and guaranteed good Linux support is pretty high on my list of demands.
For reference, Dropbox prices are:
€120/yr: 2TB
€200/yr: 3TB
€60/yr: One additional terrabyte of storage
I guess the pricing is relative depending on needs - if you need to host a bunch of stuff, Jottacloud suddenly seems very reasonable. If a few gigabytes for your holiday pictures is enough, less so.
Makes sense, thanks.
Yes, I was confused by the hourly price, not sure why they would add it, seems confusing.
Actually I just realized they probably just added add as 5€ divided by the number of hours per month as an indication
I think they offer a bunch of more complex services to business consumers, which makes their website a bit confusing to tiny people like us. I think it’s probably wise to focus only on the information on this page.