Running out of room in your Dropbox or Google Drive account? New beta service Streem gives its customers an unlimited amount of storage space in the cloud, and it’s just attracted $875,000 of seed funding investment to do so. Unlike most conventional cloud storage apps, there’s no option to sync local files — everything is stored exclusively on the Web and streamed on demand.
That’s an advantage according to co-founder and CEO Ritik Malhotra, who told TechCrunch that users could store as much high-quality video and music as they liked without taking up room on their hard drives. The service will set you back $20 per month, though there is a free plan available with a generous 200GB allocation of space.
The development team has built apps for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and the Web, but of course no Internet connectivity means no access to your files. Streem uses a proprietary set of algorithms for compressing files and spotting duplicates that it says enables it to keep costs down and offer unlimited storage to its customers. Data is protected by SSL connections and AES-256 bit encryption.
With prices dropping and Internet speeds increasing, competition in the cloud storage space has never been so fierce. Dropbox recently released a slick new Carousel photo management app, Google slashed the prices it charges for Drive space back in March and Apple and Microsoft continue to push their own branded services. There are also a host of smaller services to choose from. Nevertheless, Streem offers something different that may suit a certain section of the market, and it seems Silicon Valley investors are happy to put their faith in its potential. You can sign up now for the service at the Streem website.