Best Cloud Storage for Nonprofits in 2024: Discounts for a Good Cause
Charitable organizations are on the side of the angels, yet often do their work on a shoestring. Plenty of providers, though, offer their services at a discount or even completely free for NGOs and the like. We've put together a list to help you pick the best cloud storage for nonprofits.
Written by Aleksander Hougen (Managing Editor) & Aleksandar Kochovski (Editor)
Last Updated: 2024-02-26T10:55:55+00:00
All our content is written fully by humans; we do not publish AI writing. Learn more here.
Working for a nonprofit is a tough but rewarding task. Cloud storage allows a nonprofit to store and access all of its data — some of which might be sensitive — without having to worry about buying and maintaining its own servers. Cloud storage for nonprofits also gives volunteers working remotely the same access to files as their office-based counterparts.
We’re going to talk through some of the best cloud storage for nonprofits, but if you want to find out the best backup solutions for organizations like these, don’t forget to first take a look at our best online backup for nonprofits roundup.
Key Takeaways:
- Nonprofit organizations have unique needs when it comes to cloud storage, chief of which are cost, security and collaboration tools.
- Google Drive is the best cloud service for nonprofit organizations, and it’s free as part of Google Workspace for Nonprofits.
- The most secure cloud storage option for nonprofit organizations is IDrive, which offers zero-knowledge encryption for users.
There are some great options out there that would suit any nonprofit organization, but Google Drive is our clear favorite. It offers excellent collaboration tools and has a free nonprofit version via Google Workspace for Nonprofits. It also offers healthy discounts for its expanded storage options, making it very affordable.
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10/21/2021 Facts checked
Updated to reflect changes to Google Workspace and added MEGA as an honorable mention and information about EFSS.
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07/30/2022
Updated to reflect changes in IDrive’s pricing, including an increase in the free plan to 10GB of storage.
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05/23/2023
Updated to remove IDrive’s discontinued free plan and add its new free 30-day trial.
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Updated IDrive’s pricing information.
Top Cloud Storage for Nonprofits
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What Makes the Best Cloud Storage for Nonprofits?
We considered many cloud storage options for this list, but only a few provide specific benefits for nonprofits. Of course, many factors come into play when choosing the best cloud storage for nonprofits, and we’ll go over these factors in a bit. For now, let’s take a quick glance at the full list of cloud services for nonprofits.
- Google Workspace — Free Google cloud storage for nonprofits
- Box — Respectable business cloud platform with free nonprofit cloud storage
- Dropbox Business — Plenty of third-party app integrations and discounted prices for nonprofits
- OneDrive for Business — Free online storage for nonprofit organizations
- IDrive — Cloud storage and online backup hybrid with a 50% discount for nonprofits
In our comparison, we gave the biggest advantage to providers that offered the greatest discounts for nonprofits. Some of these cloud storage providers even offer their services for free to nonprofits and NGOs.
As with any business cloud storage, collaboration and productivity tools are just as important as an affordable price. Tight integration with online collaboration tools gives some services an edge over others.
Finally, security can be a concern when it comes to sensitive business data. Zero-knowledge encryption is the gold standard in this area, though in most cases, it’s mutually exclusive with third-party app integrations. With that out of the way, let’s dive right into our number one nonprofit cloud storage option: Google Drive.
1. Google Workspace for Nonprofits
More details about Google Workspace:
- Pricing: 30GB free; 2TB per user for $3 per month each
- Provider website: google.com/nonprofits
Pros:
- 30GB of storage for free
- Great integration with Google apps
- Multiple storage options
- Great discounts for nonprofits
Cons:
- Limited storage on free tier
- Lacks zero-knowledge encryption
- Poor privacy policy
Huge tech companies like Google enjoy showing support for charitable organizations, and that support includes free access to Google’s collection of productivity apps and storage for nonprofit companies. The Google for Nonprofits program lets nonprofit organizations and NGOs use Google Workspace for free or at greatly reduced prices.
Google Workspace comes with Google Docs integration, allowing your volunteers to work together on projects in real time. You can also share your files with others, thanks to public file sharing. These features help to make Google Drive one of the best cloud storage for multiple users, as well as one of the best cloud storage for sharing.
With Google Drive for Nonprofits, you gain free use of Google Docs, up to 2,000 users, as well as access to 30GB of Google Drive storage, which you can learn more about in our Google Drive review. If needed, you can upgrade to Business Standard or Business Plus at a 75% and 72% discounted rate for 2TB or 5TB of storage per user, respectively.
