Icedrive Review (2024) – Why I Bought IceDrive? 8 Pros & 5 Cons

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About Icedrive

Icedrive is a cloud storage company founded by James Bressington in 2019. It is owned by ID Cloud Services Ltd and is headquartered in Wales, United Kingdom.

I appreciate the steady pace at which it is growing and improving. This makes it a tough competitor for other popular cloud storage services.

The need of the hour is online security & privacy. This is where Icedrive jumps in. An interesting thing to note here is that it calls itself a ‘Privacy oriented company’. Read on to find out if this statement holds any truth or not!

Icedrive Free Storage

Icedrive features a free plan, along with very affordable premium plans! With a free Icedrive account, you get 10 GB of free cloud space, which is quite amazing! 

Unlike pCloud, it does not employ a reward system for unlocking storage space on completing tasks like installing the desktop app, etc.

Icedrive is a pretty straightforward service. If you sign up for a free account using your email, you get the entire 10 GB space along with 50 GB of monthly bandwidth with no hidden demands! 

However, they follow a 12-month inactivity policy specifically for free plans. This means that if you do not sign in to your free Icedrive account for a year, they will delete it by themselves.

Icedrive Speed

For this Icedrive review, I conducted the speed tests from India, whereas my Icedrive server was located in Europe. I tried to upload and download an 885 MB video file on Icedrive with a network speed of 100 Mbps. These were the results I received.

• Upload Time: 1 min 51 sec
• Download Time: 1 min 15 sec

I saw the same results while uploading and downloading with zero knowledge encryption. Overall, Icedrive offered some really appreciable speeds for a cloud storage service.

I have used various cloud services including India’s DigiBoxx, Sync, Yandex Disk, Dubox, JioCloud, etc. This is why I can confirm that IceDrive is faster than most cloud storage services.

Icedrive Review Video

For users who prefer video, here’s the video review of Icedrive in the Hindi language with English subtitles. Enjoy!

Icedrive Data Centers

The Data Centers of Icedrive are in Europe (UK and Germany) and the United States. The European servers are good from the speed and privacy points. But unlike pCloud, you don’t get to choose your server location with Icedrive. They will auto-select the server for you.

Icedrive Zero-Knowledge Encryption

Zero Knowledge Encryption basically means that nobody can read or access your data stored on the cloud storage except you. If someone wants to decrypt your data, they would require your master password.

Unlike pCloud, Icedrive offers Zero Knowledge Encryption with all its paid plans, which does not cost you any extra charges!

This feature provides you with an encrypted space secured with a passcode to store all your sensitive data. You can find all the encrypted files under the ‘Encrypted’ tab.

You get both encrypted and normal storage space. But what’s unique about Icedrive is that it lets you choose which files you wish to protect with encryption.

I personally use normal storage for files that require frequent access and encrypted storage for storing sensitive and private data.

Icedrive Versioning

The versioning feature lets you preview, restore, and download the previous versions of your files. This is helpful in case your file gets accidentally changed, edited, or deleted. You can restore it to any of its previous versions with a single click! 

With the free plan of Icedrive, you can create up to 3 versions that are stored for a period of 15 days in their system. And with the paid plan of Icedrive, you can create up to 10 versions that are stored for 180 days in their system.

Once this time period is exceeded, all the file versions are purged from their systems.

This is interesting because pCloud only offers a 30-day versioning limit. However, pCloud does not restrict the number of revisions. Whereas, with Icedrive, revisions are limited to 10 versions.

Icedrive Trash Folder

The Trash tab holds all your deleted files and folders. Unlike many other cloud storage services, the Icedrive Trash folder has no limit. All your deleted items would remain there unless you delete them permanently. 

An important thing to note is that the trash space occupied by the deleted files is included in the total storage. So if you are running out of storage space, clearing your trash bin will help! 

Icedrive Sync

Icedrive doesn’t provide a sync folder but it does have the option to selectively sync any folder on your hard disk. Using the Icedrive virtual drive, you can select folders from your devices to sync with the cloud.

