Internxt Review
Interested in what newcomer Internxt Drive has to offer? In short, not much outside of security and privacy, but keep reading this Internxt review to learn all its strengths and weaknesses.
— Last Updated: 2021-10-25T14:18:00+00:00 Facts checked by Elisabeth Ivey
Internxt Drive is a relatively new cloud storage service that launched in 2020. It claims to offer “absolute privacy and uncompromising security” to its users. In this Internxt review we’ll see if that claim holds up, as well as take a look at how the service compares to other cloud storage services in terms of features, price, ease of use and more.
Key Takeaways:
- Internxt is a secure cloud storage service that launched in 2020.
- Although it sports an intuitive interface and shows a lot of potential, Internxt is lacking in features and speed.
- Most of the paid plans are poor value, except for the 2TB plan.
As a secure and encrypted zero-knowledge file storage service, Internxt’s claims are legitimate. However, its feature set, speed and pricing leave a lot to be desired.
Given how young the service is, it’s understandable it doesn’t have a feature set that matches those on our list of the best cloud storage. Internxt has a lot of potential, but in its current state it’s difficult to recommend over services like Sync.com or pCloud, which offer a lot more functionality without sacrificing security or privacy.
Yes, Internxt is a secure and private cloud storage service that offers zero-knowledge encryption and two-factor authentication. It also stores your files as fragmented pieces spread across multiple server locations in different countries, making it even more private and secure.
Internxt Drive is a recently launched decentralized cloud storage solution that places an emphasis on security and privacy.
Alternatives for Internxt
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Strengths & Weaknesses
Pros:
- Well-designed & easy to use
- Good security & privacy
- Well-priced 2TB plan
- Solid customer support
Cons:
- Incredibly basic features
- Slow
Features
It’s quickly apparent when you start using Internxt that it’s a service in its infancy. The bare essentials of cloud storage are there — you can upload files to the cloud and share them with others — but that’s pretty much where it ends.
A Bare-Bones Cloud Storage Service
There are no third-party integrations, built-in file previews or media players. Nor is there file versioning or deleted file retention. You can switch between “full sync” and “upload only,” but there’s nothing like selective sync or Dropbox’s Smart Sync (read our Dropbox review). You can create shareable links for files, but the only adjustment you can make to them is setting a download limit.
There’s also a “backup” function, which suggests Internxt plans to take more of a hybrid approach to cloud storage going forward (read our guide on cloud storage vs online backup to learn about the difference).
It lets you designate folders to automatically upload to the server at regular intervals. This is a nice addition, but it can’t compete with the best dedicated online backup solutions.
Usually the features section takes a lot of space in our reviews, but there’s nothing more to talk about in this case. Internxt fulfills the bare minimum requirements of a cloud storage service, but we’re hopeful the service will improve significantly in this area once it matures.
Internxt Features Overview
| |
|---|---|
| Sync | |
| Sync Folder | |
| Block-Level Sync | |
| Selective Sync | |
| Bandwidth management | |
| Sync Any Folder | |
| File Sharing | |
| File Link Sharing | |
| Link Passwords | |
| Link Expiry Dates | |
| Folder Sharing | |
| Folder Permissions | |
| Link Download Limits | |
| Upload Links | |
| Productivity | |
| File Previews | |
| Edit Files | |
| In-App Collaboration | |
| Office Online | |
| Google Docs | |
| Notes App | |
| Media Playback | |
| Mobile Apps | |
| Deleted File Retention | |
| Versioning | |
| WebDAV | |
| Security | |
| At-Rest Encryption | |
| In-Transit Encryption | |
| Encryption Protocol | AES 256-bit |
| Zero Knowledge | |
| Two-Factor Authentication | |
| Server Location | EU |
| Support | |
| 24/7 Support | |
| Live Chat Support | |
| Telephone Support | |
| Email Support | |
| User Forum | |
| Knowledgebase | |
| Misc | |
| Free Plan |
Pricing
Internxt offers six plans, though two are only available as a one-time purchase (or lifetime access, as it’s sometimes known). First, there’s the Internxt Drive free plan, which is always a good thing. However, it gives you a measly 2GB of storage, which isn’t enough to impress. If you’re looking to get as much free storage as possible, check out our list of the best free cloud storage instead.
