Free storage for consumers is pretty common in the cloud industry. Companies offer a variety of storage limits that can be utilized free of charge from computers or mobile devices. In fact, China has providers allowing up to a terabyte of storage free of charge.

However, subscribers outside of China rarely use Chinese cloud storage.

China’s Cloud Storage Industry

Yunio and Weiyun are two of the largest cloud services that exist in China. The basis of their solutions are identical to America’s – content can be uploaded and stored off-site in their cloud platform. Desktop and mobile uploading is available as well as file sharing and password protection. So, what sets Chinese cloud storage services apart? 

Chinese companies offer a lot more storage space for free. Dropbox subscribers for example can store 2GB of data . Yunio users can store 1TB, and Weiyun users up to 10TB. To give you a better idea of the size difference,1 terabyte is equal to 1,000 gigabytes.

Essentially the differentiating factor that sets Chinese cloud storage services apart is the significant amount of free available storage on offer. But is that enough to make users switch providers? It doesn’t look like it. More storage, stored out of the country doesn’t appeal to cloud users globally. And perhaps there are others reasons as well the world isn’t jumping on China’s cloud storage bandwagon.

Chinese cloud storage systems have complicated and poor infrastructures. If they go down, it is much more of a challenge to get them back up and running. Their lack of infrastructure also limits how much can be uploaded at once and or shared. For example, it takes up to 20 minutes to upload only 10MB of data. So imagine how long it takes users to upload a full TB.

Also, Chinese laws are different and more restrictive when it comes to what’s considered acceptable content for storage, which often makes out-of-country users wary. Cloud provider Baidu just got warned by the Chinese government to better screen what they’re storing. Some users don’t want to be told what they can and cannot store on their cloud account.

Security is also an issue. Cloud hacking and breaches in the U.S. have made news in recent months, so users are more skeptical than usual when it comes to online storage. Signing up and agreeing to terms and conditions (written entirely in Chinese) can be very big a risk.

If you are in China and would like to access providers based outside the country, you’ll need a virtual private network (VPN) to do that. We have compiled a list of the best VPN services for China.

Conclusion

More often than not, increased storage isn’t enough of a reason for consumers to switch from native cloud services to Chinese.

Would you ever consider using a Chinese cloud storage service?