pCloud Review (2024)

All major platforms—Apple, Google, and Microsoft—provide cloud storage, as do established players like Dropbox and Box. It's reasonable, therefore, to wonder whether there's a need for more entries in the space. Yet services like pCloud pop up from time to time, looking to muscle in on the big boys' territory. Most of these present the same claims of letting you access files from anywhere, free up local storage, share documents, and collaborate on them. What distinguishes pCloud most are its generous pricing plans and no-knowledge local encryption option.

Pricing and Starting Up

Like Box, pCloud provides free accounts with 10GB storage. One service that's more generous in terms of free cloud storage is Google Drive, with 15GB gratis (though email and original-quality photos count against that). Apple and Microsoft give free accounts only 5GB, and Dropbox only provides a paltry 2GB. Newcomer Degoo offers a whopping 100GB to free accounts, with feature limitations.

pCloud's 500GB Premium plan costs just $3.99 per month, and $7.99 per month gets you 2TB. By comparison, Apple charges $9.99 for 2TB of cloud storage, as do Google and Dropbox. Microsoft includes 1TB of OneDrive storage with a $6.99-per-month Office 365 Personal subscription, and 6TB (1TB each for six users) with the $9.99-per-month Home subscription. Degoo offers a whopping 10TB for $9.99 per month.

pCloud offers two Lifetime plans: 500GB for $175 and 2TB for $350. That's forever (or as long as the company's in business). pCloud Business adds team organization and access management, file commits, and activity monitoring. Pricing is by negotiation for these business plans.

You can sign up for pCloud using your Facebook or Google credentials or by entering an email address and password. As with all file-syncing services, the setup process encourages you to download and install the pCloud Drive software, though it's not required. The service includes apps for Windows (XP through 10); macOS 10.9 or later; Linux (Ubuntu 14.04, Fedora 21, Debian 8 or later derivative distributions); iOS 9 or later; and Android 5.0 or later. There's also a Lightroom Classic plug-in and a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. With those, you can download web content directly to pCloud storage.

As you proceed through setup, you unlock more storage. For example, verifying your email address ups it by 1GB, uploading a file gets you one more, and so on. The small 9MB desktop installer requires you to OK the license agreement. It also installs DLLs in command-line mode and requires you to OK installation of driver software, presumably for creating a virtual drive on your PC. Finally, you see a window saying Setup Successful that includes a Launch button.

Once you launch the desktop client, you see a cloud-shaped system tray icon, similar to that of OneDrive, and a dialog box for signing into your account appears. Next, an introduction wizard takes you through the program and service's features.

Interface

Like OneDrive, Google Drive, and iCloud, pCloud adds an icon to File Explorer from which you can access its cloud-stored contents. Unlike those, it uses a standard drive icon, rather than a custom one to indicate it's not local storage. Even more puzzling is that the pCloud drive is called a Removable Disk in File Explorer—I haven't seen this behavior in any other syncing app. As with most cloud storage clients, clicking the tray icon takes you to the File Explorer window for its virtual drive. Right-clicking presents a menu with the following choices: Open Drive, Notifications, Preferences, Pause, and Exit. It also shows your storage usage and quota in a pie chart.

The Settings interface not only shows you your storage and account login, but also has tabs for Sync, Share, Crypto (not related to currency), and Settings. There are also Help and About options, the latter of which offers a check for updates button. The Account page shows a bar graph of your storage usage and quota, and lets you change your password or upgrade your account. The Speed tab in Settings lets you specify custom upload and download throughput limits in Kbps. You can also specify Unlimited speed or Auto.

pCloud also adds right-click context-menu choices in File Explorer: Copy to pCloud Sync, and Sync to pCloud. The first adds the selected file to a synced folder you set up previously, and the second actually creates a new sync. This is actually a shortcoming: The right-click options don't let you simply save a file or folder to pCloud storage, as you can with OneDrive and some other cloud storage services.

For example, for any file in File Explorer, OneDrive offers a simple Move to OneDrive choice to the context menu. Google Drive is closer to pCloud, only letting you sync a folder you've right-clicked; you don't see any right-click options for that service when right-clicking on an individual file. pCloud at least does let you add an individual file to an already synced folder, with the Copy to pCloud Sync choice.

All of the services—when you're inside their own top folder or virtual drive—let you share the item from a right-click menu choice. pCloud offers options to Invite to folder, Copy upload link, and Copy download link. These are just as they sound: the first opens a dialog asking for an email address for the contact you want to access the folder; the second opens a webpage from which a recipient can upload files to the right-clicked folder, and the third opens a webpage from which she can download the folder's contents.

The recipient will see a page similar to your own web pCloud interface, with thumbnails for photos. There are no options for password protecting these share links or setting expiration times when you share from File Explorer, but if you use the web interface (see next section), you do get those options. pCloud also offers an Offline Access choice for cloud-only files that you want downloaded to the local PC. That means that normally, you'll be saving space by having pCloud files only stored in the cloud, not taking up space on your disk.

