Small businesses need the Cloud more than ever. The Cloud lets you access your data anywhere, on any device, and at any time. You can also easily automate tasks so your team can work smarter, not harder. In this guide, we’ll take a look at how to maximize the benefits of the Cloud for small businesses. We’ll start with an overview of what the Cloud is, then dive into different aspects that will help your business succeed. Finally, we’ll give you some tips on how to use the Cloud in order to grow your business—including tips on how to find the Best Cloud Server for Small Business.
Best Cloud Server for Small Business
The Cloud for Small Business: What it Is and What It Can Do.
The Cloud for Small Business is a digital platform that provides businesses with the ability to communicate, access data, and collaborate with colleagues from anywhere in the world.
The Cloud for Small Business benefits small businesses by providing them with the ability to connect with their colleagues on a global scale, as well as store and share data securely. Additionally, theCloud for Small Business can help businesses reduce costs associated with communication and collaboration, including emailing and transmitting large files.
Subsection 1.2 What are the Cloud for Small Business Benefits. The Cloud for Small Business benefits include:
– being able to connect with your colleagues from anywhere in the world
– reducing communication and collaboration costs
– storing and sharing data securely
– using the Cloud for Small Business to connect with your colleagues on a global scale
Best Cloud Servers for Your Small Business
Dropbox
Dropbox claims to serve more than 300,000 teams through their Dropbox for business cloud-hosting solutions. Expedia, Under Armour, Spotify and National Geographic Channel are a few of the well-known brands in Dropbox’s esteemed clients list.5 Beyond the cross-platform sharing, storage, sync, backup and seamless integration features, Dropbox allows file sharing even with users who don’t have a Dropbox account. The basic plan for individuals is free, offers 2GB of storage and comes with Microsoft 365 integration, allowing one to edit files directly through Dropbox. The Plus plan for individuals offers 2TB of free storage.6
Dropbox. “Dropbox Individual Plans.” The Standard Business plan offers 5TB of storage, with a standard charge of $15 per user per month for at least three users. It also offers full audit records of user activities, sharing, and controls. Business users get priority dedicated support.
Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Hosting is an excellent option for a small business cloud server. Known as AWS’s main competition, Google Cloud has millions of users and has many outstanding features for small businesses. Some features include its excellent support team, security, and continued network expansion.
The Google Cloud support team is reachable 24/7. Similarly, users with the Premium support plan can expect responses within 15 minutes, year-round.
As a result, this platform is constantly growing and offers encryption, independent verification, and more to make you feel safe and secure.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon’s AWS offers a wide range of cloud hosting services. Plans include Pay as you go, Pay less when you reserve, Pay even less per unit by using more, Pay even less as AWS grows, and Custom pricing. “Pay as you go” allows one to pay only for the resources actually used, without any long term commitments or upfront costs. The “Pay less when you reserve” plan allows one to invest in reserved capacity, and later get discounts and savings. “Pay even less per unit by using more” allows one to get benefits of reduced costs with increased storage space and data transfer. “Pay even less as AWS grows” plan allows one to receive benefits when AWS optimizations result in reduced operational costs. Custom pricing, as you might expect, is for clients needing customized solutions.1 AWS claims its unique selling proposition (USP) in computation and dedicated application services, including website hosting, mobile data backup, business apps hosting and gaming. Pricing details vary widely across multiple product offerings, and one can start with AWS free tier to get a firsthand experience of services and expected costs.
DigitalOcean
A popular IaaS platform, DigitalOcean is known for supporting manager Kubernetes clusters. Some of the pros of DigitalOcean include its scalability, deployment, security, and storage abilities.
DigitalOcean is available globally. Therefore, it can be scaled up or down and move between virtual machines called Droplets. Consequently, users can also use Droplets to distribute traffic and can redirect network traffic easily.
This platform is considered incredibly secure because it uses a centralized billing system, private networking, firewalls, and two-factor authentication.
