Comparison · 2026-07-20 · 10 min read
People rarely go looking for something else because they woke up curious. Usually there was a moment: a storage-full email at the worst possible time, a price change nobody asked for, a shared folder that quietly stopped being shared, or the slow realisation that a company you have never spoken to holds every photo of your family and every contract you have signed. Whatever the moment was, the search that follows is almost always the same one — what else is there?
The honest answer is that there are only four genuinely different models, and most of the options you will read about are variations inside one of them. Once you can see the four, choosing gets a lot easier, because you stop comparing feature lists and start comparing what happens when things go wrong.
The four models, and what each one actually fixes
1. Another mainstream provider
Switching from one large provider to another is the easiest move and the least meaningful one. You get a different interface, maybe better pricing this year, and the same fundamental arrangement: a company owns the account, sets the terms, can change the price, and can suspend access. If your problem was “I do not like this app”, this fixes it. If your problem was “I do not want a company to be the single point of failure for my files”, it changes nothing.
2. A privacy-first provider
This is the category of services built around end-to-end encryption, where the provider stores ciphertext it cannot read. It is a real improvement and it solves a real threat — a provider-side breach or a curious employee no longer exposes your content. What it does not solve is availability and account risk: the company still runs the service, still owns the account, and if it shuts down or locks you out, encryption does not get your files back. We go into what the encryption labels actually mean in Encrypted Cloud Storage: What “Encrypted” Really Means.
3. Self-hosting
A machine you control, running software you chose. Maximum sovereignty, and the only model where nobody else has any say at all. The catch is that you have quietly become the operations team: backups, disk failures, power, remote access, security updates, and an honest answer to what happens if the building floods. It is a genuinely good answer for people who enjoy it, and a genuinely bad one for people who do not. We costed it out properly in The Real Cost of Running Your Own Cloud.
4. Decentralized storage networks
The newest model, and the one that changes the shape of the problem rather than the branding. Your file is split into redundant pieces, spread across many independent operators, and the fact that it is being stored is recorded publicly on a blockchain. There is no account to suspend, because there is no account — access is tied to a key you hold. You pay the network directly for the space and the time you want, rather than renting a plan. Walrus Drive is a browser interface to one of these networks; How It Works walks through what happens to a file when you upload it.
| Mainstream provider | Privacy-first provider | Self-hosted | Decentralized network | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who can read your files | The provider, in principle | Only you, if end-to-end | Only you | Anyone, unless you encrypt first |
| Who can cut off access | The provider | The provider | Nobody but you | Nobody |
| What you pay for | A monthly plan tier | A monthly plan tier | Hardware, power, your time | Bytes × duration, up front |
| Cost to get data out | Usually free, sometimes throttled | Usually free | Free | Free to read |
| Single point of failure | The company | The company | Your hardware | None by design |
| Who does the ops work | Them | Them | You | The network |
| Sharing and collaboration | Excellent | Good | Varies | Basic — links, not live editing |
| Best when you want | Convenience | Confidentiality | Total control | Durability and independence |
The question that actually decides it
Ask what you are trying to survive. That single question sorts almost every case.
- Surviving a nosy or breached provider — pick end-to-end encryption, or encrypt the files yourself before they leave your machine.
- Surviving a company decision — a price rise, a policy change, an account suspension, a shutdown — you need a model where no company sits between you and your data. That is self-hosting or a decentralized network.
- Surviving your own hardware — fire, theft, a dead drive — you need copies somewhere that is not your house. Self-hosting alone does not solve this; self-hosting plus off-site copies does.
- Surviving time itself — data you want readable in ten years — you need something that keeps existing without your continued attention, and a clear renewal plan. See Cold Archives.
- Surviving nothing in particular, you just want more space cheaply — honestly, a mainstream plan is fine. Not every file needs a philosophy.
Most people do not need one replacement. They need two tiers: a convenient one for the working files they touch daily, and a durable, independent one for the things that would genuinely hurt to lose.
Where a network-based option fits — and where it does not
Being straight about this matters more than a sales pitch. A decentralized network is excellent for files that must remain available and verifiable without depending on anyone: archives, legal and financial records, research datasets, media masters, build artifacts, anything you want to still be able to prove you had. It is a poor fit for a live shared folder where four people are editing the same document all afternoon. That is not what it is built for, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
Two more things worth knowing before you try it. First, a public network stores exactly the bytes you hand it, so anything private should be encrypted on your own machine first — the guarantee on offer is durability and verifiability, not secrecy by default. Second, you pay for a chosen duration rather than a monthly plan, which means the cost is predictable and yours to control, but you do have to renew data you want to keep. You can put your own numbers into the calculator on the pricing page and see the live network cost before committing to anything.
If you want to feel the difference rather than read about it, storing one real file end to end takes a couple of minutes and no account: connect a Sui wallet, pick a file, see the exact cost, approve it. Open the dashboard and try it with something unimportant. Understanding a model by using it once beats another comparison table — including this one.