Oliver Radcliffe
Start with what you actually need to store
Most small businesses underestimate how much space they use, then discover the truth halfway through a migration. Before you compare plans, spend twenty minutes on a rough inventory. It is the single most useful thing you can do, and it stops you paying for two terabytes when you need two hundred gigabytes.
Open your file manager and check the size of your main folders. Look at your design assets, photo libraries, video exports, accounts archives and any database backups. Add twenty per cent headroom, then think about how quickly that figure changes. A firm that photographs properties will grow storage far faster than a copywriting studio.
- Documents and spreadsheets: usually measured in megabytes. Rarely a problem.
- Images and design files: the real driver for most small creative businesses.
- Video and audio: the fastest way to burn through a terabyte.
- Automatic backups: often double your total, because many services keep multiple versions of every file.
Write the number down. You will refer to it constantly.
Read the storage limits properly
Cloud storage plans rarely mean what the headline suggests. A generous allowance often applies per user, so a team of six can end up with six separate pools rather than one shared pot. Some providers pool everything across the organisation, which suits small teams far better because one heavy user can draw on the space nobody else is using.
Watch for these details before you commit:
- Pooled versus per-user allowances: pooled storage is almost always the better fit for a team of two to twenty.
- Version history retention: a neat feature, but old versions count towards your total in some services and not others.
- Deleted file retention: files sitting in the bin still occupy space for thirty or ninety days.
- Upload and download limits: some plans throttle or cap transfers, which matters if you routinely share large files with clients.
- What happens at the limit: some services stop syncing entirely, others just stop accepting new uploads. The first is far more disruptive.
If your business is close to the boundary, buy the next tier up. Spending an extra few pounds a month is cheaper than a morning spent clearing space while a client waits.
Sharing controls that protect client work
This is where cheap plans and business-grade plans part company, and it is the area freelancers most often overlook. Consumer-grade sharing means anyone with a link can view your file forever, with no record of who opened it. That is fine for a holiday photo album and completely unsuitable for a client's financial records.
Look for sensible, granular controls:
- Expiring links: set a link to die after seven or thirty days automatically.
- Password-protected links: essential when sending anything commercially sensitive.
- Permission levels: view only, comment, or edit — granted per person rather than per link.
- Revoking access instantly: you should be able to remove a contractor's access in a couple of clicks.
- Audit logs: a simple record of who downloaded, edited or deleted a file, and when.
- Two-factor authentication: non-negotiable for any account holding client data.
If you handle personal data, check where the files are stored. Data held in UK or EU data centres makes your obligations under UK data protection rules considerably easier to manage, and it is a question worth asking before you sign up rather than afterwards.
What you are really paying each month
Advertised prices are usually per user, per month, billed annually, excluding VAT. That is four caveats stacked on top of each other, and the real cost can be double what you first expected. Work out your true monthly figure for the number of people who will actually need an account. A five-person team on an £8 per user plan is £40 a month, or £480 a year plus VAT.
Some practical ways to keep the bill sensible:
- Buy annual plans if cash flow allows. The discount is typically fifteen to twenty per cent.
- Count your seats honestly. Freelancers and contractors can often be given shared links rather than paid accounts.
- Check the exit cost. What does it take to download everything if you leave?
- Beware of add-ons. Extra storage blocks, e-signature tools and advanced security features are frequently priced separately.
- Revisit the plan annually. Storage tiers change, and so does your business.
Set a calendar reminder for the renewal date. Rolling onto a higher tier without noticing is a common and entirely avoidable expense.
Backups, security and getting your data back
Cloud storage is not a backup on its own. If you delete a file locally and sync runs, the deletion propagates everywhere. If ransomware encrypts your folder, the encrypted versions upload. Treat the cloud as one copy of three.
A simple arrangement that works for most small firms: keep files in cloud storage as your working copy, keep a local copy on a computer or external drive, and keep an offsite or offline copy that syncs weekly rather than continuously. Test a restore once a quarter so you know it actually works. An untested backup is a hopeful guess.
Before committing, ask the provider three plain questions: how long after I cancel can I still download my files, what format will they be in, and can I export everything in one go? A service that makes it awkward to leave is a service that will make it awkward to stay.
Moving across without losing a day's work
Migrations go wrong when they are done in one dramatic evening. Do it in stages instead. Start with a small, low-risk folder to confirm that permissions, links and sync behave as expected. Then move one project group at a time, leaving the old service running read-only for a month.
Tell your clients before you switch if sharing links will change, and update your email templates so nobody is left clicking a dead link. Rebuild your shared folders with the permissions you actually want rather than copying old habits. Finally, keep the old account alive until you are certain nothing has been missed, then cancel it properly and confirm in writing that your data has been deleted.
Choose the plan that fits how you work, not the one with the biggest number on the pricing page. A modest, well-configured setup with proper sharing controls will serve a small business far better than a sprawling one nobody quite understands.