Next up are the three plans that you can pay for monthly or annually. These confer 20GB, 200GB and 2TB of storage for $1.15, $5.20 and $11.56 per month, respectively. If you sign up for a year instead, prices decrease to $1.04, $4.07 and $10.49 per month, respectively. Only the 2TB plan is remotely competitive to the market.
The prices are conversions from euros done at the time of writing, so the exact price in U.S. dollars will probably differ slightly depending on when you’re reading this.
- : 2 GB
The 20GB plan costs roughly the same as 100GB or 200GB plans with other services, such as Google Drive (read our Google Drive review). The same is true for the 200GB plan, which is closer to the price of 1TB with Icedrive. That said, Internxt’s 2TB pricing isn’t bad, as it’s not too far off services like Sync.com and pCloud.
Lifetime and Unlimited Storage
That brings us to the lifetime plans. Handing over a big lump sum for “lifetime access” to a cloud service is risky, especially one as young as Internxt. We’ll put that aside, though, as you have to decide for yourself whether you trust the service will stick around for long enough to make the purchase worth it.
The first lifetime plan comes with 1TB of storage and to avoid subscription fees, you’ll have to pay $115.38 up front for life, which is roughly half the price you get with other lifetime cloud storage offerings from services like Icedrive and pCloud. The final two plans are more expensive. They’re only available for lifetime purchase, and they cost $348.48 for 5TB and $581.57 for 10TB.
Both plans are expensive, so given Internxt’s current state and age, we can’t recommend dropping that much money. To sum up, as long as you stick to the 2TB plan (or the 1TB lifetime plan), no matter the billing period, you’re getting a good deal if all you care about is how much storage you get per dollar.
Ease of Use
One area where Internxt does well is in its usability and design. This is partly because there’s not much there to confuse, but also because it’s well designed, easy on the eyes and laid out sensibly.
Internxt on Desktop
Like most cloud storage services, the desktop application for Internxt sets up a sync folder on your device. This functions like any other sync folder, though it’s missing the context menu options you often get from other services, like MEGA or Sync.com (read our MEGA review and Sync.com review). This means you can’t share files directly from desktop, which is a shame.
There’s also a panel in the system tray that shows recent activity and the current sync status. You can enter a settings menu here, but all it contains is a toggle between full sync and upload only, the ability to change the path of the sync folder, and the choice of whether to start the application automatically on boot.
There’s a button to take you to the logs folder, which we appreciate, though it’s probably not that useful to anyone not testing the service or troubleshooting issues with it. When you install and run Internxt, you’ll be given a short tutorial before being able to access the system tray menu. This is a nice touch, even if it feels unnecessary for a service as basic as Internxt.
Internxt Mobile App and Web Client
The mobile application is pretty much the same story. All it does is show the files you have stored on the cloud and let you upload and download files or media. You can create the share links for files as well, but it has the same limitations as the desktop application.
The web client has a little more going for it. The design is reminiscent of a lot of other well-designed cloud storage web interfaces, like Icedrive (read our Icedrive review), and unlike the desktop app, it allows you to create shared links to your uploaded files.
The design is intuitive, but there’s not much you can do with it. Still, no one’s going to accuse Internxt of being difficult to use.
File Sharing & Syncing
As you’ve probably guessed by now, there’s not much to say about Internxt’s approach to syncing and sharing files. There’s a sync folder, which you can add files to, and there’s a web client where you can manually upload files. The only thing you can do beyond that is change whether the sync folder downloads anything or if it just uploads.
Sharing is just as basic. You can only share individual files, and you do so by creating a link that you can copy and send to other people. The only setting you can define for a shared link is how many times the file can be downloaded, which defaults to 10.
Speed
If you’re storing a lot of data on the cloud, make frequent changes or work with large file types, fast transfer speeds are of critical importance. Unfortunately, Internxt is one of the slowest cloud storage services we’ve tested, so those who need to upload data fast will want to look elsewhere.
This seems to be partially because of how the service encrypts files, as the client spends a significant amount of time encrypting each file before it begins the upload. It also only uploads one file at a time, which stops it from taking full advantage of faster connection speeds.
To test Internxt’s transfer speeds, we used our regular testing conditions: a Windows cloud computer hosted in Ireland with a stable upload and download speed of 100 Mbps. For our data, we used a 5GB unzipped folder containing dozens of file types, including documents, videos, images, audio and more.
