IDrive is a cloud storage software that allows you to back up your PCs, Macs, and mobile devices through an online cloud interface. Whether you need to back up multiple devices or sync online files, backup software can come in handy. Despite the convenience of backup services, is IDrive all that it’s cracked up to be? By looking at the good and the bad, let’s find out if IDrive is the right software for you.
Comparing IDrive to The Best Cloud Storage Services
We reviewed dozens of cloud storage services on the market and narrowed them down to the top five. Despite not coming out on top, IDrive made our list as the best service for personal backups.
IDrive offers an affordable system that allows you to back up an unlimited amount of devices with file syncing and security. Here is where IDrive sits among our other recommendations:
- Sync – Best cloud storage service for most
- pCloud – Best long-term storage solution
- Icedrive – Best for personal cloud storage
- IDrive – Best for personal backups
- Zoolz – Best for automated backups from any device
We looked at each option to see who it’s best for, what features to consider, and how to find the best options for your needs. Want to scope out all of your options? See all of our top picks here.
IDrive: The Good and The Bad
Just like for all cloud storage services on the market today, there will be good and bad features to consider. However, after extensive research, we found that many users avoid IDrive due to its unreliability and poor customer support. With that said, we did find some decent features too, so before you make your decision, let’s look at both sides of the spectrum.
The Good
Affordable Backup System: IDrive is one of the more affordable backup services on the market today, starting at $59.62 per year, with frequent 50% off sales. And at this affordable price, IDrive seems to offer some strong features within its system, including the option to host unlimited devices on one cloud account.
If you are backing up data from multiple computers, IDrive offers to create a unique folder for each device to prevent overlapping data. You can also restore your data, get access to an unlimited amount of files, and manage computers remotely from any web browser.
Sync Online Files: Syncing files across multiple devices is the most convenient way to share with anyone you wish, and IDrive currently offers a real-time online file sync and share system. You can access your most critical data from any device through this syncing system, and you can choose to link any computer you wish to keep files in sync. Using its unique folder arrangement, IDrive allows you to add files to this folder to sync them in real time.
You can also sync files via the mobile app and web browser. Simply use the drag-and-drop or download button features to upload files with ease.
Security and Data Protection: Another seemingly nifty benefit of IDrive is the strong security and data protection it offers, with private keys and encryption networks. IDrive encrypts all data with a 256-bit AES on transfer and storage, and you have the option to set your privacy to the highest level by creating a custom private key for your account. World-class facilities and data centers currently host the IDrive application, so you know that your data is physically secure, too.
IDrive also has periodic third-party reviews of its network infrastructure to check for service vulnerabilities and breaches and utilizes Continuous Data Protection (CDP) features, which automatically recognize file changes and start the backup process in real time.
Comprehensive Mobile App: While not always necessary, IDrive does offer a comprehensive mobile app that is beyond convenient for anyone looking for cross-platform backup processes. It’s available for iOS and Android, and the IDrive mobile app lets you back up your mobile data, create an organized timeline with date and location, and sync files on the move. You can also view and access any synced files from your PC or Mac and gain collaborative access to share and restore files.
The current system requirements to run the IDrive mobile app include:
- iOS — 11.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone and iPad.
- Android — Version 4.0.3 and later.
Snapshots and Versioning: The IDrive Snapshots and Versioning features provide a historical view of data and retain up to 30 previous versions of all files backed up to your cloud account. IDrive Snapshots help you perform a point-in-time recovery on your most critical data if ransomware attacks your system. If your data does get infected, IDrive Snapshots allows you to select a timeline before the infection and restore it.
IDrive Versioning, on the other hand, allows you to retain previous versions of all of your backed-up files. The Versioning feature can help you restore entire folders to the earliest versions, even if you back up the files on multiple computers. IDrive also makes it easy to restore these versions through the Restore tab, where you can restore your data with just a few clicks.
The Bad
Poor Customer Support: Technology software should offer decent customer support, especially for cloud storage services, where you are most likely storing critical data and files. However, IDrive is heavily lacking in this department, as many users have complained that most of the time they tried to contact its customer support team, IDrive redirected them to an automated bot system that didn’t help with inquiries.
On the other hand, other users explained that when they finally reached a customer service representative, they would be on hold for up to four hours or never hear back for follow-ups. It also doesn’t help that users frequently said that many customer service reps were unpleasant to communicate with and would offer standardized responses that wouldn’t answer specific questions at all.
Slow and Unreliable: Cloud storage and backup services should run a fast system, but this doesn’t seem to be the case with IDrive, according to many user reviews. One user claims to have lost important documents during the syncing process, and when attempting to back up their files, it took two and a half weeks for IDrive to store 2.2TB of data. Even though IDrive offers two, five, 10, and 15TB of data storage, many users found it takes around one week to download a terabyte of data.
When it comes to unreliability, the majority of the reviews expressed that IDrive simply wasn’t doing what it claimed it could do. From backups to syncing files, many users were left disappointed because IDrive seemed to do the complete opposite of what it initially promised.
PC Backups Don’t Work: IDrive’s unreliability certainly ties into the issue of its PC backups not working properly or at all. As software that prides itself on providing reliable backups, it’s simply unacceptable when we found that nine out of 10 users faced complications with this specific feature. For example, many users complained that IDrive’s backup would stop working without warning, and error messages were common without reason.
Users also found that incremental and manual backups didn’t work either, leaving customers without a safety net. When users confronted the customer representatives with these issues, they were generally unhelpful and weren’t sure how to fix the issue.
