Internxt Drive review: Fantastically affordable storage, sync, and backup

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Online storage, multi-device sync, and mirroring
• Fantastically affordable lifetime plans
• Extremely secure and private
• Free 2TB account

Cons

• Could use better help and task feedback
• The backup is actually one-way sync/mirroring

Our Verdict

Internxt’s intuitively blended web access, file sync, and backup (mirroring) services are impressive. However, the incredibly affordable lifetime plans are by far the most outstanding aspect. The docs, client interface, and backup feedback could be better, but, by Grapthor’s hammer — what a savings!

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Though Internxt Drive rightfully touts its 256-bit encryption and dedication to privacy, there’s no feature in particular that sets it apart from the crowd. As with services such as Dropbox, Sync.com, OneDrive, iDrive, etc. there’s sync and storage. There’s also backup, though it’s not true inviolable backup, but mirroring.

Internxt presents its features in a largely intuitive fashion, but what wholly distinguishes itself from the hoi polloi are its incredibly affordable lifetime plans.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best online backup services for comparison.

How much is Internxt?

When I last reviewed Internxt, I said you might want to hop on its super-affordable lifetime plans before they disappeared. Happily, here we are two years later, and Internxt lifetime plans are still imminently affordable — albeit a bit different than before. Read this discussion carefully.

I first tried the free plan with 1GB of storage (formerly 2TB). Sadly, you can no longer increase the free plan’s capacity to as much as 10GB through various actions such as inviting friends to the service.

Beyond that, things have changed a bit since my last look in 2023. Gone are the $0.89-per-month 20GB and $3.49-per-month 200GB plans. Subscriptions now start at $1.65 a month for 1TB and $3.30 monthly for 3TB billed annually. Mind you, these rates are discounted from $10.99 and $21.99 per month, respectively, and might not last. Those prices are also approximate and subject to change as they reflect conversion to dollars from Euros.

So Internxt can be a tad pricey on an annual basis when not on sale. But if you’re willing to commit for life (is that even a thing anymore?) Internxt morphs into uber-affordable. See below. (Note that all stated prices are even lower using the links to purchase in this review.)

Foundry

If you’ve priced online storage at any time, these lifetime deals are eye-popping. As mentioned, the 3TB forever plan (assuming the company lasts, of course) is only a bit more per-gigabyte than I pay for 1TB with OneDrive for two years.

As to the company lasting, while I hate to be that guy, my job description requires that I point out that Internxt is now only five years old and online storage is a very competitive landscape.

That said, I made that same caveat two years ago, when the company was just three years old, and it’s still here. It’s reassuring that the company employs the well-known OVH storage infrastructure. Worst case, your data will still be available for download after any corporate failure, and the lifetime pricing is more than worth a roll of the dice in my book. My being particularly risk-averse makes that a hearty endorsement.

Note that features vary with the cost of the plan, not surprisingly. Most notably, the backup function is not available for free accounts.

Internxt Drive features

Internxt’s features are basically four-fold: sync, backup, sharing, and a recent addition — antivirus. The first three are located in a menu tree to the left of the web interface, and also the Internxt desktop app which resides in the system tray. The AV is only available in the local client, while sharing is done online.

Syncing works like services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. You drag or add files to a local folder/virtual drive that Internxt created, and they’re synced between your devices and the Internxt online storage. There are apps for iOS and Android.

The pay plans also let you create a backup plan that will fire off automatically at a rate as granular as one hour. Add any files or folders that you want backed up regularly, set the schedule, and forget about it. Backups don’t sync.

Though I stupidly referred to it as such in my first review, Internxt’s backup isn’t true backup. A true backup is never altered, using versioning to reflect changes. With Internxt, any files that change overwrite older files. This is actually a form of one-way sync known as mirroring.

The company is considering versioning (saving older files) but has not implemented it at the time of this writing. I’ve never needed it, and for most users, current-state backup will be fine.

As mentioned, Internxt now includes antivirus with the paid plans. On both Windows and my Mac it proved extremely thorough — and aggressive. One scan registered 114 percent when I stopped it. I appreciate enthusiasm, but let’s stop at 100 percent please.

I clicked on the above notice with some trepidation, fearing it would simply trash files out of hand. However, it only takes you to a list that you can then select items from. There is no quarantine, only remove. Be doubly sure before you remove stuff. There’s also a custom scan that will let you narrow the scope to a single drive or folder.

The antivirus is also very aggressive, so be careful — there were quite a few false positives. Actually all them were, thoug