Price War: Amazon Cloud Drive comes cheaper than rivals Google and Dropbox

With its desktop app established and its popularity starting to soar, Amazon has released a mobile app that allows users to connect to their Cloud Drive accounts from anywhere and everywhere.

Amazon Photos has been previously made available to both iOS and Android, but to give users better access to their files, Amazon Cloud Drive has been released. According to its official iTunes page, the app allows users to view folders, preview files, and share the files as links or attachments via email and other apps.

Simply put, the mobile app is a read-only version of the desktop app. If you want to upload, edit, or sync files, you will need to either access the desktop version or use Amazon's other specialized apps (i.e., Amazon Photos and Prime Music).  While highly restrictive, given that the app is still in its infancy, we believe that future updates-which we hope will come soon-will have these glaring problems solved.  

The Real Score between Amazon and Its More Established Rivals

Appearing as a rather exclusive file storage and sharing platform, Amazon Cloud Drive is currently offered for free for the first three months of signup. Thereafter, users are required to choose from one of two plans: Unlimited Photos at $11.99 annually, which provides unlimited photo storage and 5 GB for other files, and Unlimited Everything, which stores all your files for $59.99 per year.

This is a far cry from Dropbox and Drive, both of which offers a considerable amount of free space at 2 GB and 15 GB respectively. Dropbox even provides additional free space up to 16 GB based through referrals, social media integration, feedbacks, and more before offering the Pro version. On the other hand, Google Drive pitches several monthly plans starting at $1.99 per month.

As Mashable noted, however, Amazon Cloud Drive has one great thing going for it-the price. Compared with the competition, Amazon offers the most affordable price, relative to the storage space provided. Whereas Dropbox and Google Drive asks for $9.99 monthly for 1 TB, Cloud Drive's Unlimited Everything only comes down to $5 a month. And if you own a Fire phone or tablet, you should rejoice: you get the Unlimited Photos plan for free. Do note, however, that only photos taken by the said devices count as free.