I have been considering koofr as they offer 1TB lifetime for ~$180, their support is quick to respond, they are well reviewed, and they offer rclone support. What they are not is listed on PG, or the former website. I have read they are in Slovenia but elsewhere their data centre is in Germany, and I have not found any mention of an audit.
My intention is to encrypt my all data on my devices before transferring to the cloud, and as a redundancy to additionally always have 2 local copies of the same data. This offers me peace of mind using a non subscription service, which I understand may raise concerns they are more likely to fail, rather than Proton or Tresorit with a constant revenue stream.
Internxt, which were at least listed on the previous privacy website, have a similar lifetime deal though they do not support rclone.
Is koofr the best of the lifetime storage options? I had a terrible experience with pcloud so I will not consider them.
Just bear in mind that lifetime is often only as long as the company operates or chooses to fulfil this particular offer.
You don’t have to be an economy genius to see that a company cannot run forever on lifetime accounts only and more than one with especially good lifetime offers went bankrupt.
Indeed, though they do offer subscription services also and say that the lifetime offers will not be permanent.
Either way the point you have raised is why I will exercise a 3-2-1 backup and/or sync policy. I really want to avoid another subscription if possible.
I do already pay Proton for a VPN but the package I have is 500GiB.
IMO, don’t put your data on any lifetime centralized cloud storage, as that can never be real. I agree with the reason @Valynor gave on above.
On this particular use case, I would highly recommend Akord. It’s built on Arweave, which keeps your files on a decentralized chain for 200 years at minimum. I see this is the only way to put your data on the cloud forever reliably.
I don’t recommend Internxt for 2 reasons:
It removed the AppImage version of its Linux client for no reason. Now, it only provides .deb installer. While others try unifying their Linux support through unify packaging, e.g. Snap, Flatpak, AppImage, etc., Internxt is doing the opposite.
The coin (INXT) is not gaining any momentum at all. It currently sits at #1672 in the market cap. Basically, it’s a shit coin that could go away along with its services at any moment.
If you want to permanently store your file, Akord. For other use cases, Storj would be the most reliable, secure, and also the cheapest option out there.
Thanks for sharing, Akord have a very novel pricing model, which can essentially amount to a lifetime subscription fee, if after a number of years you are happy with the amount of permanent storage that has been credited to your account. Can I take it you can also manually add topups within the annual limit as the amount awarded for each subscription would not reach that?
I had heard of Storj during the crypto bull run but I was not very familiar with it. They also have a pricing model I have no experience with, which to sync 1TB from one device to the cloud ($7 egress), keep it there ($4 per month), and sync to another device ($7). I can see how this could be competitive, even with multiple syncs daily, especially if they have ‘delta sync’ for large files where small changes have been made? In the future if possible I would like to be able to backup VMs to the cloud, perhaps using Proxmox.
Separate to pricing, is there any particular reason you would recommend these services over Proton Drive or Tresorite, and do you know why they are not listed on the PG website?
I was not even aware Internxt is a crypo prolect. Have you any concern over Storj also being a cryptocurrency project, separate to the current trading price?
Personally I would prefer a deb to a snap, though I can appreciate the universality of a Flatpak or AppImage.
It depends on how much you want to use your permanent storage. Unlike other subscription-based cloud storage, your usage does not depend on your subscription status. Your permanent space is yours forever.
But I agree, it’s expensive. In this case, ArDrive would be a better option. Their pricing model is pay as you go at around $3 for 500 MB of permanent storage. Compared to what you would get on a monthly basis with Akord’s $9/month subscription plan, it’s a lot cheaper, but without a non-permanent space that’s included with Akord’s plan.
I don’t know
I think it’s also good to know that Adobe uses Storj for their Adobe Premiere Pro cloud, see here.
The delta/incremental sync part is on your side. I don’t think they have this one currently. I have Kopia setup on my part to delta sync my files with Storj. I also use rclone to sync my files for file sharing or when I need to open the files on mobile, but no delta sync here.
