Internxt Review
If you’re looking for a secure cloud storage provider, chances are you’ve seen Internxt. In the past, its slow speeds and basic feature set have kept it behind our favorites, but with some updates it could be one of the best. Find out how it stands now in this Internxt review.
Key Takeaways: Internxt Review
- Internxt is a cloud storage service that prioritizes privacy and security.
- Recent updates have vastly improved Internxt’s weak points, such as its speed.
- There are still some missing features and odd UI choices holding it back.
Despite only being released in 2020, Internxt manages to make the honorable mentions in our list of the most secure cloud storage services. However, as we’ll go through later on in this Internxt review, its young age still shows in the form of slow speeds and a weak feature set.
As you’ll see, Internxt’s weakest points are almost always in the settings menus. The sync folder, backup, web app and file sharing all work, but there isn’t much flexibility. This isn’t a service for tinkerers or advanced users.
That said, if your priority is a secure service at a reasonable price, Internxt may still have something for you. This zero-knowledge provider has a few tricks up its sleeve. Just because it isn’t our favorite cloud storage service doesn’t mean it can’t put up a fight.
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11/02/2022 Facts checked
Rewrote the review to evaluate its new features, interface and performance results.
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10/22/2023 Facts checked
Rewrote the article to account for Internxt’s new pricing structure, speeds and features.
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Internxt Cloud Storage Review: Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Great security
- Useful stand-alone tools
- Included backup service
- Competitive lifetime plans
- Decent customer support
- Free plan
Cons:
- Odd UI choices
- Limited feature set
- Slow speeds
- No productivity tools
Features
When you go into Internxt, you’ll find the main “drive” page. This is where you can see all of your synced files. You can move them about, view previews, upload and download files, create folders or switch to a tiled view. Other than deleting files and creating sharing links, there isn’t much else you can do here.
If you’re looking for some more advanced features like bandwidth limits, file versioning or even some sync options, you’re out of luck. Even the settings page, where some of these options are normally found, is pretty sparse.
What you’ll find there is an “account” page for changing your name or language, two pages for plan and billing information, and a fourth page for security. Even that last page only has options to change your password, add two-factor authentication or download a backup key.
If you’re using the desktop app, there’s a docked UI attached to the system tray with its own preferences menu and extra settings. Here you can change your sync folder, choose to start Internxt on system boot and even set up a regular backup — which we’ll get back to later.
Although Internxt is lacking in many ways, there are a few things done right here. Not only is there Mac and Linux support, but the apps seem to be identical to the Windows app. The web app is also pretty solid.
The file preview is also improving. Music and video playback is now possible in the app, without it taking too long to download the data. That’s on top of the existing options of PDF and image files.
However, there still aren’t previews for notes or documents and integrations with productivity apps are missing. This means you can’t edit files or work collaboratively with Internxt.
Internxt Backup
Internxt Backup acts as an unlimited backup provider. You choose which folders you want to backup, you set a frequency and then your data is protected. Since it’s included with free accounts and offers effectively unlimited space, it seems like a great deal
However, it’s tough for our team to recommend, as backup frequency is locked to every day, and certain folders — such as program files — simply never show up in the backup. It also doesn’t hold multiple backup versions, so you have to be careful not to overwrite it with a corrupted file.
Internxt Trash
It’s not often that we call out a trash function as a feature of cloud storage, but this one is interesting. Since it gives you a 30-day period to recover files and can hold multiple files with the same name, it can act as versioning. It’s very limited and might stop working in any update. However, if versioning is a must-have, maybe this will fill that need.
Stand-Alone Internxt Services
Internxt also offers six separate services for free. The first three — a byte unit converter, a password generator and a password strength generator — are pretty common tools. Though, it would be nice to see them inside the app itself or more accessible on the website, as they can only be found in the site’s footer.
The fourth — a virus checker — isn’t exactly a replacement for an antivirus. However, we’ve seen services branch out into other categories quite successfully before (see our Surfshark review). Even if this isn’t too useful today, we’ll keep an eye on if Internxt chooses to do anything else with it in the future.
Fifth is the temporary email service. Here, Internxt gives you a gibberish email to sign up to a free service and — after three hours of inactivity — it deletes itself. If you ever need to sign up to a sketchy website and want to limit your risk of getting spam, this is a handy tool to use.
Finally, there’s Internxt Send. This is the secure file transfer service that Internxt offers, and it’s comparable to pCloud’s (see our pCloud review). You get 5GB to upload up to 100 files, and you can do it as many times as you like. It has zero-knowledge encryption and expires after 15 days, but it lacks advanced options like download limits or password protection.