There’s also Google Workspace Enterprise, which nonprofits can get at a discount of over 70%, though the specific price is only available upon request. This plan puts no limit on storage or users, which makes it a great choice for nonprofits with a high storage requirement per user.
Google Drive App Integrations
Easily the biggest draw to Google Drive is its support for apps, and that includes both Google’s own homegrown and third-party apps. Drive users have free access to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, as well as any Google app you can imagine. With the Google Workspace Marketplace, those choices bring almost limitless functionality to Google Drive.
Permissions management is excellent, letting you set access levels for different users on a per-file basis, making it a great choice if you have a lot of users. Plus, there are sharing options aplenty, with multiple settings you can tweak to get the best file sharing experience.
| Plan: | Storage | Price | Nonprofit discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workspace for Nonprofits | 30GB | NA | NA |
| Business | 2TB (per user) | $3 per user per month | 75% |
| Business Plus | 5TB (per user) | $5.04 per user per month | 72% |
| Enterprise | Unlimited | NA | More than 70% |
2. Box
More details about Box:
- Pricing: 100GB per user free
- Provider website: box.org
Pros:
- Cheap deals for nonprofits
- Strong pedigree
- Microsoft Office & Google integration
Cons:
- Lacks zero-knowledge encryption
- Admin fee for free accounts
- Limited storage for free accounts
Box is built for businesses, which is why we rate it highly as one of the best cloud storage for enterprise solutions, and why almost 70% of Fortune 500 companies use its services. It provides both free storage for nonprofits and discounts for its business plans, so strap in for a deeper dive into Box.
At rest, Box uses AES 256-bit encryption for data, with high-strength TLS encryption used for data in transit. Unfortunately, like Google Drive, Box doesn’t offer zero-knowledge encryption. If you love the features of Box, but you’re looking for stronger security, then think about using a product like Cryptomator to encrypt your files. Check out our Cryptomator review to learn more.
Plus, Box offers discounts for nonprofit organizations that meet its criteria. Its nonprofit option offers 10 lifetime licenses for the Box Starter plan, with 100GB of free storage. The only cost here is an $84 administration fee. If you require more storage, nonprofits can take advantage of a 50% discount on business plans, including the unlimited storage option.
Box Collaboration Features
Box makes collaboration simple, with Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 integration included. This allows you to co-author and access documents and autosave them directly in Box. You can read more about these features in our full Box review.
- Single user
- 10GB
- Single user
- 100GB
- Price per user, minimum of three users
- 100GB
More plans
- Users: No limit
- Unlimited GB
- Users: No limit
- Unlimited GB
- Users: No limit
- Unlimited GB
3. Dropbox Business
More details about Dropbox Business:
- Pricing: 5TB for $15 per user per month
- Provider website: dropbox.com
Pros:
- Good third-party app support
- Unlimited storage available
- Block-level transfers
Cons:
- No clear nonprofit pricing
- Lacks zero-knowledge encryption
- Previous security issues
Our shortlist wouldn’t be complete without a mention for one of the biggest names in cloud storage: Dropbox Business. As our earlier Dropbox Business review explains, it offers a user-friendly experience and good file-sharing options, especially for bigger organizations.
It’s also one of our favorite enterprise file sync and share providers, scoring highly for file syncing speeds, thanks to its use of block-level file transfers.
Dropbox Business offers discounts for schools, charities and nonprofit organizations, although these aren’t made public. You’ll need to speak to Dropbox Business directly for a quote, but you can use the standard pricing as a base figure (see our Dropbox pricing guide). With a relatively high price per user, it isn’t the cheapest solution, as unlimited storage costs up to $20 per user per month.
Advantages of Dropbox for Nonprofits
Dropbox Business is a good choice for teams, making it easy to connect Microsoft Office 365 and Dropbox together for real-time project management. You can co-author documents, make changes together and roll back to previous versions of documents with versioning. The same goes for Google’s productivity apps, such as Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.
If those aren’t enough, Dropbox Business has its own app store where you can find integrations with remote office staples, such as Trello and Asana. You’ll even find video conferencing and communication tools, including Zoom and Slack.
- Price per user, shared storage, 30-day free trial
- 5TB
- Price per user
- 3TB
More plans
- Price per user, 30-day free trial
- 3TB
- Price & storage per user, 30-day free trial.
