Best Cloud Storage for Small Business
Dropbox Standard is the one to give a non-technical team: $15 per user, 3 TB shared across the team, 180 days of file history, and the only plan here with a stated one-seat minimum. The lowest price per seat is Zoho WorkDrive Team at $4.50, and the cheapest storage the provider itself cannot read is Sync.com Teams 1TB at $6.
The nine plans divide on who holds the keys. Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, Box and Zoho encrypt files in transit and at rest but keep the keys. Sync, pCloud, Tresorit and Proton offer end-to-end encryption, and in return some give up the built-in document editing that the Google, Microsoft and Zoho bundles are built around. A firm holding client records and a team co-writing documents all day are shopping for different things.
Our picks
- A solo owner who expects to hire: Dropbox Standard. The only plan here with a stated one-seat minimum, at $15 with 3 TB shared across the team.
- Lowest price per seat: Zoho WorkDrive Team. $4.50 per user for 3 TB of shared storage, unlimited file versions and Zoho's own document tools.
- Client records on a small budget: Sync.com Teams 1TB. End-to-end encryption at $6 per user, 1 TB each, 180 days of history, with data held in Canada.
- A team that lives in Word, Excel and Outlook: Microsoft 365 Business Standard. $12.50 per user bundles 1 TB of OneDrive with the desktop Office apps and business email.
- An encrypted plan for two people: Proton Drive Professional. A two-seat minimum, the lowest of the end-to-end options, with up to 200 versions kept per file.
At a glance
| Option | Price per user | Storage included | Minimum users | File version history | Encryption |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $14source | 2 TBsource | 30 dayssource | In transit and at restsource | ||
| $12.5source | 1 TBsource | In transit and at restsource | |||
| $15source | 3 TBsource | 1source | 180 dayssource | In transit and at restsource | |
| $15source | Unlimitedsource | 3source | In transit and at restsource | ||
| $6source | 1 TBsource | 3source | 180 dayssource | End-to-end (zero-knowledge)source | |
| $7.99source | 1 TBsource | 3source | 180 dayssource | End-to-end (zero-knowledge)source | |
| 6 TBsource | 3source | 100 versionssource | End-to-end (zero-knowledge)source | ||
| $4.5source | 3 TBsource | 3source | Unlimitedsource | In transit and at restsource | |
| $7.99source | 1 TBsource | 2source | 200 versionssource | End-to-end (zero-knowledge)source |
Storage per person or shared by the team
The Storage included column mixes two kinds of allowance, and it is easy to read backwards. Dropbox Standard and Zoho WorkDrive Team give 3 TB to the whole team, and Tresorit pools at least 6 TB. Microsoft, Sync, pCloud and Proton give 1 TB to each person, and Google gives 2 TB per user that the organization then pools, so a heavy user can spill into a colleague's unused space.
For a three-person team, Sync's 1 TB per seat comes to the same 3 TB that Dropbox and Zoho share across everyone. Each added Sync seat brings its own 1 TB. Box Business sidesteps the question with unlimited storage at $15 per user.
What end-to-end encryption costs you
Of the four encrypted plans, only three have a price here: Sync at $6, pCloud and Proton at $7.99. pCloud's zero-knowledge encryption is a paid add-on rather than switched on by default, so its $7.99 understates the cost if privacy is the reason you are looking. Tresorit prints no price, and its summary warns it runs well above the mainstream plans.
The other costs are convenience. Sync and pCloud have no built-in document editing, and reviewers describe Sync's transfers as slow. Proton's editing is newer and thinner than Google's or Microsoft's. Jurisdiction differs too: Sync keeps data in Canada, pCloud serves from EU data centers, and Proton and Tresorit are Swiss companies.
Seat minimums for a very small team
Five plans are sold in blocks of at least three seats: Box, Sync, pCloud, Tresorit and Zoho. A solo owner on Zoho pays for three seats at $4.50 each, which still comes in under a single $15 Dropbox seat, but on Box the same rule means three seats at $15. Proton's floor is two, and Dropbox's is one. Google and Microsoft do not state a minimum on the pages we could read.
How far back you can undo a mistake
Version history is counted in days by some providers and in versions by others. Google stops at 30 days (or 100 versions, whichever comes first), Dropbox, Sync and pCloud keep 180 days, Tresorit keeps 100 versions, and Proton keeps up to 200 versions for as long as ten years. Zoho keeps unlimited versions, on the cheapest plan in the table.
