Phones keep getting more and more storage, which is great for people that want to keep all of their digital stuff on hand. A 128GB Galaxy S10 with a sizable SD card is plenty capable of handling all of your photos and videos, plus a music library and plenty of apps locally.

But what if you don't have a phone with that much storage, or you want backups somewhere in case the phone gets lost or broken? Or, if you're like me, you might have a few different phones that you use (and sometimes get changed out) so trying to keep everything the same across several devices is a huge pain.

That's where cloud storage comes in. Instead of having a single copy of a file just on your phone, you can keep it on a cloud server somewhere, easily accessible by all of your devices all the time. It's great for dealing with multiple phones, for keeping backups, or just for extending how far your phone's storage can go. We'll go over some of the best services available in this guide.

Best overall: Google Drive

If you're looking for something cross-platform, cheap, and functional, it's really hard to suggest anything besides Google Drive. There's very little that we don't like about Google's own cloud storage app, including its tight integration with the rest of Google's office apps, cheap pricing, and simple interface.

If you're heavily invested in Google's ecosystem, Drive makes the most sense. Anything you upload will be accessible via your Google account, whether that's on Android, iOS, MacOS, or Windows, and you can sign in on almost any web browser. Plus, Drive gives you a one-stop shop to open files in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and it'll keep all those files synced up across apps.

That gets into another one of Drive's biggest selling points: collaboration. It's really easy to let Drive manage your own files, but it also takes the pain out of dealing with groups of people or teams trying to work on the same project. We use Google Docs all the time here at Talk Android, and it's just about flawless even with multiple people accessing and simultaneously working on files. Even if you're just sharing single files, it's a great choice.

Google gives everyone 15GB of free storage, which is pretty generous on its own, but they offer expanded storage through Google One plans. $1.99 per month gets you 100GB of cloud storage, plus access to Google customer support, the option to add family members to your account, and more. Additionally, 200GB will cost $2.99, while 2TB will run you $9.99 monthly. There are also significantly more expensive 10TB, 20TB, and 30TB plans for heavy users that cost $99, $199, and $299 per month, respectively.

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The original: Dropbox

If you've been around for a while, you probably remember when all of this cloud storage craze started, Dropbox was the first big name to come out of the fray. They offered one of the most popular original cloud storage plans that let users stuff their digital files into a cloud locker to access anywhere on the planet.

At the time 4G wasn't ubiquitous, and not every single person had a smartphone in their pocket, so this was a little ahead of its time. While other services have cropped up to give Dropbox some serious competition, there's still a place in the market for the smaller cloud storage company to make a name for itself.

As a free option, Dropbox does struggle to stay competitive. You only get 2GB of cloud storage space on their basic tier, and you can only access the service from three devices at a time. You also don't get automatic mobile camera uploads, which gives another point to Google Drive.

But where Dropbox manages to stand apart is in its ability to provide team collaboration and control over your content in a way that Google really can't do, at least on their paid plans. For $11.99 per month (or $9.99 per month, if you pay annually) you'll get 2TB of cloud storage, putting Dropbox roughly on par with Drive. But on top of that, you also get Dropbox Smart Sync, which keeps your files and folders synced to your PC without actually taking up room on your hard drive, quick camera scanning, integration with Dropbox Paper, and a ton of extra tricks and features for managing files across the web with other people, including those without a Dropbox account.

It's a service focused a little more on productivity and less on being a catch-all for your digital life, but that gives it some breathing room from the other giants in the industry. Additionally, there's a $20/mo plan that takes things a step further and allows quick watermarking of your content, access to an entire history of who's viewed your files, and Dropbox Showcase, a feature that lets you add custom branding and captions to your work.

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Office enthusiast: Microsoft OneDrive

If you're looking for the version of Google Drive that shows up in a suit and tie, you want Microsoft's OneDrive. It's a little less casual than Drive, but it offers many of the same features, plus incredible integration into Microsoft's Office suite of products, and especially with Windows 10.

