Why You Should Use pCloud as Your Primary Online Back up Solution

I use pCloud since many years, I think it is genuinely the best online backup solutions currently existing for my professional and personal projects. I use it daily to share and back up my data. It never bugged so far, the technology is fast and efficient. This article is all about Why You Should Use pCloud as Your Primary Online Back up Solution.

pCloud is becoming one of the most popular cloud storage option out here. It is famous for its lifetime plan and privacy friendly policies.

pCloud is a personal cloud space where you can store all your files and folders. It has a user-friendly interface that clearly shows where everything is located and what it does. The software is available for almost any devices and platforms, iOS and Android devices, MacOSX, Windows OS, and all Linux distributions.

By installing pCloud on your computer (through its desktop application pCloud Drive), the app creates a secure virtual drive which expands your local storage space. Every change you make in your pCloud can be seen immediately on your computer, phone or tablet. All your devices are instantly synchronized and you have direct file access to any update you make.

Easy to use

Using pCloud for the first time is very easy, you should first register on pCloud website with an email account or Facebook account that creates your own space in pCloud. If you are using it for free, you will get up to 10GB of storage space. The premium account offers 500GB storage and the premium plus offers 2000GB storage space in the system. Also, this cloud offers to pay in crypto coins. Once you open pCloud, you can see a sync option where your can sync your local folders. you can add or make changes in these folders and save them to cloud storage that can be made available even while you are offline. If we need to add files to pCloud, you can drag the files from local and drop them in the cloud storage folder that is synced with local and is stored in the cloud.

• If you would like to upload files to the cloud, you can do file or folder upload directly from the internet that makes the files available in the cloud and then through synchronization in your system.

• You can share files with others with the help of invite links of pCloud storage or sending links of files or folders to them directly. This makes them view the files and download it to their local. Also, if needed, you can provide download or upload links to others which helps them to retrieve files into their system. A nice option is that you can customize the look of the page links you share for your clients.

It’s also important to mention that you can backup your WordPress website and your social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram and Picassa). Backing up other cloud storages is also available (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive).

Instant Synchronization

The magic of pCloud is the instant file synchronization between all of your computers, phones, and tablets. Any number of devices can be synchronized with the same pCloud account that can be used to make changes to files in the system.

All you need to do is install the pCloud desktop application – pCloud Drive – and sign in using the same login credentials on all your devices. If you’ve already installed pCloud, simply adding files to your pCloud Drive folders will immediately sync your data on all of your devices. Now all your uploaded data is accessible by you from any other computer, smartphone, or tablet that also has pCloud installed.

Sharing Files

Sharing large files is easy and simple with pCloud. You can choose among several file sharing options:

• Shared links – send files to colleagues, friends and family by generating a link. Your recipients will get an instant preview from their browser, even if they don’t have a pCloud account. For extra security, you can protect your links with a password or set an expiration date.

• File requests – collect files from other people directly to your pCloud account. Your recipients will be able to upload files without getting access to any of your files. Everything will be organized in one place for your convenience.

• Direct links – share files/folders with others, directly. The Public folder is a special folder in your account you can use to generate direct download links, host static HTML websites and embed images.

• Invite to folder – share private folders with other pCloud users. Control the levels of access by setting “View” or “Edit” permissions. Once the users accept your invitation, they will be ready to start collaborating with you.

Pricing

pCloud features four types of plans. Let us check them out.

• Monthly Plans: 500 GB storage for $4.99 and 2 TB storage for $9.99

• Annual Plans: 500 GB storage for $47.88 and 2 TB storage for $95.88

• Lifetime Plans: 500 GB storage for $175 and 2 TB storage for $350

• Family Lifetime Plan: 2 TB storage for $500 (5 Users)

Check the latest pCloud Pricing here.

Security

Every single file is divided and stored in 15 different racks and servers. The system is live with up to 5 racks/servers down. To guarantee your files’ safety, pCloud uses TLS/SSL encryption, applied when information is transferred from your device to the pCloud servers. You can also optionally subscribe to pCloud Crypto which encrypts your files client-side. That means nobody but yourself is able to access those files, not even the cloud storage administrators or government authorities.

pCloud Crypto is the thing you should pay attention to here. In fact, pCloud is the first cloud storage provider to offer both client-side encryption and server-side encryption. You might ask yourself, what are the advantages of that? Why not simply do client-side encryption across all files and with that disable any sort of access by the government authorities? There’s one big downside. Encrypted files can’t be accessed by anyone. Even the servers and processors don’t understand the data. That way all possible applications such as image previews, playing videos and music directly in the cloud, previewing documents,… aren’t possible.

pCloud uses 256-bit AES encryption for per-file and per-folder keys. For users’ private keys they use 4096-bit RSA.

It is for that reason that pCloud has both the client-side encryption (zero-knowledge) where you can place your important files and the server-side encryption where you can place music, videos and other stuff. That is if you wish to view them directly in the cloud. You can still opt-in to upload everything to your Crypto folder and unlock that whenever you need it.

They’re fully GDPR compliant. They are also compliant under the ISO 9001:2015 – Quality Management Systems (QMS) and ISO 27001:2013 – Information Security Management Systems (ISMS).

pCloud also offers two-factor authentication.

Conclusion and Last Cool Feature

One of the best things about pCloud is that they don’t use the storage of your PC to host files. With pCloud Drive, you have access to the files that are actually in the cloud. You can always “favourite” your files and that way store them for offline usage.

Finally, there is also a new pCloud feature called pCloud Pass. pCloud Pass helps you keep your passwords and gives you instant secure access to them on all your devices. Log in to sites and fill forms with a single click. Unlike traditional password managers that store your passwords in plaintext, we use a military-grade encryption algorithm to store your passwords in the most secure way possible!