Web Interface

The web interface does a clear job of showing you your uploaded files and media, even displaying photos and playing videos and music online. But it doesn't use right-click for things like getting a share link, as Google Drive and OneDrive do. Instead, you have to tap the overflow […] menu to get the options you'd normally get in a right-click context menu. For folders, those include Share, Rename, Copy, Move, Download Archive, Delete, and Folder Info. For files, you also get choices for viewing or playing media as well as downloading and seeing revisions.

You can also preview (but not edit) Office documents in the web interface. That's better than Apple iCloud Drive, which, though it has its own online office suite, doesn't even let you preview a .doc file. Google Drive and OneDrive are the only major online storage providers that let you edit office docs in the browser, though DropBox integrates smoothly with those to allow editing.

You can of course upload files to pCloud via the web browser. The feature supports drag-and-drop for multiple simultaneous uploads.

Syncing

The Sync tab in desktop settings lets you specify a local and cloud folder that you want synced. When I first selected the local folder, a cloud folder of the same name was automatically proposed. So you link a local folder to a folder in the pCloud cloud storage hierarchy, unlike SugarSync, which lets you map a folder on one PC to one on another. Google Drive's syncing is even less drastic, creating separate entries for each PC you sync folders from rather than letting you choose an existing one.

Revisions/Versioning

pCloud saves 30 days' worth of revisions for paid accounts, and 15 days' worth for free accounts. pCloud is actually deceptive for free users in this regard: I could preview earlier versions, but when I hit download on the page showing an older version, I'd simply get the last version. Google Drive, DropBox and OneDrive give free users 30 days with download privileges.

You can only see multiple file versions in the web interface. That's the way Google Drive works, but OneDrive and IDrive give you a right-click option in File Explorer that opens a dialog showing a file's version history, with no need to open the web browser and log in to your account.

In pCloud, versions are accessible from the bottom choice of the overflow menu in the browser interface. You get choices for previewing, downloading, opening the folder location, reverting to the selected version, and restoring it in place. It's a good set of options, more than Google Drive's three choices of Download, Keep Forever, and Delete. OneDrive adds printing, accessibility view, and translation options alongside Download and Restore.

Special Features

The Crypto Folder

The Crypto folder offers no-knowledge client-side encryption. That means that not even pCloud's staff can retrieve your files if you lose the password. The standard pCloud file storage does use TLS/SSL encryption, but that can be decrypted on pCloud's servers. Crypto options appear in the web interface and the installed program's settings panel. It's a paid-account-only feature, with a 14-day trial available for free users.

You get started with Crypto by entering a password and optional hint. The entry place for this tells you how strong your password is, which is helpful. A final confirmation dialog asks if you're sure you committed the password to memory. (If you write it down, you may as well have no password.) A folder called Crypto Folder is created, and the settings panel now displays buttons for Lock and Open Folder.

The folder still appears when it's locked, but you can't add or open anything to it. It would be even more secure if the folder were not even visible when locked. Further, the fact that you can access files in your Crypto over the web in a browser expands the attack surface for malware. You can reset your Crypto password in the web interface, but doing so deletes all your files.

Screenshot Saving

Just as with OneDrive, pCloud can save screenshots of your desktop to the cloud whenever you hit the Print Screen key (PrtSc on some keyboards) or a screenshot of the active window when you press Alt-Print Screen. This is a handy feature, letting you save image files of your screen in one action, without the need for opening an image app and pasting. There's even an option to copy a download link for the screenshot to the clipboard as part of the action.

Back Up Other Services

Another special option in pCloud is the ability to back up other existing cloud storage services—that includes social apps like Facebook and Instagram, but also Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive. Somehow, I find it more likely that those huge companies would be able to preserve my files, but I suppose if you want to move everything to pCloud from one of those, say, for its lower prices, that functionality could help.

The Backups page in the web interface lets you simply connect your pCloud storage with other cloud services. After you start the backup, you get a new folder in your pCloud Files called Backups, with subfolders for any services you add. The folder was quickly populated with my Dropbox files when I connected that account. The feature makes sense if you're switching to pCloud in addition to simply backing up the other account.

Mobile Apps

As mentioned above, pCloud offers mobile apps for Android and iOS. I installed the app on my iPhone X. Like all apps these days, it wants to send you notifications. After saying yes or no to that, you sign in with your login. The next option is to turn on auto-upload for photos and videos.

After that, you can simply view your cloud-stored folders in a familiar interface. You can see photos full screen; an information page shows you the file size, date, and dimensions, but not camera settings and object and geotagging like you get with the OneDrive and Google Photos apps. You can play music files, easily accessed via a button on the bottom of the main app interface.

You can also open your Crypto folder with the password. You can even view, but not edit, Word documents. Share links are available from the app for folders and files, and you can see activity for the links' usage. One thing you don't get is access to previous versions. Despite that, it's a well-rounded, perfectly respectable mobile client for cloud storage.

One annoying aspect of pCloud was that on my test PC, a lot of actions were accompanied by a flashing of all the desktop icons, similar to what happens when you install a new default program. It's not a major complaint and doesn't affect the program's functionality, but it's disconcerting.

Fine, But Not Outstanding

pCloud is a very reasonable service: reasonable pricing, wide device support, media playing, and a local encryption option recommend it. But it's just not as integrated with the OS or as full-featured as our Editors' Choices for cloud storage and syncing, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.