Hard-to-Use Interface: Not only do most of the reviews claim that IDrive is unreliable and slow, but we found that many users agreed that its interface wasn’t user-friendly and was difficult to navigate. One user explained that the IDrive interface is clunky, and the functions on your device and mobile app don’t match, so it’s hard to figure out how to do the same actions on both. This user went on to say that IDrive doesn’t allow you to search for individual folders or trash, making it inconvenient to find the files you need.
Other users found that you also can’t rename or move a folder in either the app or the cloud interface, and you can’t clean out your archive on an external drive.
IDrive Pricing and Options
IDrive offers a pricing plan for everyone, no matter how many files you need to back up or sync, including a free forever Basic package that offers up to 10GB of storage. Alongside the free plan, there are three different pricing tiers you could choose from, including IDrive Personal, IDrive Team, and IDrive Business.
Here’s a general overview of each plan to help you choose:
IDrive Personal
- $59.62 for the first year, renews at $79.50 per year.
The IDrive Personal plan includes one user, unlimited computers, and 5TB of storage and scales to 10TB for an additional fee. This plan would be helpful for an individual who needs to back up personal files on multiple computers and devices. You also get continuous data backup, syncing options, collaboration options, and a Linux backup.
IDrive Team
- $74.62 for the first year, renews at $99.50 per year.
The IDrive Team plan includes five computers, five users, and 5TB of storage and scales up to 35TB for an additional fee. You get the same features included in the IDrive Personal plan, as well as user/group functions, single sign-on, and business compliance. The IDrive Team plan would be a nice addition to a small team looking for extra storage and backup space.
IDrive Business
- $74.62 for the first year, renews at $99.50 per year.
The IDrive Business plan includes unlimited users, computers, servers, exchange, SQL, and NAS devices, with 250GB storage that scales up to 5TB for an additional fee. You get access to most of the same features as the IDrive Team plan, except you get a server cloud backup with IDrive Business. The IDrive Business plan could be an option for small businesses that need more security and storage.
While IDrive doesn’t offer a traditional free trial, it does have a free forever plan and offers a 50% discount for students.
IDrive BMR Cube
If you are looking for an affordable, custom-made solution that protects against malware, the IDrive BMR Cube might be a product worth investing in.
Whether you need to recover an entire system or prevent downtime in your small business, the IDrive BMR Cube is a nifty product that claims to do just that. Powered by Intel NUC hardware, the BMR Cube is fast, making it easy to resolve conflict in no time.
IDrive’s BMR Cube uses snapshot-based image restoration to protect your system against ransomware and recovers files through virtualization without any additional hardware. With two-tier protection, IDrive stores your data on the BMR Cube and a secondary cloud system.
You can access and manage the BMR Cube from anywhere via the cloud. You can schedule backups, create restore points, and manage notification settings with the Cloud Manage feature.
As a product built for multiple industries, the BMR Cube is business compliant with legal mandates such as HIPAA, SOX, GLBA, and SEC. With built-in NAS datastores, you can create a network-attached storage system within the cube and enable collaboration processes.
With the BMR Cube, you can also restore your entire computer and access functions through a centralized web console for ease of use.
Currently, IDrive offers three different versions of the BMR Cube, including:
- 2TB Cube — $99.50 per month. Includes unlimited licenses, 16GB RAM, 2TB local storage, 6TB virtual storage, and 2TB cloud backup.
- 4TB Cube — $149.50 per month. Includes unlimited licenses, 16GB RAM, 4TB local storage, 10TB virtual storage, and 4TB cloud backup.
- 7.5TB Cube — $225.00 per month. Includes unlimited licenses, 32GB RAM, 7.5TB local storage, 12TB virtual storage, and 7.5TB cloud backup.
The IDrive BMR Cube is only available in the US, Canada, and the UK. Each product offers a 30-day evaluation period.
IDrive Compute
Not only does IDrive offer cloud storage, but it also offers virtual private servers for 25 locations. Hosting more than 4,000 servers across multiple data centers and utilizing 500 petabytes of storage, IDrive Compute can provide dedicated resources on a server with multiple users.
IDrive Compute allows you to scale your operations with its distributed data center regions. From Los Angeles and Boston to London and Amsterdam, you can select a region and perform a speed test. IDrive Compute promises a 99.99% uptime for instances and block storage volumes and offers an NVMe SSD, which is enterprise-grade hardware.
You can do many things with IDrive Compute, including real-time communication, content delivery, remote monitoring of assets, cloud gaming, and patient monitoring, to name a few.
With a fast-performing computing infrastructure, you can scale your business and run extensive workloads with rapid connectivity and low latency. You can create compute instances with a Linus OS that provides instant provisioning, expandable NVMe storage, firewall-based access, centralized management, edge computing, and VM backup.
IDrive offers a pay-as-you-use pricing model and includes high-grade security and managed infrastructure and support. While IDrive doesn’t disclose pricing for this product on its website, you can get 90% off of your first year.
How IDrive Ranks
IDrive offers an affordable system with a wide range of features and add-on services. While it wasn’t our top pick for the best cloud storage services, we do recommend IDrive, especially for personal use.
IDrive offers an affordable backup system with seamless online file syncing, though some home users found that it simply didn’t live up to the hype. However, the mobile app seemed to work fine for many, and there were hardly any complaints about the security side of things.
For businesses, IDrive is a safe choice. With robust cloud storage, security, and compute options, you build out whatever your company needs. We ranked it highly among other cloud services because of the good balance of customizability with user-friendliness.
