Whenever there's a talk about cloud storage, A LOT of people will say "buy a NAS and build your own" or "get an external drive and host your files on it". That completely misses the point of cloud storage—security and redundancy.
If your home floods, catches fire or someone robs it, you can say goodbye to your backup while same cannot happen to the cloud provider due to having exceptional security measures. Your files are also replicated on multiple servers, sometimes even data centers so if one goes down, there's always another that can serve you your files back. Also, the speed! With NAS, you're limited by your home speed internet connection and not everyone has gigabit speeds which means some might struggle to access their own NAS outside from home.
When you add electricity bill in equation, it really isn't worth it when you can get cloud storage so cheap these days with some cloud services offering lifetime plans.
Now that we cleared that out of the way, I'm using Filen.io & Google Drive with Filen.io is my main and cloud provider of choice. Why? It's end-to-end encrypted and entire project is open source. It offers very generous free tier (20 GB if you register through someone's referral link and additional 30 GB when you invite three other users). It has unlimited bandwidth (unlike MEGA and some other providers), has fast speeds and is made in the EU.
They also offer cheap lifetime plans (for now) which get additionally cheaper during Black Friday and they are stackable! You can literally get multiple 100 GB for 30€ each and buy them as many times as you wish. And yes, you still get 50 GB for inviting friends on top.
Just keep in mind: Filen.io is totally encrypted. You can lose access to your files if you don't save master key and change password (many people have already lost access to their files). Master keys are tied to your password and once you change it, you also change your master key for decrypting files. And while you still might gain access to your account, you could find the storage empty despite having files on it. Messed up, I know, but this is a cost of privacy.
If your home floods, catches fire or someone robs it, you can say goodbye to your backup while same cannot happen to the cloud provider due to having exceptional security measures. Your files are also replicated on multiple servers, sometimes even data centers so if one goes down, there's always another that can serve you your files back. Also, the speed! With NAS, you're limited by your home speed internet connection and not everyone has gigabit speeds which means some might struggle to access their own NAS outside from home.
When you add electricity bill in equation, it really isn't worth it when you can get cloud storage so cheap these days with some cloud services offering lifetime plans.
Now that we cleared that out of the way, I'm using Filen.io & Google Drive with Filen.io is my main and cloud provider of choice. Why? It's end-to-end encrypted and entire project is open source. It offers very generous free tier (20 GB if you register through someone's referral link and additional 30 GB when you invite three other users). It has unlimited bandwidth (unlike MEGA and some other providers), has fast speeds and is made in the EU.
They also offer cheap lifetime plans (for now) which get additionally cheaper during Black Friday and they are stackable! You can literally get multiple 100 GB for 30€ each and buy them as many times as you wish. And yes, you still get 50 GB for inviting friends on top.
Just keep in mind: Filen.io is totally encrypted. You can lose access to your files if you don't save master key and change password (many people have already lost access to their files). Master keys are tied to your password and once you change it, you also change your master key for decrypting files. And while you still might gain access to your account, you could find the storage empty despite having files on it. Messed up, I know, but this is a cost of privacy.
