View Apple iCloud here
As an Apple user, you’ve probably heard of iCloud, but we don’t blame you if you find it confusing. It’s Apple’s own cloud-based storage system, and if you have an iPhone or iPad and have an Apple ID, you’ll have 5GB of free storage.
It’s the easiest way for those into the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, iPad, and Mac users) to sync contacts, notes, files, photos, and more across devices and access them across all of their devices. For example, you can use the Files folder on an iPhone or iPad to view all your files stored in the cloud.
Because it integrates so seamlessly with all of Apple’s products and services, iCloud really is the best cloud storage solution for someone who’s all-in with Apple. And I mean it Everything in: All your computers are Macs, your mobile devices are iPhone or iPads, you work in Apple’s productivity software (Pages, Numbers, Notes), and so on.
Frustratingly, Apple only offers a paltry 5 GB of free iCloud storage, which isn’t too bad if you just want to store some Pages and Numbers documents, but it’s definitely inadequate for photos and videos. Apple is years late in raising this limit (Google offers 15 GB for free), but it should at least stop counting iOS backups. Since fall 2021, Apple has offered to “loan” you as much iCloud storage space as you need to back up and restore your data to a new device, for up to two weeks. It’s a good feature for those who buy a new Apple device, but it won’t help you protect your data if your iPhone is lost/stolen/damaged.
From there it’s $0.99 / £0.79 per month for 50GB, $2.99 / £2.49 for 200GB or $9.99 / £6.99 for 2TB. You can enable family sharing on the 200 GB and 2 TB plans. Doing so does not mean that your family members can see all of your cloud data. It just means that your entire family’s iCloud usage counts toward the same storage limit. These paid tiers are now called “iCloud+” and include several new benefits. There’s iCloud Private Relay, free storage for HomeKit security cameras, a Hide My Email feature, custom domain names for iCloud email accounts, and additional contact options to recover your account. These are all excellent features that help reinforce our opinion that iCloud is by far the best choice for those who are all-in on Apple devices.
The main benefit of paying for more iCloud storage is that almost all of Apple’s apps can sync seamlessly through it. Photos, productivity apps, Mail, Calendar, and anything you put in your iCloud Drive folder in Finder on a Mac are instantly available on all your Apple devices. A significant number of iOS apps can optionally back up and sync via iCloud as well.
If you occasionally rely on non-Mac computers or non-iOS mobile devices, you’ll find iCloud’s limitations frustrating. Apple offers a full suite of web apps at iCloud.com, but they’re pretty mediocre. Apple offers an iCloud Windows app that syncs data and integrates your iCloud mail with regular Windows apps like Outlook, but there are no native productivity apps for Windows or Android: if you want to edit a Pages document, you’ll need to use the web interface to use.
We love using iCloud, but we also pay for it. Most decent cloud services require you to pay a small fee.
If you are a heavy Apple user, you should consider the Apple One service bundle. It’s much more than a cloud storage solution, so it’s beyond the scope of this article, but the value on offer could tip the scales in favor of iCloud.
