Alternative to ProtonDrive

ProtonDrive is an online cloud storage service based in Switzerland that emphasizes enhanced security and data encryption.

For quite a few years already, ProtonMail has been offering a relatively secure email service to the public. ProtonDrive launched its stable product in 2022 and it features a similar experience to that offered by Tresorit, pCloud, or Sync (client-side encryption). There are various alternatives to ProtonDrive, but in this article, and in this article we explain how Internxt ends up outperforming all of them.

Unlike with ProtonDrive, Tresorit, Sync, Dropbox, pCloud, Mi Cloud, etc, files uploaded to Internxt Drive are fragmented, client-side encrypted, and distributed all over the globe, so that a server never holds a complete file, but instead an encrypted shard.

There is a relevant number of studies on the topic of distributed cloud storage (eg Analysis of centralized and decentralized cloud architectures, School of Computing, University of South Alabama). And even ProtonMail published an article mentioning that their choice of a traditional cloud architecture instead of one that’s more innovative like that of Internxt, had some very obvious disadvantages. In ProtonMail's own words:

Offering a centralized cloud storage service instead of a decentralized one is always going to involve some trade-offs. We recognize, for example, that the decentralized nature of the p2p model makes it highly effective at defeating censorship. Without a centralized server, there is no single point of failure for decentralized cloud storage systems. There is no one server that can suffer a catastrophic failure, accidentally burn to the ground, or be seized by a third party. With decentralized systems, your data is stored on the disks of multiple (possibly even hundreds of) operators, who may be located all over the world.

As demonstrated by the success of the p2p BitTorrent protocol, this makes p2p systems almost impossible to censor, block, or shut down, as there is no central organization which can be pressured or coerced. Downloading data from a p2p network can be very efficient when the recipient is able to obtain data from multiple sources (peers) simultaneously.

So, why did ProtonMail create ProtonDrive under a traditional, centralized infrastructure? Quoting their own article: “Our existing infrastructure. ProtonDrive is built upon Proton’s existing infrastructure. All data stored on our servers is end-to-end encrypted, so even if the files are breached, they cannot be decrypted and accessed.”

As mentioned above, ProtonDrive simply offers the security layer of client encryption that for instance Google Drive and Dropbox lack, and that services like Tresorit already offer. However, Internxt Drive goes a step further by not only offering client-side encryption but also file fragmentation in an infrastructure that’s incredibly redundant and spread across the whole globe.

In terms of features, Internxt offers highly complete web, desktop, and mobile apps.

There are various alternatives to ProtonDrive, but in this article, we explain how Internxt ends up outperforming all of them.

But before choosing any cloud storage, it's best to be more aware of how cloud storage works in general. If you study more about this on the educational resource, then you will have no doubts about our opinion.

Finally, in terms of pricing, just like Proton, Internxt offers a full privacy hub, by offering Internxt Drive, Photos and Send. All these services are included in your Internxt membership, and thus being Internxt highly competitive in terms of pricing and features.