The interesting feature of Icedrive cloud storage is that you can choose a sync direction while creating a sync pair – Two Way, One Way to Local, or One Way to Cloud. Once the two folders are paired, any changes made to them will remain synced.

There is no Block-Level Sync feature available with Icedrive as of now. This may be a reason for the slightly slow sync speeds on Icedrive. They are planning to introduce Block-level sync in the future.

You can find syncing options in its mobile apps where you can auto-upload photos, videos, and files. Icedrive is not the best when it comes to Sync. In my opinion, pCloud and Sync cloud storage are much better for file syncing as of now.

Icedrive Virtual Drive

Icedrive offers a Virtual Drive feature that can be accessed when you install its software and mount the drive.

With the virtual drive, you can effortlessly sync folders from your computer to the folders on your cloud storage using its desktop application.

While creating a sync pair, Icedrive also lets you specify the sync direction. This helps you specify where the changes will be reflected if any data is changed in the synced pair of folders.

• Two Way – Changes made are reflected on both the local folder and cloud folders.
• One Way to Local – Changes made to the cloud folder are reflected in the local folder.
• One Way to Cloud – Changes made to a local folder are reflected in your cloud folder.

The best part is that this virtual drive does not take up a major chunk of space on your device. It only occupies a brief space to store the recently used files in its cache. This is necessary to avoid lags and slowdowns in its functioning.

Icedrive truly works like an external hard drive attached to your computer! All you need is an active Internet connection in order to operate it. I personally like Icedrive’s sync direction feature a lot. Every cloud storage should implement it.

The only drawback is that the virtual drive is not available for Mac OS. I hope they try to implement it in the future.

Icedrive User Interface

The user interface of Icedrive is one of the best I have ever seen on any cloud storage.

It is extremely easy to use and comes with a modern design. The color theme of Icedrive is very pleasing along with the adorable polar bear logo. It’s so simple that I can even recommend it to my Dad.

The left sidebar comprises all the important features that you’d need. This includes Icedrive folders, Encrypted Storage, Shared files, Favorite Items, Recent files, and Trash folders.

File Management and Customization options are available on the top when you select any file or folder. The sharing options are easy to use and identification of shared data is effortless with tiny on top of every folder.

A drag-and-drop upload feature makes it even more convenient. You can select multiple files on the dashboard and drag them into a folder, just like Google Drive.

They have recently introduced the dark mode on their desktop app. It’s great for preventing strain on the eyes and gives Icedrive a premium feel. Overall, this is a very well-organized and easy to use interface.

Icedrive Devices and Apps

Icedrive has dedicated desktop apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux; Mobile apps for Android and iOS, and a web interface that works pretty smoothly on all the major browsers. 

The mobile app has a clean interface with integrated players for all document types, audio, and video files. It comprises handy features like automatic backup, password protection, 2FA, marking files for offline access, media background play, and dark mode.

As per the latest update, the Android app of Icedrive also lets you access password-protected PDFs, which is a very convenient feature. However, it doesn’t work on the web app yet.

Overall, my experience on all the devices was very satisfying. 🙂

Icedrive Customer Service

Icedrive offers customer support through chat, email, knowledge base, and Community tab. However, their chat team is mostly away and unresponsive.

Talking about email support, you can contact them with your queries through an email ticket system. The average response time is two days! 

They feature short but informative FAQ-style articles on their knowledge base to solve your basic queries. Overall, the support is a bit slow. But I found their replies to be quite informative, kind, and positive.

pCloud’s customer support is slightly better in my experience.

Icedrive Sharing and Collaboration

Icedrive now supports a range of sharing and collaboration options. All your collaborations can be viewed under the collaborations tab. They are neatly arranged in three different tabs.

• Shared With Me: It features a list of files or folders shared with you.
• Public Links: It comprises a list of links that you’ve shared with others.
• File Requests: It keeps a list of folders where you’ve requested others to upload files.

