3 Free Personal Cloud Solutions Worth Checking Out!

1) Tonido Desktop

Tonido is a desktop application that allows you to use your local drive as a cloud storage, allowing access from any web browser. The speed of set up for Tonido impressed us greatly, as we were able to install and run the Tonido server within just 5 minutes! We also downloaded the Android app, that allowed us to browse our entire file system after logging in. Tonido's user interface is web-based, meaning it can be accessed through any browser. Tonido also offers the feature to provide guest access, so friends can login to access shared files easily. There is even Tonido Sync, which allows you to download a sync client to your desktop that syncs up to 2GB of data between various devices. The basic version is free, and so has a limited set of functionality. With the paid versions, user can do advanced tasks like accessing Tonido server as a virtual drive, streaming media content and syncing of data up to 100 GB. Tonido has clear disclaimers that it hosts none of your data, but only connects servers to clients through its own relay servers. Overall, the ease of setup for the client on the desktop was very impressive. The plethora of platforms it supports is another solid reason to try out Tonido!

2) PocketCloud by Wyse

PocketCloud is another personal cloud solution offered by Wyse. It comes as a simple GUI application that lets you set some simple settings. The unique thing about PocketCloud is that instead of setting credentials on the server end, it enables you to make the cloud server discoverable by connecting to your Google account. This can be problematic in the corporate environment when the Google servers it's trying to access are blocked. The only workaround then is to perform some advanced manual configurations, as outlined on this site: http://bit.ly/TbEXbu. Given that we couldn't connect to Google talk servers in office, we found Tonido to be a far easier setup. On your mobile device, you can then download PocketCloud Explore that lets you browse the files on your system, once you have logged in with your Google account for authentication. The advantage with PocketCloud (over Tonido) is that folders that are shared can be accessed directly, without the time-consuming drill down needed in the Tonido app to access needed files. But a distinct benefit of using Tonido is its availability on such a wide variety of platforms, that are not available on PocketCloud. Another big disadvantage on PocketCloud is that streaming is limited to 30 seconds at a time, but there is no such restriction in Tonido.

3) Bdrive

This is another option for the personal cloud enthusiast that works well. After installing the server version of Bdrive on your Windows or Mac, it provides you with a BID that serves as a unique identifier for your server. You can use this BID tag to connect from other computers as well as your mobile devices. As you set up Bdrive, it lets you login with your Facebook ID or create a new Bdrive account. One of the unique features of Bdrive is that it offers context menu options in Windows. Hence, if you want to share a folder or file, you can just right click and “Send via Bdrive” shows up as an option, directly sharing files and folders. However, a disadvantage is that you need to install the client Bdrive app to view shared files from other PCs, unlike in Tonido, where you can directly use the web interface to view shared files. Also, your friends will have to install Bdrive in order to access shared folders from your server device. There is also an Android and iOS app available to access files on the go. The Android app has a clean interface, and connects quickly to your host server once you login with your Bdrive credentials. Only the folders that you share with your own devices show up in the app, and this provides better access control than Tonido, where you can access your entire system without having to exclusively share it. We also tested streaming of videos, and it worked very smoothly using Wi-Fi. A premium feature offered in Bdrive is the ability to mount shared folders as virtual drives in the computer, so that they can be used like local drives in the file explorer. This valuable feature is offered free of cost on Bdrive, but offered as a paid feature in the other solutions.