With the advent of the 21st Century, the world has seen a lot of changes, mainly in the technological field. Although the industry is getting more and more software-oriented, it is important to know that the hardware industry has made great advancements too.
One of the greatest options being storage options. A lot of us have seen that picture where a group of men hauls a huge almirah-sized box which was apparently a 5 MB storage device. But with the advent of nano-technology, following the creation of micro-transistors, all of this has changed.
Enter the cloud. The cloud is basically a virtual storage system, which securely transfers all your data, whether they are photos, videos, documents, etc. to a system that is not the user’s device. Then the user can access this data from any other device, anytime and anywhere.
The only condition is that the person needs to have an active and sufficient internet connection. This inspired many tech giants to come up with their own cloud systems. Two of the most prominent cloud storage systems are Dropbox and OneDrive.
Dropbox vs OneDrive
The main difference between Dropbox and OneDrive is that Dropbox is a more security-oriented cloud system that is suitable for the protection of sensitive data, while OneDrive is better suited for backing up documents and presentations due to its integration with Office 365.
Comparison Table Between Dropbox and OneDrive
| Parameters of Comparison | Dropbox | OneDrive |
| Security | Dropbox has become more security-oriented over time. | OneDrive is supposedly less secure than DropBox. |
| Office 365 Integration | Dropbox is not integrated with the Office 365 suite. | OneDrive is integrated with the Office 365 suite. |
| Encryption | Dropbox encrypts the whole data together. | OneDrive encrypts each data individually. |
| OS Integration | Dropbox has no seamless integration with iOS, Android, etc. However, it is compatible with all of them. | OneDrive has seamless integration with Windows and is well compatible with all other operating systems. |
| Price | Dropbox is priced higher than OneDrive. | OneDrive is relatively cheaper than Dropbox. |
What is Dropbox?
Dropbox is one of the oldest and very popular cloud storage systems. This company was created back in 2007 and is currently headquartered in San Francisco. Initially, Dropbox was created by MIT students Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. This startup was also funded by seed accelerator Y combinator. The company had seen promising results and was even one of the most valuable startups in the world, with a total worth of $10 billion.
In just 4 years in operation, Dropbox had acquired 200 million active users. It was very evident that the consumers of the tech world did not prefer to carry around storage devices with them, and also, having a cloud storage platform gave them the liberty to free up space on their local devices, which they could use for other purposes.
The modus operandi of Dropbox in a computer was such that there would be a specific folder in the computer that would be the Dropbox folder. The user can simply drop all the content they want to be backed up in this folder and Dropbox will then synchronize it with all the other devices where the person is logged into Dropbox with the same account.
Dropbox is now available for all platforms, although it has had a deal with Microsoft, and had Dropbox present in Windows by default. The main competitor of Dropbox is Google Drive, which has now surpassed it in terms of the user base.