The base tier of OneDrive gives you 5GB of storage, while Microsoft's $1.99 tier puts 100GB of space in your cloud locker, which is on part with Google. But it's the next steps up that get interesting.

Instead of having OneDrive plans, Microsoft just bundles in OneDrive storage with their Office 365 subscriptions. Office 365 Personal is priced at $69 per year/$6.99 per month and offers 1TB of cloud storage that can be used on any of your computers, tablets, and phones, plus the full suite of Office 365 products. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are cool, but they aren't quite as nice and functional as Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Don't forget you get powerful extra Outlook features, too.

Microsoft delivers a few extra tools through OneDrive, too, including expiring sharable links, ransomware detection and recovery with 30-day backups, and automatic photo backup and syncing with your phone and computer. Plus everything can be quickly edited and created in Office products, which is another huge productivity boost whether you're working on your own or collaborating in a group. You storage ties into your Xbox One devices, too.

If you're already on board with Google's ecosystem, there's not much that OneDrive will be able to do to tempt you over. But if you want something similar to Google's offerings with a little more polish and better Windows 10 integration, OneDrive is the way to go.

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Just the photos: Google Photos

If you're looking for something to just back up your photos, you might already have it installed on your phone. Google Photos is tangentially related to Google Drive, but it's treated as a completely separate service under the Google umbrella. It doesn't let you upload whatever you want to it, and you can't edit anything in Google Docs, but it does handle all of your precious photos and home videos with enough extra tricks to make it worth checking out.

The biggest selling point for Photos is that it's free. Google does do some compression on the free tier, though, so if you want to upload full resolution files, you can pay for Google One storage and your full-size photos will count against that cap while still being accessible in the Photos app.

But that free tier really is free. Upload everything on your device, no matter how long those videos are, and Google will keep everything safe. You can easily redownload photos on other devices, make some quick edits, and organize everything into specific albums. But that's not where Google Photos ends its feature list.

There's a ton of stuff the service does automatically, including grouping similar photos together, making intelligent edits and stylized images of your best shots, and cleaning up your library by automatically archiving screenshots, meme, and other clutter. Plus, you can make physical photobooks and order them directly from the app, which are great for presents and holidays. If nothing else you'll probably want to set up Google Photos just as a permanent backup solution to your photos, because this seems like the one service that Google doesn't ever plan on killing off.

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Roll your own media: Plex

Alright, so Plex technically isn't like the other cloud services on this page, so it might not fit for everyone, but that completely depends on what you're using it for. If you need an off-site backup, go ahead and cross this off your list, but if you're looking for an easy way to manage things like music, movies, and your personal photos, this might be a better solution than everything else.

Plex works by taking your computer and turning it into a home server, which you can then put all of your music, movies, TV shows, and more on. You can easily access all of this stuff around your house, like slinging it to an NVIDIA Shield TV (or letting the Shield TV by the server itself), but you can also enable remote connections so you'll always have access to your stuff on any device. If you want something that can be a completely personalized Netflix or Spotify library, this perfectly fits the bill.

Additionally, though, Plex can handle some backups, too. One big Plex Pass feature allows you to back up your personal photos and videos to your server, which can then be accessed on the go or back at home on your computer. It won't do all files, so it's not an option if you need to store word documents and spreadsheets, but I imagine many casual users aren't really making very many slideshows in their spare time anyway.

Plex is totally free, as long you supply your own content that goes on the server. Plex Pass costs $4.99 per month/$39.99 per year/$119 for a lifetime sub, and that enables some extra features on your server and lets you do photo backups. But if you're focused more on entertainment than anything, and you have some hard drive space to spare, considering being your own cloud storage. It'll give you something fun to do on the weekends, too.

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Did we miss any of your favorites, or do you need something a little more specific? Drop us a comment and let us know, and we might be able to add your suggestion to the list!