14 DAY TRIAL // In case OneDrive is not exactly your cup of tea and you’re looking for a new cloud-based storage service that also works with Office 365, you might want to have a look at Box.
Already one of the top cloud storage solutions out there, Box recently launched a beta solution for Office 365, which basically enables users to quickly access documents stored in the cloud with productivity apps developed by Microsoft, including Word and Excel.
“Companies are looking for ways to get more value out of their information, and they're choosing platforms that make every employee more connected, productive and mobile - without compromising security,” Box said in the official announcement of the new app.
“With our new Box for Office desktop app integrations, you can easily open, edit, share and save any file from Box seamlessly within Word, PowerPoint and Excel.”
At the same time, Box is also working on a new application that would integrate with Office for iPad, thus trying to benefit from the growing popularity of Microsoft’s productivity solution for Apple tablets.
Microsoft Office for iPad is free of charge, but requires an Office 365 subscription in order to edit documents, so an application like Box for this particular platform could really come in handy to many users.
But replacing OneDrive with Box is clearly the toughest challenge, so why would anyone do that?
In terms of pricing, Microsoft’s OneDrive is clearly winning the fight, but Box claims that it offers enhanced security which isn’t yet available in other cloud services.
At this point, OneDrive comes with 15 GB of free storage space, but another 8 GB can be added to your account through certain settings, such as configuring your mobile phone to automatically upload your camera roll to the cloud. An additional 100 GB can be yours for $1.99 a month.
Box, on the other hand, is a bit more expensive and offers only 10 GB of storage space at no charge. If you want to purchase 100 GB of extra storage space, you need to pay a monthly fee of $10.
At the same time, Box also comes with an upload file size limit of 250 MB, while Microsoft is working as we speak to remove any restriction in this regard. It appears that Microsoft might not limit users in any way when it comes to uploading large files, but the company is currently keeping details secrets and promised to share more information at a later time. Until now, uploads on OneDrive were limited to 2 GB.