The Best Cloud Storage Options for the iPad

Apple iCloud Drive

Apple's iCloud Drive is already part of the fabric of every iPad. iCloud Drive is where the iPad saves backups and is used for iCloud Photos.

iCloud Drive is an excellent all-purpose storage solution for the iPad. Although it shines in an iOS-centric world, it is somewhat limiting for users who share the workload between computers, tablets, and smartphones. It doesn't offer the same document editing, in-document searching, and other extras offered by the competition.

One area where iCloud rules the roost is refresh speed. It's lightning-quick to get a file you just popped into your iCloud Drive folder on your computer to show up on your iPad.

iCloud Photos is the easiest way to keep cloud backups of your photos if you use the iPad and the iPhone.

A free iCloud account comes with 5 GB of storage space, but some people with large photo and video libraries may want to bump up to the 99 cents-per-month 50 GB plan. Other plan options include $2.99 per month for 200 GB of storage and $9.99 per month for 2 TB.

Dropbox

Sometimes a platform tie-in is a significant bonus. For example, iCloud Drive works great with the Apple Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps. However, sometimes not having a tie-in to a major platform is an asset, which is the case with Dropbox.

While your cloud storage choice is ultimately about your needs, the Dropbox advantage is how well it works with all platforms. Do you use Microsoft Office? No problem. More of an Apple apps person? Not an issue.

Dropbox falls on the more expensive side. It offers 2 GB of free space and has a 2 TB one-user Plus plan for $9.99 per month and a 2 TB Family Plan (up to six users) for $16.99 per month. But the cost is worth it if you need the flexibility to work with any platform.

Setting up Dropbox on an iPad is easy and offers many advantages. Dropbox is one of the few cloud storage options that allow you to boot into Adobe Acrobat to edit PDF files on your iPad. For light editing, such as adding text or a signature, you don't need to load Acrobat.

Dropbox even comes with a document scanner, although if you have extensive needs in the scanning department, you should go with a dedicated app.

Dropbox has robust search capabilities and supports saving files offsite and sharing them across the web.

Box

Box is the closest to Dropbox in terms of being an independent solution. It has many of the same features as Dropbox, including the ability to save documents for offline use and to leave comments on documents, which is great for collaboration.

Edit text files on Box right in the iPad app, which is awesome. However, it doesn't allow PDF editing and isn't quite as ubiquitous in working with other apps like Dropbox.

One nice bonus of Box is the 10 GB of free storage, which is among the highest of any cloud storage service. Although the free storage plan limits the file upload size to 250 MB, it's attractive for moving photos ​off of the iPad.

The premium plan ups the file size upload limit to 5 GB and the overall storage to 100 GB for $10 a month.

Microsoft OneDrive

Microsoft's cloud storage options are ideal for heavy users of Microsoft Office. OneDrive interacts seamlessly with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and other Microsoft products. It also does a great job of marking up PDF files without leaving the app.

Similar to Dropbox and a few other cloud services, you can set OneDrive to back up your photos and videos automatically. It's fast when loading previews for all files except Microsoft files. For a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, OneDrive launches the Word or Excel app. This is great for times when you intend to edit the document, but for viewing documents, it makes the process much more awkward.

The best deal on OneDrive is the Microsoft 365 Personal plan that gives 1 TB of storage and access to Microsoft 365 for just $6.99 a month.