What is a cloud service?
The term "cloud services" refers to a wide range of services delivered on demand to companies and customers over the internet. These services are designed to provide easy, affordable access to applications and resources, without the need for internal infrastructure or hardware. From checking email to collaborating on documents, most employees use cloud services throughout the workday, whether they’re aware of it or not.
Cloud services are fully managed by cloud computing vendors and service providers. They’re made available to customers from the providers' servers, so there's no need for a company to host applications on its own on-premises servers.
Tera Box
s its name suggests, TeraBox(opens in new tab) offers one terabyte (1TB) of storage, though unlike other competitors in the cloud storage industry, this is entirely free. There are drawbacks, though, including adverts, file size and number limits, and bandwidth throttling, which means that it is good enough to go in our best free cloud storage guide but not in our best cloud storage one.
Paid plans improve on each of these and offer 2TB of cloud storage. Pricing is on the affordable end of the scale, however there have been concerns raised over TeraBox’s privacy and security. Use it safely and sensibly, and it is unmatched at this price point.
TeraBox features
When it comes to cloud storage, there are two approaches. Most people think of an online storage space for their files, while some companies offer automatic backups of users’ machines (or a combination of both). TeraBox is a storage solution only, so is best compared to companies like Google Drive, Box and Internxt(opens in new tab).
Like Google Drive(opens in new tab), it’s most likely that TeraBox users will access their files - whether that’s to upload, download or view - using the browser portal. Here, there are clear folders running down the left-hand side for file types, like documents, photos, videos and music. The recycle bin is also accessed here - files that are deleted sit here for 10 days before they are permanently deleted, though this can be upgraded to 30 days with paid Premium accounts (more on pricing below).
To share files, users can choose between items already in their cloud drives or from their computer or other device. While some other cloud storage solutions offer greater control over sharing permissions, we like what’s on offer here. As well as choosing how to share a file (via email or with a unique link), TeraBox users can select the period for which it will be available (24 hours, 1 month, 6 months or permanently), and add an access password to somewhat boost security (check below for some concerns over the security of TeraBox).
The company - Flextech Inc. - also offers a file sharing(opens in new tab) service which doesn’t require users to make an account. Controls for this TeraTransfer service are a little more limited, with links only available for 24 hours, and a 50GB file size limit (unlimited for TeraBox free or Premium users). It’s worth mentioning that TeraTransfer is currently in beta testing, which is said to be for a “limited time”. This means that in the future, users may need a TeraBox account to continue.
It took us several attempts to upload our 1GB test file, with progress coming to a halt on all but our ninth attempt. This final, successful upload was complete in under four minutes, which is very respectable when compared with other cloud drives, although we do have concerns over the service’s stability.
We would typically expect a download to complete significantly quicker than an upload with our typical Internet connections, however this is where TeraBox’s speed throttling comes into play. Using our free account, the same 1GB was re-downloaded in under nine minutes. This would have been reasonable before the introduction of high-speed Internet connections; most other competitors manage the same download in less than half the time, with several sub-one-minute times.
TeraBox security
Spend any time digging through forums and reviews and you will find concerns over TeraBox’s security. The website claims to store metadata and file data separately, and to encrypt files during the upload and download processes. In summary, TeraBox claims that only the user can see the data.
Digging up the company’s past is where security concerns begin to surface. TeraBox was previously known as Dubox before it was purchased by FlexTech Inc. Chinese-owned Dubox made it explicit that data was stored in Chinese data centers, which are sometimes seen as less secure than their American or European counterparts.
As we are unable to confirm the current situation with data storage and security, we recommend using TeraBox cautiously. This means that you should avoid storing sensitive and personal information in its cloud space. That said, you have 1TB of free space to use for any other data, which is unmatched.