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Some pCloud links

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/27

For my link archive (Swiss pCloud is GDPR conformant, has European servers in Luxembourg, supports Windows/MacOS/Linux/Android/iOS and various browser extensions).

Before the lists of links: note that cloud storage is not a back-up (despite many of them trying to lure you into thinking they are), so note two things:

  1. Backup stuff in multiple places.
  2. A backup is only a backup if you can prove that a restore from backup functions well.

The links:

I asked a few questions because things weren’t always clear ([Wayback/Archive] @pcloudapp @jpluimers – Twitter Search / Twitter):

And via [Wayback/Archive] keep pcloud in sync with google drive – Google Search:

[Wayback/Archive] How to make a full Google Drive backup in 3 steps – The pCloud Blog

All started because Google Drive killed local syncing of content shared with me:

There is of course a Reddit board:

Note pCloud has specials every now and then.

For instance, recently there was this special on May 15 (International Day of Families – Wikipedia):

From the table below, I inserted the EUR prices at 20230822 with the above “back to school” discount:

Plan: Monthly/Yearly(Discount) Lifetime Normal/Discount(Superdiscount) Time to Break Even
Premium 500GB Lifetime EUR 4.99/59.88(49.99) 500GB for EUR 570/199 one-time payment 10/4 years
Premium Plus 2TB Lifetime EUR 9.99/119.88(99.99) 2TB for EUR 1140/399 one-time payment 10/4 years
Custom 10TB Lifetime not available 10TB for EUR 6,000/1,190 one-time payment Not comparable to annual plan
~5.3/3.0 times 2 TB plan
2TB pCloud for Family Lifetime not available 2TB for EUR 1700/595(399) one-time payment; up to 5 users Not comparable to annual plan
~1.5/1.0 times individual plan
10TB pCloud for Family Lifetime not available 10TB for EUR 7600/1499(1049) one-time payment; up to 5 users Not comparable to annual plan
~1.3/1.2 times individual plan

Note the EUR prices effectively usually are larger than the USD prices as the EUR usually is a stronger currency but that is not reflected in the prices.

Lifetime controversy

There is debate on lifetime subscriptions (actually: 99 years) being a scam or not, but especially with the discounts, they are only a few times more expensive than a yearly subscription. If you trust a Swiss company to exist for another 4 years, it might be worth it.

Some links:

  • [Wayback/Archive] mcread on X: “@jpluimers I got the “lifetime” thing some years ago, … but there’s waay too much anxiety about waiting to see when they’ll go bankrupt … after all this time I wish I didn’t spend the money and maybe gave it to a sustainable business yearly …”
  • [Wayback/Archive] pCloud Lifetime Deal – Do They Worth the Big Amount of Money (March 2023)

    This isn’t an “infinity” option but instead, a pCloud Lifetime deal that’s good for 99 years.

  • [Wayback/Archive] What Is pCloud Lifetime & How Does It Work? [Worth It in 2023?] (modified to include Yearly Details and fixed the 500GB calculation):
    Plan: Monthly/Yearly Lifetime Details Time to Break Even
    Premium 500GB Lifetime $4.99/$49.99 500GB for $199 one-time payment 34 years
    Premium Plus 2TB Lifetime $9.99/$99.99 2TB for $399 one-time payment 4 years
    Custom 10TB Lifetime 10TB for $1,190 one-time payment Not comparable to annual plan
    2TB pCloud for Family Lifetime 2TB for $595 one-time payment; up to 5 users Not comparable to annual plan
    10TB pCloud for Family Lifetime 10TB for $1,499 one-time payment; up to 5 users Not comparable to annual plan

    …

    There’s a limit of 99 years mentioned in the fine print, which for most of us equals a lifetime. You’ll never lose access to your storage if you don’t cancel your account, and pCloud doesn’t impose penalties for inactivity.

