Free Unlimited Online Backup: Pros and Cons

Free storage backup solutions can be attractive for home users.

Certain free online backup providers could entice you by offering several good features for a trial period; however, upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription would be a much better decision. A free subscription will never have all the options that are included in full versions.

Here are some cons regarding free internet services.

Be careful with the word "unlimited" as it may not mean that it has no limits. It is important to investigate what free unlimited online backup means before joining a service.

For example, a provider may be promoting "free unlimited storage", meaning that you can store unlimited amount of data on their servers; however, there is a limitation to the size of each document which could be between 200 or 300 MB. So in other words: they will give you free unlimited storage, but your files should not exceed 300 MB. You must therefore read well before signing up.

Another example could be companies offering backups for free on unlimited number of computers, but the storage space that is assigned to you is not enough to cover all your computers, in other words, the storage space they give could be something between 2 to 5 GB. You should then consider what they imply as unlimited.

Free unlimited online backup services will not give you all of the features that paid services have.

For example, with a free account you may be able to back up one time every day, while if you pay you can schedule backups several times per day.

Another con is seeing advertisements all over the window in your free account. This could be annoying for some individuals.

Phone, chat and email support would be another limitation. Professional or business class customers could have priority over those that are given the offer to freely backup over internet.

Free unlimited online backup services may not always have support for file sharing, which is a very convenient feature that some small businesses would look for if they want to back up online, because some managers may have their employees save important files to a shared folder using a website or URL to benefit some individuals within a group or network that will have access to it later.

Free unlimited online backup users may also encounter poor or no logs of all the activity that is generated. This is convenient to manage an account and track who deleted or edited a file at a given moment.

Let's look into some pros about free and unlimited backup service.

File availability is perhaps one of the greatest benefits. If you need access to files but you don't have your own laptop or you can´t take it everywhere, or perhaps you are always forgetting your USB flash drive, then you can sign up for a free service and avoid having to send yourself an email with the information you need. Instead you will be able to retrieve this information wherever you are in the world once you have an internet connection available.

Some free services will also let you schedule your backups. This is a great feature of paid services which you can enjoy for free depending on the provider that you select.

Being able to share very large files, pictures, music and documents with ease will be another great benefit for this service.

The best providers also offer very high levels of security and data encryption for your files, although you are using a free unlimited online backup solution. This is an excellent way for backing up important but not necessarily highly confidential data.

Free online backup services are useful when you are lacking of funds to pay for online backup services, mostly if you need your project to continue running. On the other hand, you can have peace of mind that files are not only residing locally on your computer.