- 15TB
- Price per user, shared storage
- 9TB
- Price per user, shared storage
- 15TB
1-month plan
4. OneDrive for Business With Microsoft 365 for Nonprofits
More details about OneDrive for Business:
- Pricing: 1TB per user free; unlimited storage for $4.50 per user per month
- Provider website: microsoft.com
Pros:
- Flawless Office integration
- Strong free plan for nonprofits
- Unlimited storage available
Cons:
- Lacks zero-knowledge encryption
- No Linux support
- Desktop Office apps cost more
When it comes to business tech, few companies are trusted more than Microsoft. Additionally, as our OneDrive for Business review shows, its cloud storage solution remains a popular choice for businesses and nonprofit organizations. It comes with support for Windows and macOS, although Linux support is lacking.
File uploads are fast, thanks to block-level syncing (called “differential sync” by Microsoft) for all file transfers, something that was previously only available for Microsoft Office files.
Microsoft offers OneDrive for Business as a nonprofit donation as part of the Microsoft 365 Business package. There’s no fee to use it, and it includes 1TB of OneDrive storage and access to Office 365 online. Access to desktop Office apps will cost a little extra, plus you can add unlimited storage at an additional cost with the Office 365 E3 package.
OneDrive for Business Features
The name gives it away — this is a business product, first and foremost. That’s why Office is completely integrated into the OneDrive experience, making it easy to open and edit your files from the online OneDrive interface. You can also directly access this storage from the desktop Office apps as well as work with others in Office documents online.
OneDrive uses 256-bit AES encryption for data at rest, and the TLS protocol in transit, matching Box. Two-factor authentication is offered as standard, but like the other players, there’s no zero-knowledge encryption for your files.
- Price per user, 1TB storage, User count: 1 – 99+
- 1TB
- Price per user, Unlimited storage, User count: 1 – 99+
- 1TB
- Price per user, 1TB storage, User count: 1 – 99+
- 1TB
- Price per user, 1TB storage, User count: 1 – 99+
- 1TB
5. IDrive
More details about IDrive:
- Pricing: 10GB free, 5TB for $39.75 per year
- Provider website: idrive.com
Pros:
- Zero-knowledge encryption
- Single sign-on features
Cons:
- Storage might not be enough for large companies
- Limited sharing options
IDrive is the odd one out on this list, as it isn’t purely a cloud storage service but an online backup platform (read about the differences between the two in this article). However, it has a cloud storage service built into it, which comes with standard cloud storage features, such as file syncing and sharing.
IDrive’s cloud storage is shared with your backup storage space. This means you’ll have to balance out how you use your storage, but at 5TB for $39.75 per year or 10TB for $49.75 per year, small nonprofits should be fine.
This low price is thanks to the 50% discount that nonprofits get, on top of IDrive’s affordable plans. Storage is shared between users, but you can go all the way to 100TB. A 10GB free plan is available if you want to take IDrive for a spin before committing to a purchase.
IDrive Business Features
IDrive makes managing your nonprofit’s cloud easy, thanks to its user-management features. It lets you divide your storage into sub-accounts with different content, plus you can control permissions and access levels for users. IDrive even features a single sign-on option, which can make logging in simple for your employees and volunteers.
Also, IDrive holds the esteemed honor of being the most secure offering on this list. As with the other services, files stored on its servers are encrypted, but IDrive goes a step further by offering secure zero-knowledge encryption. This ensures that only you can access your file storage, and even IDrive’s employees can’t decrypt your data.
- No credit card required.
- 10GB
- One user.
- 100GB
- One user, multiple computers. Plans starting from 5TB up to 100TB. Big discount for first-time signup.
- 5TB
More plans
- 5 computers, 5 users. Starting at 5TB up to 500TB. Big discount for first-time signup.
- 5TB
- Unlimited users, multiple computers and servers. NAS devices. 250GB storage. Starting at 250GB up to 50TB. Large discount for first-time signup.
- 250GB
Honorable Mention: MEGA Business
Although it doesn’t offer any discounts for nonprofits, there’s one more service that we’d like to give a nod to before wrapping things up, and that’s MEGA. MEGA’s business version comes with a lot of features that are useful to organizations (nonprofit or not), such as detailed user management, reports, and unlimited versioning and file recovery.
All of the things you get with MEGA for personal use are also included, such as zero-knowledge encryption, plus great syncing and sharing features. Check out our full MEGA review if you’d like to learn more.
The price of MEGA Business depends on what you need. You can play around with the pricing calculator yourself to get a feel for it, but we collected a few example plans in the table below to give you a better idea of what to expect.
