What is Amazon Drive? (Is It Free + How to Upgrade)

Online cloud storage has become a popular alternative, with more files and photos taking up space on devices. It makes storing, accessing, and restoring all your important photos, documents, and other files easier. Amazon is among the many popular cloud storage providers with its cloud storage app, Amazon Drive.

Amazon Driver offers a wealth of powerful features for Amazon customers to store and back up their files. So, what is Amazon Drive? And is Amazon cloud free for prime members? In this guide, we’ll give you a deep understanding of what Amazon Drive entails.

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What is Amazon Drive?

Amazon Drive is a secure online cloud storage service that allows you to store photos, videos, and files. When you create an Amazon account, you’ll receive a free Amazon Drive account which gives you 5 GB of storage. You can use this cloud storage app to aggregate all your files, including documents, Zip files, and videos, in one place.

Users can save, organize, share and access all their files from any computer or through the free Amazon Drive app. It also allows you to stream music to any device, whether a computer or a mobile device.

Why Do You Need Amazon Drive?

Given how important data is, people turn to Amazon Drive to have their files stored in a secure location. Storing files on Amazon Drive prevents you from losing your important data in case you damage or lose your device. You can use Amazon Drive if you would like to:

Store or backup your files
Share your files with others
Access your files from anywhere
Securely store your files so that you can retrieve them later
If you do not have enough space to locally, store or back up your files
If you do not want to lose all your locally stored data accidentally

Is Amazon Cloud Free for Prime Members?

Every Amazon user including prime and non-prime members get 5 GB of free storage shared with Amazon photos. However, Amazon prime members will get unlimited storage for photos in addition to the 5 GB for videos and other files including music files and documents. All members will have to pay for extra storage to store files beyond the storage quota.

What is the Difference Between Amazon Drive and Amazon Photos?

Since both are cloud storage services, people often confuse Amazon Drive and Amazon Photos. Unlike Amazon Photos, Amazon Drive allows you to store all kinds of files, not just photos. These can include music files, word documents, PDFs, and many more. Amazon Drive also offers free 5 GB file storage space, file-sharing features, and file previewing.

On the other hand, Amazon Photos is a free unlimited full, resolution online photo storage service that only allows you to store photos and videos. Amazon Prime members will get free 5 GB of video and unlimited photo storage. Other features include a photo editor, searching photos by people, places, and things, and photo and video sharing. It also supports Family Vault, which allows you to share your unlimited storage with up to 5 people.

Like Amazon Drive, you can use Amazon Photos on its website or through its iPhone and Android apps.

How to Use Amazon Drive?

Amazon drive makes it easy for you to upload, view, and download files. Whatever type of file you would like to upload the process is just the same. To use Amazon Drive:

Visit the Amazon Drive website at https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive on your PC
Alternatively, you can download the Amazon Drive App on your iPhone or Android device.
Log into your Amazon account
To upload a file, click on the Upload button
Select whether to upload single files or a whole folder and let it upload
You can then select the folder in which you would like to place the file or create a new one.
After uploading the file you’ll find it in the specific folder
To download the file or folder, click on it then select the Download option at the top menu
Alternatively, you can click on the Share option to share it with others.
Then click on the Get Share Link button which can be emailed, texted, or posted on social media.

How to Increase Your Amazon Drive Storage?

While the free 5 GB might be enough space to fit a lot of files, you could have larger files that need more space. Amazon allows you to upgrade your Amazon Drive storage to one of its paid plans. You can upgrade to 100 GB for $1.66 per month, 1TB for $6.99, or 2TB for $11.99 per month.

If you would like to upgrade your Amazon Drive storage:

On the Amazon Drive homepage, click on Manage Storage
Under the Need more storage? section, select your preferred plan.
You can then follow the instructions to complete the payment.

In most cases, the 100 GB storage is more than enough unless you plan on storing very large or plenty of files. If you need more space to store photos, you can upgrade your membership to Amazon Prime and get unlimited photo storage among other benefits.

Why Amazon Drive is the Best Cloud Storage Service?

Using Amazon Drive to store your files on the internet has plenty of advantages. Some of the benefits of using Amazon Drive over its competitors include:

It is less costly compared to other cloud storage services
Easily accessible from any device
Its simple interface makes it easy to upload files
Offers unlimited cloud storage for photos
It has a wide range of paid plans making it one of the most versatile cloud storage services

Conclusion

That’s everything about Amazon Drive. Amazon Drive is one of the best cloud storage providers offering great value for your money. Its wide range of plans makes it a great option if you would like to store photos. Unfortunately, professionals and businesses will find it quite disappointing due to its lack of productivity and collaboration tools.

While Amazon Drive is an excellent cloud storage service, Amazon will no longer support it as of December 31st, 2023. This is because Amazon plans on focusing on photos and video storage with Amazon Photos. However, you can still store your files in Amazon Drive as you look for an alternative file storage platform like Google Drive.