Now, let’s look at all the important sharing and collaboration features below.

Public Links

With Icedrive, you can create public links for any of your files and share them with anyone you wish.

The paid plans of Icedrive also let you specify a link expiry limit, set a secure access password and enable/disable downloads for your file.

File Access Control

If you wish to collaborate with another user on your file or project, Icedrive lets you share files along with access controls. To share a file with someone, you simply need to enter their email, and specify an access level – Read Only or Editor.

Finally, you can also add a comment along with your shared files. The collaboration activity can be viewed from under the Collaborations tab.

Commenting and Discussion

Now, Icedrive also lets you add insightful comments on shared files.

This is helpful in case you wish to leave any feedback or remarks for your designers or team mates. You can conduct full-fledged discussions through the comments feature, which is great!

File Requests

With the File Request feature, you can request any user to upload files to your folder. In order to request files, you simply need to generate a file request link for your folder and specify the number of days for expiry.

Then, you can share the link to your folder with other users. The best part is that the user doesn’t need to have an Icedrive account to upload files. They just need to mention their name and start uploading files.

Overall, the Sharing and Collaboration features of Icedrive are really impressive. I’m really happy to see that they’ve introduced all the advanced functionalities on their cloud storage platform.

Icedrive Documents

Icedrive lets you view all file types including word documents, presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs, audio files, videos, etc. But the catch is, you cannot edit them in the web and mobile devices. It does not have any integrated editing apps at the moment.

With the desktop application, you can edit your files with the native apps on your device and when you click on Save, your file will automatically be re-uploaded to the cloud.

So, for editing a .doc file, you can install the Icedrive desktop app. The doc file will automatically open in your local editors like MS Word. Once you make all the changes and close the file, the latest updates will automatically be re-uploaded to the cloud.

Unfortunately, I was unable to preview various file types like PPTs, PDFs, Word docs, and spreadsheets on my mobile app while testing Icedrive. The music and video players worked fine.

Icedrive Playback Features

Icedrive has integrated players for audio and video playback on the web version and mobile apps. You can vary the speed of your audio playback from 0.5x to 4x. The desktop app uses your internal media players.

The mobile app’s media player lacks options like speed controls, playlists, rewind feature, seeking, etc. But it allows background media playback. So your audio file keeps playing despite closing the app.

Though there are very few customization options available here, the media players are pretty decent. You can check out pCloud if you want a smooth music and podcast streaming experience.

Icedrive WebDAV Access

Quite interestingly, Icedrive offers WebDAV access for developers on all its paid plans. With this feature, users can access their Icedrive storage without installing any additional software on their devices.

Basically, WebDAV access helps developers move, edit, copy, or share files via a web server. All you need to do is browse the WebDAV server URL and enter your access key as the password. This will help you operate your cloud storage through the web server.

The Icedrive team was going to remove this feature previously. But I guess it’s going to continue!

Icedrive Security

Icedrive calls itself a ‘Privacy Oriented Company’ which is true. This is because it uses the TwoFish client-side Encryption protocol for encrypting its users’ files. Whereas, other cloud services use AES 256-bit encryption, which is the industry standard encryption algorithm. 

Client-side encryption is the process of encrypting all your files before transferring them from your local device to the Icedrive servers. They also have Zero Knowledge Encryption for securing the private and sensitive data of their users.

Wondering why they have used the Twofish encryption? Well, Icedrive believes that because it is a lesser-known protocol, it would guarantee enhanced security, because hackers are unfamiliar with it. 

For enhanced security, they also provide Two Factor Authentication (2FA) on their cloud service. So, you can use enable 2FA through Google Authenticator, FIDO/U2F, or Text Message/SMS.

Even their mobile apps support 2FA and Pin lock for security. However, just like pCloud, you won’t find support for biometric lock on Icedrive.

Overall, Icedrive is a pretty secure cloud storage provider. I’m really happy that they finally decided to introduce 2FA for additional security. Better late than never!

