The cloud storage market is huge, and Dropbox is right near the top of the heap, with only Google Drive having more market share. While Dropbox's ease of use can't really be argued against, it is lacking in some areas, and the paltry 2GB of free storage without paying ever-increasing monthly premiums lags behind the competition. Even if you were a paying customer, the company has ended its unlimited tier after a few users abused their goodwill, and you might be looking for an alternative. To tide you over while you save for your own NAS to wean off cloud storage, here are a few other file-sharing services that give a more generous level of storage capacity for free.

5 Mega.io

One of the biggest names in cloud storage

Mega has a rather storied past in the file-sharing market, mainly due to the larger-than-life persona of its founder, Kim Dotcom. What's also large is the amount of free storage you get on Mega, with a whopping 20GB just for signing up. That's a lot of files to save and share and has me rethinking my iCloud subscription right now. What sets Mega apart is native apps to upload on PC, Mac, mobile, and Linux, and a well-known set of security and privacy features, like your files being encrypted before they hit the company's servers, using a zero-knowledge encryption model.

That means your files are safer than many other cloud providers, and you also get end-to-end encryption while sharing files with anyone. You can set your mobile devices to back up their camera roll automatically, or folders from your desktop PC. It also comes with a few collaborative tools, like Mega chat, and the ability to schedule video meetings, all from the app or web dashboard.

4 Mediafire

One of the quickest ways to share files online

Mediafire probably isn't the best option for long-term digital storage, but it's fantastic for quick file sharing with friends or family. Signing up for the free tier gives you a pretty decent 10GB of storage, and the web-based uploader works well enough. One of the useful features is the ability to create upload links to share, so that the person you give the link to can upload things to your account. That's going to come in handy during family trips, where you want to pool photos and videos in one place. However, the 10GB storage quota is the service's big hook for free users, as you have to deal with an ad-riddled experience without subscribing. Or you could use an adblocker while sharing things on Mediafire and not have to deal with the annoyances.

3 Box

Business-friendly features and a 10GB limit for free

Box is one of the better cloud storage providers for business users, but can it compete against other cloud storage free tiers? With 10GB of storage, limited only by 250MB max file sizes, it's one of the better file-sharing providers when you need something quick and free. But it's not just free storage you get. You get access to a huge suite of collaborative tools, and the ability to send up to five documents for e-signing each month. It's not that you can't get e-sign features elsewhere, but it's a nice added extra when you want to stash some Word documents in the cloud so they don't get lost.

2 Proton Drive

Privacy as a focus, not an afterthought

Proton is known for its privacy-first stance, so you can relax knowing that your cloud-stored documents are encrypted so only you can open them. You get a decent amount of storage for signing up, at 5GB. It's not the best, but it's several times Dropbox's amount, and it comes with some neat features. You can theme your vault, so you don't have to look at the same sterile dashboard as the other cloud storage providers, which makes it instantly better in my eyes. Proton Drive also gives you access to a suite of productivity tools that almost rivals Google and Microsoft's cloud offerings. And the Swiss company was founded on open-source philosophies, so it is built on a foundation of privacy and freedom.

1 Backblaze

Trust your data to one of the best

While every other entry on this list is more of a file-sharing service, Backblaze is a proper backup solution. Signing up for Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage gives you access to the company's well-regarded backup software, which will securely store the files and folders you choose on your PC, but on the company's storage pods instead. It's not a cloud sync service, so even if you accidentally delete a file from your computer or the cloud version, you can still recover it as it doesn't affect the other copy. You get 10GB of storage free, forever as long as you have an account, and only pay minimal fees like $6 per month for every terabyte of storage you upload. To begin with, it's the cheapest way to properly back up important files at a second location, but you might decide that it's the best way to back up your entire device after a while. And yes, you can still share files with friends and family, as you would with any other cloud storage provider.

Dropbox isn't the only good cloud storage provider anymore

While Dropbox does make file transfer and sharing easy, its one-size-fits-all approach can mean missing out on features you need. It also doesn't have a large storage allocation on the free tier, which makes it less useful if you need more storage quickly on a budget. The costs start to ramp up once you move into the paid plans, so it might be worth checking out the alternatives depending on the amount of cloud storage you need.