Cloudload.com Review 2020
CloudLoad is a company focused in online storage that also offers cloud-based torrent downloads. The company was launched in September 2013, but an earlier version of its website existed back in 2012, along with an official Twitter profile.
The platform works completely online, with no additional software required to use the service. The only requirement is a device with internet connection and a premium account.
What does CloudLoad.com offer?
The site allows its customers to upload their files to the cloud or retrieve data from the internet and store it in the cloud. An embedded web search feature is included with the purpose of helping the users to find the content they are looking for.
There are five plans to choose from depending on your particular needs. You can also give a try to the service for 7 days at no cost with a trial subscription.
Files have unlimited lifetimes on CloudLoad, but the storage is limited according to the current plan. Capacities vary between 40, 100, 500, 1000 and 2000 GB, for MINI, MEDI, MEGA, MAXI and TERA accounts, respectively.
The number of parallel connections is also limited by the level of the purchased upgrade, to 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25. All downloads take place through a secure socket, under the HTTPS protocol.
Speeds are also virtually unlimited, with a maximum speed of 10 Gbps. The solid specifications offered by the platform permit as well live streaming of media content.
Pricing
The cheapest plan costs $5.98 per month, while the most expensive, which can be purchased only by contacting them directly, goes for $49.90. In order to acquire an upgrade, a VISA or MasterCard branded card is required, as it is the only method they currently accept.
The site is not crypto-friendly, meaning they won’t receive payments issued in Bitcoin or any altcoin. It seems they used to be in the past because a Bitcoin sign can still be seen on their website (but grayed out).
With the highest tier, the price per GB of storage is approximately $0.025, almost 6 times cheaper than with the lowest tier. The costs per unit are significantly reduced with every (more expensive) plan. The complete list of prices is shown below.
Prices on CloudLoad. You can also test the service for 7 days with a trial subscription
There is also a chance to test the site with a 7-day trial which will automatically convert into a full subscription unless cancelled within a week. To cancel a trial, the user must contact customer support asking to finalize the account.
A 30-day money back guarantee is included with every purchase, which users can make effective by messaging the support team.
Using the site
Free Trial
Trials at CloudLoad.com come with no other limitations but their lifetime. Users can test any of the available plans for a week and then decide whether to continue using the service for a fee or deactivating the account.
How to download anonymously through CloudLoad
Using the site is very intuitive and getting familiar with it should not be an issue. After signing in you are presented a dashboard where you can browse your files or add new documents to your account. The first time you log in, you will be presented with some suggested material.
Six suggestions of material CloudLoad thinks I would like
There are two search bars, the one at the top lets you browse the files you own, while the bigger one, at the bottom, is supposed to assist you finding content to grab. We tried the internet search box, but after a couple of queries, no relevant results came out.
No results for “the”? Something must be seriously broken with the site, that it returns no results for the most used word in English…
Adding files to your cloud is quite easy, you can either click on the link or the cloud-and-arrow icons to retrieve a file from the web or your local computer, respectively.
If you select the former, you just need to paste a valid URL (which can be anything retrievable, including torrent and magnet links) and click the plus sign; for the latter, you will be presented a local file explorer to browse and point to the relevant file.
Retrieving a torrent file
The file will be gathered by CloudLoad and presented in your dashboard after the process has concluded.
It took me more time to find a link than having the file ready in my dashboard
If the document is a video or audio file, you can play it directly from the browser as you would do offline in your own device.
Playing some random music on CloudLoad
The site will automatically classify your files into some basic categories (videos, images, audio, etc.). Besides making things easier to view, you can also take advantage of categories to restrict searches to a specific type of material.
Searching cat images. No results found, again. That is suspicious, at best
How anonymous is CloudLoad.com?
Downloads are anonymous by default, but bear in mind that the site complies with copyright laws and is against the violation of intellectual property. While you are completely invisible to your ISP or network administrator, CloudLoad can fully identify you based on the data provided during the registration process.
The company behind the service explicitly states that no one but the user and anyone he has shared his password with will have access to his files. They promise not to store any file logs or share the activity of their users.
What about the security?
The website uses HTTPS, meaning that all the data travels encrypted from end to end through SSL.
While they request billing information to all their customers, including those using the trial, they do not mention anything about how they store and protect sensitive data.
The platform comes with a virus scan feature, which helps to keep your own devices clean. Unfortunately, we tried the option with a heavily infected file (grabbed from a malware database) and it was not flagged at all. The file we uploaded is a well known virus that mines Monero with the resources of the infected machines, you can read more about it here.
The average torrent is far cleaner than this little malware we added to CloudLoad. There are no warnings anywhere (check the file analysis by VirusTotal).
User experience on CloudLoad
The interface is easy to use, but some elements interfere with each other at times, making it difficult to perform certain activities. The site is responsive and proudly highlights how it supports an ample range of devices.
There is no FAQ on the site, something really uncommon these days. Due to that, some information is extremely hard to find or directly unavailable.
From our own experience the customer support is anything but helpful. Even though we clearly worded our request, we received a generic answer that seemed to ignore everything we had explained. They can only be reached through the ticket system, but at least they reply quickly after the first message.
Some people have claimed on the internet that cancelling accounts before the trial period expires is difficult. They mainly complain about the fact of a phone call being required which is not mentioned at the moment of joining.
The site itself is considered trustworthy by Scam Adviser (which gives CloudLoad a perfect 100% score) and Google, but slightly shady by Scam Analyze (whose data is based in WOT, with a 50% score).
Pros
- Affordable memberships.
- Anonymous downloads.
- Free trial.
- No additional software required.
- Unlimited file lifetime.
- Very high speeds.
Contras
- Bad customer support.
- Bitcoin not accepted.
- Credit card required.
- Some features do not work as expected.
- Unreliable virus scanner.
Conclusion
CloudLoad.com is a great storage option for those also looking for some privacy and anonymity, as long as they are comfortable with sharing their billing information. The antivirus is not as reliable as it should, so using the site as a cloud torrent does not represent any advantage over its competitors, many of which offer better specifications.
Go to cloudload.com