Icedrive Privacy Policy

The Privacy Policy of Icedrive is very transparent. They do not share any of your data and don’t make use of Google Analytics either. 

Icedrive is completely GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant, so you have the option to download or erase all of your data that they possess.

It also follows the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Policy that protects copyright owners and online service providers in case of any copyright infrigement. Overall, I found these privacy measures very reassuring.

Icedrive Pricing

Icedrive offers advanced features starting from $4.99/month for 100 GB storage! Apart from their monthly and yearly plans, they also have 2-year and lifetime plans that are 100% value for your money.

Let’s look at the different pricing models below.

	100 GB (Lite)	1 TB (Pro I)	3 TB (Pro III)
Monthly Pricing	$4.99/mo	$7.99/mo	$14.99/mo
Annual Pricing	$3.99/mo	$5.99/mo	$10.99/mo
2-Year Pricing	$2.99/mo	$4.99/mo	$8.99/mo

Because of tremendous feedback from their community and users, Icedrive has recently introduced the smaller 100 GB plans starting from $4.99/month.

Annual Plans

The Annual plans of Icedrive start at $3.99/month. With this plan, you get 100 GB of cloud storage with secure client-side encryption.

2-Year Plans

Recently, Icedrive has modified its 5-year plans to 2-year plans with different storage limits. They now start from an affordable price of $2.99/mo, where you get 100 GB cloud storage with client-side encryption.

Lifetime Plans

Icedrive had discontinued its lifetime plans for a while. But finally, the lifetime plans are back with revised pricing and storage limits!

Plan Name	Storage	Lifetime Price
Life 500	512 GB	$299
Life 2K	2 TB	$479
Life 10K	10 TB	$1199

The lifetime subscription of Icedrive starts from $299. With this plan, you get 512 GB of cloud storage space along with client-side encryption. If you need more storage, you can check out its higher plans.

But what if the higher tiers are too expensive and you don’t require all that storage space at the moment? Well, Icedrive has a solution. They have introduced stacks that can be added to your plan at an additional cost.

There are like one-time recharges to your account. If you’re running out of storage, you can get Stack 100 at $79. This will add 128 GB of cloud storage to your account. You can look at the higher stacks for more space.

Other than this, they also offer a 14-day money-back guarantee on all the premium plans! Overall, I think the lifetime plan with the additional stacks is a convenient option for small businesses and freelancers.

If you’re interested in other cloud storage with lifetime plans, you can also check out pCloud. It’s one of the most powerful and reputed cloud storage with lifetime plans starting from $199 for 500 GB of cloud storage.

Icedrive Pros

Icedrive offers lots of exceptional features, giving neck-to-neck competition to other popular cloud storage services.

1. Clean Interface

Icedrive comes with a clean, appealing, and organized user interface. It’s extremely easy to use, which is why beginners won’t have any trouble operating Icedrive.

2. Excellent Speeds

The upload and download speeds of Icedrive are truly outstanding. I live in India and I’m getting good speeds from Icedrive with or without zero-knowledge encryption.

3. Powerful File Sharing

Icedrive supports advanced features for file sharing. It lets you share files with anyone, request file uploads, collaborate with access control, share public links, and add comments under files. All these features make it more powerful and feature-rich.

4. GDPR and DMCA Compliant

Icedrive maintains good security and privacy standards. It is also completely GDPR and DMCA compliant, which makes its privacy policy very reliable!

5. Excellent Security

Icedrive now supports two-factor authentication through Google Authenticator, FIDO/U2F, and SMS/Text messages. It also uses two-fish encryption, password protection on links, and zero knowledge encryption for secure file storage and sharing.

6. No Add-Ons

Unlike pCloud Storage, Icedrive has no add-ons. You don’t need to pay extra charges for availing of zero-knowledge encryption or any other features.  

7. Affordable Pricing

Icedrive offers 1 TB of cloud storage for just $5.99/month when purchased annually. Apart from that, their recent introduction of stacks with their lifetime plans makes it a value for money and affordable cloud storage.

