"blurted"... Well, yes, I do use several different cloud systems because various organizations, school, and church all use these different ones and because I work with them, I use them too.
iCloud isn't bad in theory. However, earlier in February 2023, just before I received my latest M2 Max MBP, iCloud had a stroke. Literally everything on hard drive/iCloud was GONE. Poof. In a instant.
I worked with Apple Support Level 2 and 3 techs to try to figure it out. Odder yet, all of my files were also absent when I logged into Apple iCloud Drive from a browser. There was zero bytes there.
After about 2.5 weeks of working with Apple (I was assigned a special "liaison" that worked between customer service and the engineers), one evening I was looking at an article online and then closed the browser. I was stunned to see ALL of my missing iCloud folders/files had been restored to my desktop.
What a mess! Apple never provided an explanation other than it was an issue on their end. Two days later my new M2 arrived and I abandoned ship with the other laptop mess. I did eventually go back and reorganize those folders and files where they were supposed to me.
I actually like Google Workspace because it offers more storage space, it's affordable, and works across all my devices (iPad Pro, 2 MBP, and my Samsung Galaxy 23). It is easier to share access to folders and files from Google than from iCloud as not everyone's world is Apple-centric.
My school uses Dropbox and students have free access. However, I ONLY use it for school work.
I learned my lesson from Dropbox a few years ago. I once had a Dropbox Pro subscription that allowed me unlimited storage for about $500/year. At that time, I had even more data store because I had an entire 6TB of music, 5TB of movies, and then all my other files (around 5TB).
Then, a point came in life that no longer afforded the luxury of the expensive subscription. I allowed it to lapse because dropbox said that I would always have access to the files, but I would not be able to sync files. That seemed in theory, at first. When I needed a file from there, I went to Dropbox com and downloaded whatever file I needed.
But then, I needed to download a very large file. Dropbox would not allow it. They have a download cap set on customer's accounts that used to be subscribers - something like 40GB (guestimating) in a period of time. You can figure out the math of what it would take to retrieve ALL of my Dropbox data in 40GB portions - IF everything nearly fit into 40GB buckets to download. Customer support told me that I would need to resubscribe in order to retrieve my files in whole. I was livid. My data was being held hostage. After finally getting to a manager, I was given a two week free trial of the Pro subscription and I changed Dropbox's settings to synch one way (save to local). Eventually, I retrieved everything... and RAN from that company.
Because of this experience is why I want to build my own storage solution. I want to control the variables, eliminate subscription costs, and have it tailored exactly to my needs.