After I moved all my files to Storj, I never look back at any centralized cloud storage ever again. Especially with Tresorit, it doesn’t even have an open-source client. So, how could anyone know how it actually works BTS?
I am not the PG team, so I don’t know
IMO, the fact that it’s a cryptocurrency project is a plus, not a con. At least, you know the project’s momentum in public. Any manipulation would get caught really quick.
I prefer Snap over .deb, as it’s more secure due to sandboxing. Moreover, Snap is compatible with all the mutable Linux distros out there, not limiting to Ubuntu or Debian-based distros.
It’s 300 Euro for “lifetime” 2TB, honestly even if it doesn’t last forever it only needs to last 4-5 years to be good value (Mega for example is 100 Euro/yr for 2TB)
“Lifetime” is ambiguous. Company offering them never specified whos lifetime is it. Either lifetime of the company, lifetime of the subscriber, lifetime of a fruitfly etc etc.
I wouldn’t trust “lifetime” cloud with any important data. At most, its fine for random unimportant data but if they decide to whack it overnight, i wouldn’t want all my important stuff to be gone just like that.
IIRC, Filen representative said that they are analyzing lifetime orders in comparison with regular subscriptions, and evaluating if it’s sustainable. And if/when they realize they it is not, they will stop offering lifetime plan (but current users will, of course, still have it)
Cryptee is one of the best. You also have a like Google Docs PWA integrated for editing notes and creating documents. Is very cheap, they own the servers, they worked closely with Cloudflare and decided to use it (watch Techlore interview with the CEO), you have some fonts to choose, is a very well designed interface, you can read PDF and EPUB and automatically sync the page, you have a Photo managment, and is under the law of one of the few countries with the best privacy laws of the world (among others, as Islandia and Switzerland): Estonia. Try it! The CEO is also very attentive and answers questions in very detail and with a very good and relaxed communication style.
Last months they have introdued some great features: Templates, offline mode, etc., and have solve a lot of bugs (tho there are still some). They are planning great updates in the near future.
Also you have black mode to not hurt your eyes.
And they explain everything very good in their website, and IMO the main developer and the team are very reliable. I trust their encryption, even if it is a Web App.
Some drawbacks: bugs, slower than apps for uploading files and limited to 500 mb, not download all option (tho you can select all documents, files and photos easily), some metadata of some picture formats are not encrypted, in their TOS they can delete your account if you cannot pay in 30-60 days (is something to consider, for example, if you are an activist), and you must pay using card AFAIK, closed source in the server, altho the Web App is open source, no colaboration option
I agree with others about not trusting lifetime storage options.
For me, I’d rather use an established big player than a no name service since there’s less risk that I’ll lose access to my data, which is kind of the whole point of off-site cloud storage. I also don’t really trust any cloud provider regardless and would want to use client side encryption either way. My threat model is not so severe that i need to avoid big tech from knowing i exist, but rather, I’m just trying to avoid giving them any useful data about me even if they did try to pry.
I mostly use OneDrive with Cryptomator. On Linux, ill use rclone or one of the third-party clients. Gnome actually added support for OneDrive into its online accounts feature and I’m now hopeful that KDE will do the same soon.
I buy Microsoft 365 Family. It gives you 6 accounts with 1 TB each, for a total of 6 TB. The retail price is $100/year, which is already one of the cheapest options. But you can usually find deals for 30-50℅ off making it hard to beat. You can also buy it from third-parties without having to give Microsoft payment details (you get a product code that you enter into your account). Microsoft will let you add up to 5 years of subscription using product codes at a time, so i just load up when i find a good deal. The only other cost is cryptomator on mobile, which is a one time fee that i would be using regardless.
For convenience, i also use Proton Drive (without cryptomator) for less important files that I’m not as concerned about but want easier access to. But i keep the bulk of stuff on OneDrive in encrypted vaults.