The options in detail
Google Workspace Business Standard
Google's business bundle pairs 2 TB of Drive storage per user with Gmail on your own domain and the Docs, Sheets and Slides editors most small teams already know. Storage is pooled across the organization rather than locked to each person, so a heavy user can spill into a colleague's unused space. There is a 14-day free trial, and Google sells these plans to companies of up to 300 users. The trade-off is privacy: Google holds the keys, and version history stops at 30 days or 100 versions, whichever comes first.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
The pick for a team that lives in Word, Excel and Outlook: 1 TB of OneDrive per user comes bundled with the desktop Office apps and business email. It is the most familiar option for staff who used Office at a previous job, and it plugs into Teams and SharePoint with no extra work. Microsoft no longer prints a per-user price on the product page itself, so the figure here is cited to a review that tracks it. Files are encrypted in transit and at rest, but Microsoft holds the keys, and reviewers call its file versioning the weakest part of the package.
Dropbox Standard
Dropbox is the easiest of these to hand to a non-technical team: sync just works, sharing is one click, and the desktop folder behaves like any other folder. Standard starts at 3 TB shared across the whole team rather than per person, and it is the only plan here you can buy for a single seat, which matters for a solo owner who expects to hire later. Deleted files and earlier versions stay recoverable for 180 days, and there is a 30-day trial. There is no zero-knowledge option, so Dropbox can read what you store.
Box Business
Box is built around permissions, retention and audit trails rather than personal file sync, which is why it turns up in regulated small businesses and in firms that exchange files with clients all day. Business is the cheapest Box tier with unlimited storage, and it is sold in blocks of at least three seats. Box shows prices only after you switch the page to annual billing, so the figure here is cited to a review that tracks it. There is a 14-day trial, and files are encrypted at rest and in transit with Box holding the keys.
Sync.com Teams 1TB
Sync is the cheapest way on this list to get storage the provider itself cannot read, which is the point if you hold client records. Each seat gets 1 TB, file history runs 180 days, and the data sits in Canada with HIPAA, GDPR and PIPEDA compliance built in. The encryption cuts out some conveniences: there is no built-in document editing, and reviewers consistently describe the transfer speeds as slow. Sync sells team plans in blocks of three seats or more.
pCloud Business
pCloud gives each seat 1 TB, a 180-day file history and a virtual drive that streams files on demand instead of filling up laptops, all served from EU data centers. Zero-knowledge encryption is available but sold as a paid add-on rather than switched on by default, so budget for it if privacy is the reason you are looking. Business is sold in blocks of at least three users and comes with a 30-day free trial. There is no built-in document editing, so most teams keep Google or Microsoft alongside it.
Tresorit Business
Tresorit is the most security-first option here: everything is end-to-end encrypted, the company is Swiss, and admins get data residency choices and file-level controls that suit legal, finance and healthcare work. The Business plan starts at three users and pools at least 6 TB across them, and it keeps 100 versions of every file. Tresorit does not print a per-user price on its pricing page, and the published figure we could find describes an older plan shape, so that cell is left blank rather than guessed. Expect to pay well above the mainstream options.
Zoho WorkDrive Team
The best value on this list if you can work outside the Google and Microsoft ecosystems: the Team plan costs a few dollars a seat and includes Zoho's own word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tools. Storage is 3 TB shared across the team rather than allocated per person, which suits a small group with one or two heavy users. It keeps unlimited file versions, runs a 15-day trial and sells in blocks of three seats. Files are encrypted with Zoho holding the keys, so it is not the choice if you need storage the provider cannot read.
Proton Drive Professional
Proton brings the same end-to-end encryption as its mail product to file storage, with 1 TB per user and a two-seat minimum, the lowest of the encrypted options here. Paid Drive accounts keep up to 200 versions of a file for as long as ten years, which is more generous than anything else on this list. Proton is Swiss and publishes its apps as open source, and there is a 14-day trial on the business plans. The document editing is newer and thinner than Google's or Microsoft's, so it suits teams that mostly store and share rather than co-author all day.
How we researched this
Each row is one specific tier, the cheapest a small business would realistically buy from that provider, and its price, storage and seat minimum belong to that tier alone: Dropbox Standard is $15, not Dropbox in general. Google and Dropbox print their prices on their own pages. For Microsoft, Box, Zoho, Proton, pCloud and Sync, the price appears only after a billing toggle runs in a browser, so those six cells cite a review site that tracks the figure, and a third-party price can trail a provider's change by weeks. Check the provider's own checkout before you buy.
Egnyte Business and ShareFile Advanced were left out because their pages publish a price but not the storage allowance or version history. MEGA Business bills by usage rather than per seat, Backblaze B2 and Storj are developer object storage, Nextcloud is self-hosted so you supply the disk, and several smaller providers showed no pricing text we could cite. Blank cells mean no page we could quote stated the figure: the seat minimum for Google and Microsoft, Microsoft's version history, Box Business's version history (the one quotable figure was for a different tier), and Tresorit's price, whose only published number described an older plan.