8. Versioning Support

Icedrive supports file versioning. With the paid plan of Icedrive, you can create up to 10 versions of your documents that are stored for 180 days in their system.

Icedrive Cons

1. Limited Sync Options

Syncing options like Block-level Sync are not available on Icedrive at the moment. Though Icedrive offers Selective Sync by creating sync pairs, pCloud & Sync have better selective sync options.

2. Average Support

Icedrive’s chat and email replies are slow and the knowledge base offers answers to basic FAQs. I hope they work on introducing a swift live chat support and enrich their knowledge base with some tutorials and articles.

3. No Virtual Drive on Mac OS

Unfortunately, Mac users cannot access Icedrive’s virtual drive. They can only access Icedrive through the web and mobile app at the moment.

4. No Support for Editing

Icedrive doesn’t support editing your documents on its web app. You can only preview your files on the web.

5. 12-Month Inactivity Policy

It has a 12-month inactivity policy for the free plan users. If you don’t login to your Icedrive account for a year, it will be automatically deleted. So, make sure you don’t store any sensitive data on your free account.

Icedrive Alternatives

1) pCloud

pCloud is one of the most popular cloud storage providers in the market. It offers advanced security tools, excellent sharing options, swift speeds, but no file editing support, just like Icedrive.

However, unlike Icedrive, it offers better media players, a functional Mac OS app, better customer support, and advanced syncing options. The key difference is that pCloud offers zero-knowledge encryption as a separate add-on for an extra charge.

The pricing plans of pCloud start from $4.99/month for 500 GB of cloud storage. But if you use my link, you can get the same plan (500 GB for $4.99/mo) for a period of 90 days!

2) Sync

Sync is a cloud storage soultion focused on security. Just like Icedrive, you’ll find advanced file sharing options, clean history, robust security features, and functional apps on Icedrive.

However, unlike Icedrive it also offers a Microsoft Office 365 integration for editing documents. It also has transfer speed controls and zero knowledge encryption even on its free plan. The only downside of Sync is its lack of media players, Linux app, and jurisdiction in a 5-eyes country.

Overall, if you want a secure cloud storage service for editing your documents only, Sync is a great option to consider. It’s pricing plans start from $8/month for 2 TB of cloud storage space.

Why Should You Trust Me?

I’ve been working full-time in the digital industry since 2015. In these years, I’ve tested dozens of paid and free cloud storage services. pCloud, Sync, and Proton Drive are popular names. Reviews of these tools are available on my blog and YouTube channel.

For this Icedrive Review, I purchased Icedrive’s lifetime plan and used it to thoroughly check out all its features and conduct performance tests. I still have an active subscription and use it as my primary storage service.

Testing out so many cloud storage providers has given me the knowledge and experience to suggest the right one for your needs.

Conclusion

Icedrive comes across as a strong contender in the cloud storage market. It features an intuitive interface, excellent speeds and security, advanced sharing options, affordable pricing, and clean privacy policy make it a secure choice for individuals and businesses.

However, some drawbacks need consideration. The lack of advanced syncing options, limited support, and absence of features like in-app editing and server selection might be dealbreakers for some users.

Ultimately, if you prioritize security, affordability, and ease of use in a cloud storage service, Icedrive is the ideal solution for you. Its lifetime plans would prove to be worth your money in the long run!

But if you need more granular control and advanced functions for file syncing, media streaming, you can try pCloud Cloud Storage. You might also use a combination of Icedrive and pCloud to get the best of both worlds. That is what I prefer for myself!

Anyway, I hope this review helps you decide if Icedrive is the right cloud storage for your requirements. What other cloud storage have you used in the past? How has your experience been with them? Let me know in the comments section below.

Also, if you enjoy reading my blogs and wish to stay updated with the latest stuff in the AI world, do subscribe to my Newsletter. This is Kripesh signing off! I’ll see you in the next article. Cheers! 🙂

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