Given these conditions, we expect the uploads and downloads to take roughly seven minutes, with the absolute fastest possible result being six minutes and 40 seconds.
| First attempt: | Second attempt: | Average: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upload | 1:27:46 | 1:21:49 | 1:24:47 |
| Download | 0:10:02 | 0:11:54 | 0:10:58 |
As you can tell, these results are painfully slow. It took Internext more than 10 times the time we expected to upload our test folder. Most services, such as pCloud, Icedrive and Google Drive, hover somewhere between the minimum of six minutes and 40 seconds and seven and a half minutes, but Internxt took well over an hour.
Downloads were a lot better, but still weren’t close to a result we’d call impressive. It’s not uncommon for download speeds to be a lot faster than upload speeds, especially with encrypted storage, but these results are quite a bit higher than the minimum time we expect.
Security
As with the feature set, there’s not much to say about Internxt’s security. It’s a zero-knowledge service, which we’ll talk more about in the privacy section, and you can enable two-factor authentication.
You can enable two-factor authentication by using authenticator apps like Authy, Google Authenticator or, presumably, any app that’s compatible with the TOTP protocol. If you don’t know what that means, check out our guide to the best 2FA apps.
Internxt stores your data by splitting it into fragments and keeping different pieces on different servers. Your data is distributed to over 10,000 node operators around the world (mostly in Europe) and its integrity is secured using blockchain technology. This makes your data resilient against attack or data loss, as it’s unlikely everything would get lost at the same time.
That said, the lack of file versioning puts Internxt at a disadvantage in security compared to other services. That’s because versioning protects you against ransomware. In the event your local files are encrypted with ransomware, all it would take is one automatic sync to Internxt servers to infect your cloud files as well, and you wouldn’t be able to roll them back to an uninfected version.
Still, with two-factor authentication, zero-knowledge encryption and a decentralized network of servers, Internxt’s security is solid.
Privacy
Privacy is another area where Internxt does well. Since user privacy seems to be one of the guiding principles of the company, we’d expect nothing less.
Zero-Knowledge File Storage Service
Internxt is a zero-knowledge service — they’ve uploaded the code to GitHub to prove it — so no one will be able to open your files and see what’s inside.
Outside of the data you upload, Internxt states they collect minimal data about their users and do not sell or share identifiable information. Internxt sites data privacy as one of its core reasons for being, and it seems sincere.
The company is headquartered in Valencia, Spain, meaning it has no choice but to comply with GDPR. You can headquarter a company anywhere, though. The location of the servers storing your data is more important.
Luckily, Internxt primarily uses data centers in countries in the European Union, namely Germany, Spain, France and Finland. These countries have solid data privacy laws, at least compared to others like the U.S.
Furthermore, because Internxt splits your data into fragments, it doesn’t store whole files on any one server. This makes it even harder for anyone to access them, although it’d already be almost impossible given the zero-knowledge encryption.
All this adds up to a decentralized cloud service that, in the company’s words, offers “absolute privacy and uncompromising security.” Since the code is publicly available on GitHub and we didn’t see any red flags in the privacy policy, we’re inclined to believe Internxt.
Customer Support
If you need help with Internxt, the company begins by making sure you check its bare-bones knowledgebase. This is the only way to find the support email, which is hidden in a support article in the “About Us” category in the knowledgebase.
We tested email support by reporting a bug we experienced and got a reply about seven hours later stating the bug had already been patched and providing steps to resolve it. Sure enough, we didn’t encounter the bug again during testing.
Even better, Internxt has a 24/7 live chat you can use to get help. There’s no phone support, but it’s hardly necessary when you can use email and live chat to receive assistance.
The Verdict
With that, we’ve reached the end of our Internxt review. Overall, the service has a lot of potential, if given the time and chance to expand its feature set and iron out kinks. The company seems sincere about security and privacy and the design of the clients is a solid foundation.
Unfortunately, we can’t recommend a service on potential alone, and as it stands, Internxt doesn’t have the features to compete with more established services. That said, if your primary concern is security and privacy, and you don’t care about advanced features or transfer speeds, Internxt could be a decent choice.
What did you think of our Internxt review? Do you agree that it shows a lot of potential but lacks the polish to compete with more established solutions? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.