    …

    The product is good, I’m happy with it. Paying €350 for 2TB of good storage for life isn’t a ridiculous price, I paid €100 per year for that with Sync.

    Pretending this price implies a 65% discount is pretty dubious. The Lifetime plan hasn’t been sold for €980 at least in the 1-2 years I’ve been seeing their ads.

  • [Wayback/Archive] Thoughts on pCloud and other one-time-payable cloud storage services : DataHoarder has various opinions, so I quoted a few:
    • Remember that lifetime subscriptions don’t last for your lifetime, but for the lifetime of the service, which is 7suslly very short.
    • The other thing you might want to consider is B2 or Wasabi (they don’t have minimum data size requirements as far as I know) where 100GB will be really cheap (yup, monthly fees but Wasabi does not charge for egress). Plus, you can get a free tool like Duplicacy or Duplicati to backup to cloud: www.vmwareblog.org/single-cloud-enough-secure-backups-5-cool-cross-cloud-solutions-consider/.
    • Google and some other can be mounted by using tools like Rclone. Works fine.
    • PCloud’s Linux Support is good and not all cloud providers offer that. That was also the reason I went with pcloud.
      I got a “lifetime” subscription about 1 3/4 years ago and it has served me well. Availability is good. Speed is good and the client is OK. A Kernel Upgrade broke the pcloud application for a few weeks but it got fixed eventually. I am running arch though and kernel changes probably only affect people running on the bleeding edge.
      Concerning the business model: it is to be expected that they will not survive forever (but will Dropbox?)…..
      One thing I would also like to highlight for pCloud is the ability to store your data on European servers only.
    • pCloud is ok. been around almost 10 years and the company is turning a profit.
      TechCrunch reported it in 2019. I happened to see your question while researching the same thing. techcrunch.com/2019/04/16/dropbox-challenger-pcloud-just-became-profitable

      [Wayback/Archive] Dropbox challenger pCloud just became profitable | TechCrunch

    • Don’t recommend personally

      [Wayback/Archive] So pCloud just terminated my account looking for another good cloud storage option : privacytoolsIO

      • I had even bought a 2 TB lifetime option along with the crypto.
        …
        I just got flagged for breaking TOS. Couldn’t even appeal it. So beware to anyone using pCloud
      • pCloud has the same policy as MS for OneDrive and will ban your accounts if they violate their TOS. They take it one step further and ban/suspend for “pornographic… or otherwise objectionable”; that’s very broad and quite dangerous given that you could invest close to 1,000 for a lifetime account. In the comment section of a review, their representative said that they have bots scrumming through your images checking for content which violates TOS
        …
        Top everything off with the server being hosted in the USA while advertising to be a company based out of Switzerland.
      • I suggest encrypting the data, they won’t see what you are storing.
        Rclone supports pCloud, you could add an encryption layer with Rclone.
      • +1 for Jottacloud. I use their unlimited option as offsite backup storage. But only with rclone and encryption enabled, so they can’t see the metadata of my uploaded files and then flag me for some bogus reason.
        I actually asked their support if they’re cool with that and they told me I’m good to go.
        Keep in mind though that the unlimited storage option will cap your bandwidth once you store more than 5 TB.
      • the system won’t know any difference about if you downloaded them from Apple store/Udemy directly or some piracy website. You should have been mindful about what files to store there. Also if you do, always encrypt the files that you think may be flagged as “copyright”
      • Our internal system scans via hash file organization method the encrypted in the server-side encryption blobs automatically, which blobs are imported in an internal database in advance, so our system will recognize when an account owns copy-right material, malware files, terror-related videos or child pornography and will block them immediately. We always inform you via e-mail notification about an account suspension. Your account isn’t deleted. You have 14 days to contact us and discuss the reason for the block. In the case that this content is proven to be legal – we will recover your account.

Queries

–jeroen

This entry was posted on 2024/05/27 at 12:00 and is filed under Cloud, Infrastructure, pCloud, SocialMedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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