Internxt Features Overview
 | |
|---|---|
| Sync | |
| Sync Folder | |
| Block-Level Sync | |
| Selective Sync | |
| Bandwidth management | |
| Sync Any Folder | |
| File Sharing | |
| File Link Sharing | |
| Link Passwords | |
| Link Expiry Dates | |
| Folder Sharing | |
| Folder Permissions | |
| Link Download Limits | |
| Upload Links | |
| Productivity | |
| File Previews | |
| Edit Files | |
| In-App Collaboration | |
| Office Online | |
| Google Docs | |
| Notes App | |
| Media Playback | |
| Mobile Apps | |
| Deleted File Retention | |
| Versioning | |
| WebDAV | |
| Security | |
| At-Rest Encryption | |
| In-Transit Encryption | |
| Encryption Protocol | AES 256-bit |
| Zero Knowledge | |
| Two-Factor Authentication | |
| Server Location | EU |
| Support | |
| 24/7 Support | |
| Live Chat Support | |
| Telephone Support | |
| Email Support | |
| User Forum | |
| Knowledgebase | |
| Misc | |
| Free Plan |
Pricing
Internxt has trimmed down its pricing options since we last reviewed it by completely axing the business plans. According to the customer support team, these are being revamped and expected to be back next year. We’ll be sure to update this when they are released.
However, right now there are just six plan options, and the only apparent difference is the amount of storage space you get. The support team also told us that any Internxt account with a premium plan gets premium support, but we couldn’t get any details on what that entails.
- 5GB
- 20GB
- 200GB
More plans
- 2TB
In terms of storage per dollar, the monthly and annual plans are a little pricey. MEGA gives you 20GB for free (read our MEGA review) and Internxt’s $3.68 per month (annually) is still too much for 200GB. The 2TB plan is much better, with the $9.53 per month pricing being only a little more than what Sync.com and pCloud charge.
On the other hand, the lifetime plans are quite the deal. Across the best two lifetime cloud storage providers — pCloud and Icedrive — only the Icedrive 10TB plan matches the value of Internxt. If you can get your hands on the 50% off deals the company occasionally gives out, Internxt is the cheapest cloud storage provider with lifetime plans.
Internxt Free Plan
At 10GB and a full set of features, Internxt seems to have a fairly generous free plan. However, you only get 2GB to start. To unlock the rest you have to do tasks, like downloading the desktop and mobile apps, uploading files and sharing a file.
Normal use of the apps should get you up to 5GB, but to get up to 10GB you’ll need to invite friends. They only need to make a free account for you to get the space, but it’s worth noting that you’re capped at 5GB unless you’re willing to send out a bunch of invites.
Ease of Use
At first glance, Internxt has a fairly reasonable layout. Most of the screen is taken up by your files, there are a few options in the top-right corner, and you have a handful of extra tabs on the left. You can even switch to a tile view, if you prefer.
However, when you look closer, there are some odd choices. For example, despite Internxt offering six interesting and useful stand-alone services. there’s no link to them inside the app. We’d like to see a tab that gives you access to at least some of them. However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s instead jump in at the start.
Web App
Creating an Internxt account is quick and easy. Once you’re done there, it throws you straight into the web app with a short tutorial on how to upload files. This is where the odd choices start. The tutorial only shows you how to upload files and keeps appearing until you’ve uploaded something.
Going down the tabs, “photos” is useless unless you get the mobile app and “backup” is useless if you haven’t got the desktop app. The web app lets you view and download files, but you can’t create photo albums or manage your backups.
The “shared links” tab lets you manage the files and folders you share from the “drive” tab, but there’s no option to share directly from the tab. The “recents” tab shows you the latest file to be uploaded, edited or moved. Both tabs are useful but feel a little lacking.
Luckily, the “trash” tab has a purpose and works as expected. There are even bulk restore and delete options. However, the “desktop” tab isn’t even a tab. Instead, clicking this button downloads the installer for the desktop app.
For a cloud storage provider that focuses so much on security, downloading files without true user consent is a huge mistake. It should clearly be labeled as a download button and ideally have a confirmation box.
Desktop App
Once you’ve — probably accidentally — downloaded the installer, you can get the desktop app. This is a simple task bar-bound interface with a button to sync all files in the bottom right, as well as buttons along the top to open the web app, sync folder and settings, respectively.
Note that the web app doesn’t open in a browser, but instead opens like a normal desktop app. We couldn’t see any differences. The “desktop” button even tried to download the installer, although this time it didn’t have a default download location, so it had to ask for permission.
Mobile App
Following the trend of being almost good is the mobile app. Along the bottom, you get five buttons: for your “home” — recents and sharing links — the main drive page, for uploading files, for backing up your photos and for your settings.
While the mobile app isn’t awful, we did run into a weird quirk. Specifically, when clicking the triple dots next to a file to access the extra options, it didn’t open up high enough. Closing and reopening the menu seemed to reliably fix this, but it feels like the kind of issue that should’ve been caught.
Across the web, desktop and mobile apps, the experience feels like a new app. The Internxt interface is responsive and has a clean look, but the confusing UI decisions just left us wanting something better.
