Dropbox vs. Amazon Cloud Drive – Which one is Better? (A Detailed Comparison)

Amazon recently launched its Cloud Storage solution – Amazon Cloud Drive, And it is of-course meant to compete with Dropbox, which is currently the leader of cloud storage provider. A simple reason for this is its simplicity and it was the first of a kind to offer cloud service in such a non-geeky way.

Dropbox offers plenty of features but Amazon too has its own advantages over the previous. So is it better than Dropbox? Lets check out.

1. User Interface

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Dropbox

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Dropbox offers a very compact web Interface with a useful sidebar on the left showing information, tips etc, including a search bar too. I like its Tabbed interface for doing different stuffs like recovering deleted files or restoring an old revision of a file.

• Sharing files with others is one of its strongest feature. Select a file and get a shareable link.
• Multiple files can be downloaded at once in a zipped file
• Has a great desktop app which offers instantaneous syncing of files, which is a charm.

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Amazon Cloud Drive

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Now talking about Amazon, after creating an account, you’re welcomed by a CAPTCHA, asking you to fill it in order to continue. Looks like Amazon wants to confirm if a bot isn’t uploading files to their drives. Okay, done!

Unlike Dropbox, it offers a full-screen window experience for managing files and folders.

• How do I share files with others? It’s not possible. Atleast a shareable link for files is a must.
• Multiple files cannot be downloaded at once. So if I have several files and I want to download theme, I’ll have to choose ‘em and hit the download button one-by-one.
• No options for Account Settings.

It would have been better if the upload button was present at the top instead on the left sidebar because thats where I usually tend to look for buttons. Anyways, that’s my personal taste.

Winner: Dropbox!

2. Download and Upload Speed

I am behind a 2Mbit Internet connection which is sufficient for most of my needs. I tested both the services by uploading and downloading a 14.27 MB (.flv) Video. Here’s the statistics:

Although both Dropbox and Cloud Drive are based on Amazon’s S3 cloud services, Dropbox managed to give better speeds in both the cases.

Dropbox
Avg. Speed – Download: 201 KB/s | Upload: 53.3 KB/s

Amazon Cloud Drive
Avg. Speed –  Download: 130 KB/s |  Upload: 45.6 KB/s

 

Winner: Dropbox!

3. Plans and Pricing

When compared to Dropbox, Amazon provides a more flexible pricing system, with a total of 7 plans against Dropbox’s just 4.

Moreover, the plans are very cost-efficient and cost way less than what dropbox offers. For example, if I want to extend my storage by 100 GB, I’ll have to pay Dropbox $199 per year, but for Amazon, I only need to pay half the price of it – just 100 bucks.

Winner: Amazon Cloud Drive!

4. Features

Pros and Cons (in bullet style)

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Dropbox

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Pros	IT JUST WORKS! It’s simple, it ’s interface is neat and it doesn’t contain any crap. It preserves every single revision of files. Cloud Streaming” of music directly from the cloud. Files can be shared with others.
Cons	Files outside the Dropbox folder cannot be synced. No settings for File Permissions.

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Amazon Cloud Drive

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Pros	Songs purchased from Amazon Music store are saved directly to your Amazon Cloud Drive, never count toward your storage limit and are always stored free of charge. Brand Power.
Cons	No HTML based upload. Why amazon? Cannot share files and folders with other users. Dang! Account Management options are next to none. “Amazon Cloud Player” for streaming music from the cloud is limited to US customers only. Again, Why amazon, Why?

(P.S.: GigaOM has a nice review of Amazon Cloud Player, maybe you should check it.)

Winner: Dropbox!

5. Final Words

Dropbox – 3 | Amazon Cloud Drive – 1

Clearly the winner is Dropbox.

Currently, Amazon is in no state to compete with Dropbox. It lacks some essential features and most importantly, a desktop client. I cannot always stick to the browser to browse my files. The value added features of dropbox sets it apart from Amazon and every single of other cloud storage providers

However Amazon is focusing more on its Music integration, heavily orienting to music lovers. Looks like it wants to fight with Apple’s MobileMe?

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