Another great service offered by Google
August 13, 2019
Another great service offered by Google
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Google Drive
At work, we use Microsoft offerings. But I've used Drive on personal and volunteer projects for 10+ years. Google Drive is a robust online file storage solution. The built-in tools for editing, sharing, and organization make it a superb place to keep important documents. One of my favorite features is being able to collaborate in real-time on documents.
Pros
- Easy to collaborate.
- Works seamlessly with other Google products.
- Integrates with many 3rd party options.
Cons
- As a file storage service, I really don't have any complaints.
- Ideally, all participants on a collaborating document need a Google account. For example, if I'm sharing a document with a customer they need a Google account to get the full benefit.
- I wouldn't recommend using Google Drive to store large files. For personal photos, it's a decent offering. For an organization that wants to store lots of large video files, it would be a lot more expensive than other solutions.
- I would have lost lists of important files and documents without this easy to use robust service.
- For basic file storage, the cost of Drive is essentially free. It's been tremendously useful for our nonprofit to utilize. Google also provides nonprofit organizations free access to G-Suite.
- Being integrated with forms, Gmail, and other Google services is super useful. If your organization already utilizes other Google services it's a no brainer in my opinion to use Drive.
My personal account of choice is Google so it is a no brainer to use Google drive. We've been using Microsoft One Drive at work and it works essentially the same. One Drive has pretty much all the same tools as you'd find in Drive but integrates with all of Microsoft's offerings. I will say from a business perspective where I'm on a Windows machine every day having it auto-sync my notes and documents from my desktop to One Drive is super convenient. My heavier reliance on Google Drive comes down to how deeply integrated I am with Google's offerings as a whole.
Google Drive Feature Ratings
Evaluating Google Drive and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
Everyone in our nonprofit was already familiar with Google products. Being able to use G-Suite for free pretty much sealed the deal for us. It gave us a full suite of robust products that we could apply our own branding to and allow us to collaborate more efficiently on. We have about 15 people working within the organization currently.
If I had to do it again I think I'd make the same decision for the same reasons. If we had a larger organization with different scopes of business it may affect the decision. In 10 years if our organization has grown and our requirements have changed we will certainly have to come up with a new set of criteria on which to evaluate our options.
Using Google Drive
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- File organization.
- File collaboration.
- Creating custom forms.
- I haven't found any features difficult to use. Forms are probably the most complex thing I've set up with Drive and were exceptionally easy to use/understand/share.
Yes - All of Googles mobile apps are phenomenal which really shouldn't be a shocker to anyone given they develop the most used mobile OS on the planet. Something I really love about Google though is that they provide their apps on Apple's platforms as well with just as much polish as their Android offerings.
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