File Sharing & Sync
File syncing in Internxt works exactly how you would expect. You drag a file into the sync folder or upload it via the web app, and it gets downloaded everywhere else.
There isn’t a selective sync option or any collaboration tools, so this sync is about as basic as you can get. There also isn’t a block-level sync. This is especially bad for the backup feature, which ends up uploading huge amounts of data unnecessarily as a result.
We also found that syncing could sometimes result in ghost files. At times, files syncing from a different device would appear five or six times. It would fix itself after some time and a page refresh, but it’s still a confusing issue that doesn’t happen with more mature cloud storage providers.
Much like syncing, file sharing was present but basic. You can send files to anyone through a link — no emailing them directly in the app, though. You can also attach a password to a sharing link, but that’s it.
There aren’t options for expiry dates or download limits, and though you can share folders, there’s no bulk sharing of individual files. You also can’t create an upload link if you need someone to send you a file.
Speed
If anything gives hope that Internxt might become one of the best cloud storage services, it’s the improvement in speed over the last year.
For a long time, Internxt has been one of the slowest cloud storage providers, especially for upload speeds. However, after seeing a performance report showing speeds over twice as fast as before, we had to check it out. Now, we don’t know what their testing methodology is, so we ran our own tests.
We used a 5GB folder filled with various file types for these tests. With both our upload and download speed throttled at a stable 100 Mbps, the best possible transfer time would be six minutes and 40 seconds. We ran all the tests twice to get an average result.
| 🔃 | 1st attempt: | 2nd attempt: | Average: | Fastest Possible: |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upload | 51:30 | 47:56 | 49:43 | 6:40 |
| Download | 9:34 | 10:25 | 10:00 | 6:40 |
These speeds still aren’t fantastic — especially when uploading files. However, for a service that used to take almost three hours to upload a 5GB folder, less than an hour is an incredible improvement. It’s still far from the fastest cloud provider, but it’s at least usable.
Security
Internxt takes security seriously. Pretty much everything here is industry standard. All files have 256-bit AES zero-knowledge encryption as standard and are stored in secure data centers run by OVHCloud. You can also enable two-factor authentication.
However, Internxt goes above and beyond in two ways. The first is by making its code open source. This means that anyone can go in, poke around and even suggest changes. As you might expect, this makes hiding backdoors and master keys effectively impossible.
The second is that Internxt is a decentralized cloud storage — it splits your data up across multiple data centers. It’s like a RAID setup, except using data centers instead of individual drives.
As your files are spread across multiple sites, even if someone stole your decryption key and got past the security, they couldn’t get anything useful. If Internxt chose to store user data in a single site instead, that theoretical hacker could get everything.
Internxt has also undergone independent audits by Securitum, which are available on the FAQ page for security. These audits have shown major problems in the past, but these were promptly fixed and retested, which is always a good sign.
Privacy
While security stops unauthorized entities — such as hackers — from getting into your data, it’s worthless if a service is recording everything you upload and sending it out to countless third parties.
Thankfully, Internxt doesn’t seem to be doing that. Although the privacy policy isn’t particularly readable or easy to understand, we went through it and overall it seems pretty good.
It confirms that your stored files are all encrypted before leaving your device and the data centers only get encrypted data. The only other data that you give them is your email address and billing information, which is only used or shared to provide the service, as you would expect.
There is a section about anonymized data collected on how you use the website and that they can store your conversations with support. This isn’t uncommon, but it’s always worth remembering.
Customer Support
Internxt’s knowledgebase is well put together. The categories are useful, the search function is effective and the articles themselves are well written and (usually) correct. It’s more of a how-to guidebook than troubleshooting assistance, so if you’re looking for more than basic information, you’ll need to talk to the support team.
One of the articles claims that there are two ways to talk to someone: an email and a live chat. However, the live chat box on the right offers no way to talk to a team member. It seems that this feature is yet to be fully added.
As for the support email, we got a reply within 45 minutes for the initial email and just three minutes for the follow-up question. The answers were short and to the point. They did miss one of our initial questions, but given the short response times, asking again was hardly an issue.
The Verdict
Since we last reviewed Internxt, its upload speeds have increased substantially, and its lifetime plans are a great value per gigabyte. However, you still have to deal with some odd UI choices, features with limited options and the occasional bug.
The team behind Internxt have clearly been working hard, and it’s always great to see another cloud storage provider dedicated to privacy and security. As it stands, we can’t recommend this over one of the best cloud storage services, but with every update it moves in the right direction.
Have you tried out Internxt? Did you have the same issues we did? Is there something about this provider that we missed? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. As always, thanks for reading.
FAQ: Internxt
Internxt is a cloud storage service that prioritizes security and privacy. However, as a young service, it can fall behind in terms of features and ease of use.
Internxt uses zero-knowledge encryption and decentralized storage to ensure that no one can access your data without your password.
Internxt offers 10GB of free cloud storage, although you have to finish tasks to get more than 5GB. This comes with all the features of a paid account.