Essentially, you get to design your own plan. This type of flexibility is excellent, especially for nonprofits, as it lets you pay for exactly what you need and no more. It’s also worth noting that MEGA’s free plan comes with 20GB of cloud-based storage, so maybe that would be enough for small organizations.
MEGA only provides exact pricing in euros, so all of these prices (including the ones in the table below) are converted to USD at the time of writing.
| Features: | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Users, 3TB storage, 3TB transfer | $17 | $210 |
| 10 users, 5TB storage, 5TB transfer | $70 | $844 |
| 20 users, 10TB storage, 10TB transfer | $158 | $1,900 |
Other Free Cloud Storage Nonprofits Can Consider
If your nonprofit doesn’t quite need a full business storage service, there are a few free cloud options you could consider as well.
The good news is that a lot of the best cloud storage services have very good free plans, though with limited storage. However, if you’re a small nonprofit, and you only need to store documents and an image or two, you could give one of these services a try.
- pCloud — 10GB free storage with excellent media playback (read our pCloud review)
- Sync.com — 5GB for free with airtight security (read our Sync.com review)
- Icedrive — Blazing-fast service with a 10GB free plan (read our Icedrive review)
- Apple iCloud — Apple users get 5GB built-in cloud storage (read our iCloud review)
We gladly recommend any of these services to our readers, and they’re all great in their own right. pCloud is a standout among the best free cloud storage services, thanks to its ample storage space and useful media features, though Sync.com comes a close second, as the most secure cloud service.
How We Picked Our Providers
If you’ve read our other cloud storage reviews and comparisons, you’ll know that we carefully consider each provider, looking at the pros and cons of each. In this case, we’ve focused on the most important attributes for nonprofits, including security, collaboration tools and cost.
That’s why Google Drive comes out as our number one pick, as we gave free offerings more weight. Cloud storage services that don’t offer the right combination of features weren’t considered for inclusion.
Keeping Sensitive Nonprofit Data Safe With Secure Cloud Storage
Nonprofits collaborate with a wide range of different companies and individuals. A lot of sensitive information needs to be stored, whether it’s personal details or financial data. That’s why nonprofit organizations need cloud storage with the best security policies available.
Cloud storage that offers zero-knowledge encryption is highly desirable. It means that your service provider doesn’t store a copy of your encryption key, making it impossible for it to access your data, even by choice (or under duress). Passwords still remain the weakest link, so we also recommend using a service with two-factor authentication.
Besides encryption, make sure to use strong passwords for all of your accounts. A password that looks like your cat took a stroll across your keyboard would be ideal (you can generate a strong password with our tool). Don’t worry about remembering all those letters and symbols — use a password manager to keep your passwords safe.
Should Nonprofits Use Business Cloud Storage?
The less money a nonprofit spends on business costs, the more it can put into its true purpose. Business cloud storage offers a simple way for nonprofits to do away with the need for expensive data storage devices, as well as the staff required to maintain those devices.
Some cloud storage providers also offer healthy discounts to nonprofits that can verify their status, making it a financially savvy choice. It’s important to keep in mind that if your nonprofit has strict security requirements, you’ll need to be sure that your cloud storage provider can meet them.
Should Nonprofits Use EFSS?
EFSS stands for “enterprise file synchronization and sharing.” As the name suggests, it is tailor-made for large businesses and organizations that need to store and transfer huge amounts of data. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are examples of services that provide this type of cloud-based storage, and they’re potentially worth looking into.
That said, EFSS options are really only useful for larger organizations, as instead of paying a set fee per month, you’re generally billed for the amount of storage you actually use and the size of the data you transfer. You can check out our list of the best EFSS providers to learn more.
Final Thoughts
Any of the providers on our list would provide a nonprofit organization with excellent features and storage for sensitive data, even on a tight budget. Google Drive is our top choice here, thanks to its generous pricing and offering the best free cloud storage for nonprofits.
If you want a provider with good enterprise features, then Box, Dropbox Business and OneDrive for Business are all good alternatives, and all have good pricing discounts for nonprofits. Finally, IDrive edges a spot on the list, thanks to its cloud storage features, though it’s still an online backup solution at heart.
Have you used any of the services on this list? Do you know of any other good cloud storage services with discounts for nonprofits? Let us know in the comments below. As always, thank you for reading.
FAQ
All things considered, Google Drive is the best option for nonprofits. It’s included for free in the Google Workspace for Nonprofits package, alongside other Google apps that can greatly benefit your nonprofit organization or NGO.
Yes, nonprofit organizations get access to Google Workspace free of charge, with additional storage coming at a heavily discounted price.