Microsoft OneDrive
The tech giant Microsoft offers its cloud hosting services through OneDrive. Individual users can opt for 5 GB storage for free, while higher capacities such as 100GB, 1TB, and 6TB cost $1.99, $6.99, and $9.99 per month, respectively.10 The business plans start at 1TB per user for $5 per month, and come with a free trial. Beyond the storage, cross-platform syncing and powerful searching are the key features of OneDrive. It has its own downloadable software to keep remote and local data in sync, and also supports many third-party apps to seamlessly work with cloud data. It also offers hybrid options that integrate your on-premises solutions with the cloud services offered by Microsoft.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure most commonly assists businesses with Paas, SaaS, and IaaS needs. One of the reasons so many users choose Azure is its speed. Azure makes creating and deploying applications, recovery data, and scaling a quick process. The number of premade tools, templates, and guides is readily available to users.
Another considerable benefit of this cloud server is that it provides flexibility in coding languages, locations, and service levels. As a result, having freedom and flexibility to choose your service level allows you to select the features you need without paying for the things you don’t.
To sum up, Azure’s security is also solid and comes with excellent disaster recovery capabilities.
Syncplicity
Syncplicity is a good cloud host for businesses who hold sensitive data and want their administrators to be able to control and limit access. Stored data is accessible across devices on multiple platforms, the interface is clutter-free, and there are robust reporting features to monitor content usage. For administrators, it allows implementing policies and controls for accessing data. It enables you to group users and apply different controls to those groups. It also facilitates restrictions based on the location of devices. The personal plan, which offers 10GB of storage, is free; the small business plan starts at $60 per user per year; the enterprise plan requires at least 25 users. All paid plans have 30-day free trial period.
Free Business Cloud Storage
1. Internxt
Internxt is a relative newcomer to the free cloud market and as such is willing to offer more than others in terms of capacity, as a clever marketing tool. 10GB is sufficient for most users. It was an easy choice to select this as the overall best free cloud storage offering.
The main pros of Internxt are that it is fast, easy to use, and secure. Even if you’re not that tech-savvy, you’ll find Internxt really simple to download, set up, and operate. Of course, you’d already expect all those things from the best cloud storage – so what makes Internxt stand out from the competition?
It’s the extra features, like facial recognition of your photos to help you organize them better, like the physical hard disk of files it will send you if you somehow lose all your stuff, like server backup offering a failsafe if you accidentally delete items you shouldn’t have.
And the fact that it is based in the EU gives you extra reassurance with regards to the privacy safeguards it offers.
2. Box
Free storage: 10 GB for one user, with 250 MB file size upload limitBox cloud
Additional plans:
Starter: $5/user/month for 1-10 users with 100 GB with 2 GB file size limit
Business: $15/user/month for 1000 GB with 5 GB file size limit
Enterprise: $35/user/month unlimited storage with 5 GB file size limit
Higher priced plans come with custom administrator roles, such as user and file statistics and history.
Features: Box is as much a content collaboration platform as a storage platform. The company has a variety of features to not only create content, but edit and manage content in a group setting.
3. Degoo
Degoo may not be a name you’ve heard of before, and indeed it was only formed back in 2019, but the Swedish firm has managed to make a big impact on the cloud storage scene in a very short timeframe nonetheless.
So what has made it attractive enough to quickly pick up a large user base (some 18 million-plus), and indeed be rated top of our best free cloud storage rankings? The headline storage capacity is certainly a big draw, as you get 100GB on the free tier, which is a huge chunk of space compared to rivals.
Even better, Degoo has partnered with us to give TechRadar readers double that storage for the first year. 200GB of cloud storage for nothing(opens in new tab) is a pretty impressive offering to say the least (although note that it will revert back to the standard 100GB after that initial year is over).
Other strengths of Degoo include 256-bit AES end-to-end encryption to keep your files secure, and two-factor authentication using your Google account. It also offers some nifty benefits for uploading and storing photos, including AI routines that are designed to help surface your best snaps.
Note that the free plan is advert-supported, and also lacks ‘zero knowledge’ encryption and some other features which are reserved for paying subscribers. There’s also a stipulation that if you don’t use your free account for 90 days, your files will be ditched.
Those caveats are a relatively small price to pay though, given the amount of free storage you’re getting here, and folks looking for an alternative to the big players won’t do any better than Degoo, certainly when it comes to capacity.
