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Microsoft OneDrive vs ownCloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft OneDrive
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ownCloud
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
21st
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft OneDrive is 10.2%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ownCloud is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

CJ Aulisa - PeerSpot reviewer
Keep organized and have access to important files wherever you are
From my own personal experience, I have a story that tells about how and why the product can be improved and it mostly has to do with customer care. This is about a situation that really caused me great aggravation. I am an independent consultant, so I have OneDrive in my business set up and I pay monthly and it bills monthly. I foolishly let my granddaughter get a robot gaming account under my Microsoft account. Because she is only nine years old and she has autism, she really does not understand what she is doing sometimes. She kept buying points for a game she was playing a lot of and I did not know she was doing it. She would go buy $200 a day in robot points, and then I got on my robots bill and found out what was going on. They would not let me separate the accounts so I could stop the billing. If I canceled the account, I would have to cancel her account, and then she would lose all the things that she had done and accumulated in the game. So I removed the credit card, let that account die out, and then started a new account. I made a new password and all that stuff to start over. When you get a new account, they give you a 30-day free trial. Because I use it and knew I wanted it I already bought PowerPoint in the project and they built that. When the trial came near to the end, they sent me an email saying "your trial is coming to an end" and I called them just to make sure that the PowerPoint purchase was not considered part of the trial that they were talking about because I didn't want to lose anything when I let it lapse. They assured me that everything was good. When the trial came to an end. They removed all the files and I had been working on with a client analyzing their IBR (incremental borrowing rate). So I lost all my trees and they totally removed everything I'd spent hours on. I called and tried to find out what was going on. They spent an hour or two on the phone with me trying to go different ways calling different departments to find out where they might still have the data. Turns out they did not. They lost it. So my caution about the product and trial periods is to be careful. Because I had multiple Microsoft accounts, when the first tech checked and looked it up they thought I had a valid license for the new Microsoft account. They were referring to the old one. There is my lesson learned. Besides that episode, I like working with Microsoft products. But then another thing happened. I had another customer and they wanted me to set up on their desktop. So I created a Microsoft account for them so I could use their client email and their OneDrive and all that stuff in their name. For the life of me, I could not get that removed off my desktop after I had it installed. I had to call Microsoft to try and get it working right again. I could not do a regular delete to get rid of the stuff from the other account. It does not let you delete it. So every time I logged in from scratch, it sent up an error saying I had the wrong password for this account. I just do not need that account anymore and there was no way to get rid of it or regain control of the login. They were terrible for support after COVID hit. I want to write an article on the companies that achieved during COVID and then the companies that used it as an excuse to provide poor customer service. Microsoft would be under that jurisdiction. In the end, I would use it again if it worked and I got my password straight. It works great but with the product, you get the behemoth Microsoft customer support services. I have not contacted them lately, so I do not know if they got it working right. When COVID hit, they just went off the deep end claiming they could not fill support requests. Otherwise, I think Microsoft is pretty good. I can not think of anything that I could make OneDrive better. Besides having different outcomes from these experiences with Microsoft products, I have been happy with them.
SC
Self-hosted file sync tool used to deploy custom web UIs.
I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market. It’s a full web application platform, an indispensable tool for a business of any size that needs to deploy any kind of custom web UI. If you build an ownCloud app, you’ve got authentication, storage, security, caching, and database layers already fully baked for you. You just need to build your UI and custom logic. Your app doesn’t even need to interact with files, sync, or interact with other ownCloud features. Any web UI can be included without ownCloud. It can even be a portal to web interfaces of other applications within a business using the external app to display external sites within ownCloud. This is the case as long as that site allows itself to be displayed within a frame.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It helps you keep organized."
"It is well integrated with other Microsoft products."
"Scalability is good just because it is a cloud-based product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the amount of space allotted to each user that is issued a subscription."
"The backup capability is one feature I love about OneDrive. I also like how it syncs when you're working offline. Everything is updated once you connect again."
"It was extremely easy to setup."
"It is good as a central hub for the storage of documents and sharing among team members."
"It is simple to use and it allows me to give me the opportunity to access anything I want from any device."
"I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market."
 

Cons

"Support has not been the same since the beginning of COVID lockdowns."
"Recent functionality changes have actually made the product more confusing to use."
"The website could be improved. Sometimes I try to login and the website has issues, I can't retrieve my documents."
"Microsoft OneDrive could improve because it doesn't support backing up .PST files, which are Outlook data files, and email archives. This is a substantial setback when it comes to Microsoft OneDrive."
"The technical support is really very bad."
"I think it should be more user-friendly with more tutorials on the full scale of the program."
"The initial setup is a bit clunky."
"The file structure insight could be made more flexible like for creating more flexible folders."
"Even with fast disks, it still takes a fair bit of time to write most schema changes to multi-GB tables."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is free if you are using Office 365, and you get a terabyte of storage with your account."
"OneDrive comes with Microsoft 365 so it is just an added part of that package."
"This is a pricy solution, given that we are only using it at 50% capacity."
"We pay a lot for the Enterprise version, but it is a premium service."
"The price of Microsoft OneDrive is reasonable and compatible with competitors."
"Using this software, it has had an amazing impact moneywise on our business. It allows us to share documents without the need of extra hardware."
"Costwise, it is a great option. In most cases, it is a free space, which will be more than enough for most customers."
"The licensing is expensive and on a yearly basis."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
4%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft OneDrive?
The backup capability is one feature I love about OneDrive. I also like how it syncs when you're working offline. Everything is updated once you connect again.
What needs improvement with Microsoft OneDrive?
It takes too long for OneDrive to synchronize various applications, especially when you are saving office data. It also requires too much bandwidth.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft OneDrive?
We use OneDrive to share documents throughout the organization and collaborate. It is also used for backups.
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Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

MS OneDrive
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Chevron, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, DBS, Nestle, Lowe's, MGM Resorts, Textron, MGM Resorts
CERN, Joy Global, Sciebo, Bauhaus, datto
Find out what your peers are saying about Dropbox, Google, Microsoft and others in Content Collaboration Platforms. Updated: April 2025.
849,210 professionals have used our research since 2012.