Do you need OneDrive or OneDrive for Business?

Some people may need OneDrive, and others may need OneDrive for Business. But what’s the difference? Let’s explain.

While the answer may sound obvious, it all depends on your needs.

OneDrive

For individuals, the free OneDrive offering is what you’ll need.

OneDrive syncs up via your personal Microsoft account and can store anything and everything you’ll use day-to-day in the cloud.

For example, when you take a photo of your family, your friends, or holiday locations, you can set your Lumia to automatically upload them to your OneDrive account.

But it’s not just photos. Your Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents, including PDFs, and music files, can all be stored in your OneDrive, too, regardless if they were created on your mobile device, such as Lumia 640 XL, Surface 3, or your desktop computer.

Any of these images, files, and more can be accessed from anywhere on any device providing you’ve got Internet access. They will also be synced and up-to-date.

OneDrive for Business

Rather than using your own personal account to host your stuff, a OneDrive for Business account belongs to the organization–either your own or your employer’s.

Not all businesses may need this option. The free OneDrive option may be enough if you run a small business. But if you need to be more collaborative and want extra options, OneDrive for Business may be for you.

This is a nice way to separate personal and work content and to avoid your holiday snaps being mistakenly shared with your colleagues.

Every item uploaded into OneDrive for Business is set to “private” by default, meaning nobody else within the company can see it without your authorization in the share options.

These files may be stored in the cloud or on your organization’s servers. And while collaboration on projects and files is easy for everyone invited, it’s not for those who aren’t thanks to administrative external sharing controls.

OneDrive for Business is part of Office 365 or SharePoint Server 2013, and customers receive 1-terabyte of storage to store and work from as part of an Office 365 subscription.

Subscription plans start for as little as $5 per month.

For a more visual explanation, Benjamin Niaulin from Sharegate has put together an image that shows some of the differences between the two:

Crafted by: Sharegate The SIMPLEST SharePoint Management tool suite.

Are you using OneDrive or OneDrive for Business? Let us know how you’re using it, below.