4. Amazon Web Services
Free storage: AWS offers a free usage tier, which are introductory plans to get your feet wet with Amazon’s cloud. On the storage side, both AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Block Storage (EBS) have free usage tiers. S3 offers 5GB of free storage, while EBS offers 30GB of free storage. The free usage tier requires a credit card to sign up.Amazon Web Services Free Usage Tier
Additional plans: The company offers literally dozens of services from compute instance types to storage tiers, databases and the largest third-party marketplace of services that have been certified to run on AWS’s cloud.
Features: Amazon Web Services is considered by many the market-leading IaaS public cloud because of its breadth and depth of cloud-based service offerings.
More information:
Amazon Cloud DriveFree storage: 5 GBAmazon Cloud Drive
5. Mega
Mega is a well-known cloud storage provider with a free plan that offers you a good chunk of storage. Since June 2021, it offers 20GB of data for free with the ability to win more through achievements.
Mega says that those running the free plan get the same fast transfer speeds as paying subscribers, with no throttling of performance for free users, which is good to hear.
This cloud storage operation is also transparent in that Mega makes the source code of the sync client available, so security pros can rifle through it and help to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities in the software.
The service offers end-to-end encryption for your files, with user-friendly apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as Android and iOS (the mobile apps also include voice and video chat facilities, along with messaging, which is also encrypted).
Overall, Mega has some impressive functionality on offer, and the free plan is one of the better ones out there, although the company should make it clearer that you don’t get to keep 50GB of storage forever on the free tier (but as mentioned, your storage amount is tied to completing the various ‘achievements’).
How to Get started with the Cloud for Small Business.
In order to use the Cloud for small business, you first need to be familiar with its features. In this section, we discuss how to get started and learn about the benefits of using the Cloud for small business.
Learn about the Cloud for Small Business Benefits
In addition to its benefits for small businesses, the Cloud can also be used by larger organizations. In this subsection, we explore how the Cloud can be used by large organizations and discuss some of its benefits.
Learn How to Use the Cloud for Small Business
Now that you are familiar with the basics of using the Cloud for small business, it’s time to learn how to use it in order to maximize its benefits! This subsection provides a walk-through on everything from setting up your ownCloud account to optimizing your website for online presence and more. We hope this guide has helped you get started with using the Cloud for small business and will help you continue growing your business in today’s digital world!
Tips for Successfully using the Cloud for Small Business.
When it comes to using the Cloud for small businesses, there are a few key tips to keep in mind. First, be sure to understand the benefits and limitations of using the Cloud for your business. Check out some of the following resources to help you get started:
-An overview of the Cloud by Google
-Cloud computing basics by Microsoft
-How cloud computing is changing enterprise IT by Forrester Research
-Why the cloud is good for small businesses by johnny baez and david meyer
-Cloud computing: Pros and Cons by Cloudwatch
-Cloud computing for small businesses – a primer by Benzinga
-Cloud computing tips for entrepreneurs – a roundup of five tips from twelve business owners
-5 ways to use the cloud for your small business by ezinearticles.com
Use the Cloud for Small Business Strategies
When it comes to using the Cloud for your small business, there are a few key strategies you can employ. First, consider what type of business you want to target: private or public? Next, determine how much storage space and processing power you need to run your business on the Cloud. Finally, decide which technologies and tools will work best for your business – technology like cloud-based applications or software that runs on premise (on your computer).
Get Started with the Cloud for Small Business
In order to get started with using the Cloud for small businesses, it’s important to have a solid plan in place and be prepared to start up quickly and efficiently. Start by creating aCloud account at www.cloudworldstatistics.com and explore some of the resources below:
-A guide to setting up a cloud-based business by Forrester Research
-How easy is it to set up a cloud-based business? Check out this infographic from Forrester Research
-How do I get started with clouds for my small business? Check out this guide from Microsoft
-Setting up your first Microsoft Azure instance – quick tips from an Azure expert
-Cloud computing essentials: Tips and tricks from big data pros at Dataquest
-Setting up an Azure cloud application – Deeper insights from an author of How To Build A Great Azure App
Conclusion
The Cloud for Small Business is a powerful tool that can help small businesses increase efficiency and grow their business. By starting to use the Cloud for Small Business, you can begin to improve your business and reach new heights. Use the following tips to get started on yourCloudforSmallBusiness journey!