NordLocker

Keeping sensitive files in end-to-end encrypted 'lockers' — both on your device and synced to the cloud. It comes from Nord Security, the team behind NordVPN, and it's encryption-first by design: less a full Dropbox replacement, more a digital safe for the documents you'd never want exposed. You drag files into a locker, they're encrypted before upload, and only you can open them. Think financial records, IDs and contracts rather than everyday shared folders.

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NordLocker's Premium 2 TB plan is listed at US$14.99/mo. As with every Nord product, that's the standard rate — the company runs regular first-year promotions that come in well below it, so it's worth buying into an offer rather than at full price. There's also a small free tier so you can test the encrypted lockers before committing. Next to all-purpose clouds it looks pricey, but you're paying for a security-vendor-grade encrypted vault rather than a general storage service.

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Not quite — they're siblings. Both NordLocker and NordVPN (along with NordPass) are products of Nord Security, the Lithuanian-founded company, so they share an account ecosystem and the same security engineering. One doesn't own the other; they're separate services under a single parent brand. Having a Nord account for one makes signing up for another straightforward.

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For confidentiality, yes. NordLocker is zero-knowledge end-to-end encrypted, so nobody but you can read your files. Standard iCloud data, by contrast, is encrypted with keys Apple holds — unless you switch on Apple's Advanced Data Protection, which most people never do. So for genuinely private documents, NordLocker wins clearly. But iCloud wins on seamless convenience inside the Apple world: automatic photo and device backup, deep OS integration, nothing to think about. The honest split — sensitive documents in NordLocker; your iPhone photo library and device backups happiest in iCloud.

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For its niche, yes. It's a well-built encrypted vault from an established security vendor, with the engineering backing you'd expect from the makers of NordVPN. What it isn't is a full cloud suite — there's no rich file sharing, no document editing, no real collaboration — so judge it as the digital safe it's meant to be rather than a Dropbox rival. On that basis it earns its place at the value end of our list: strong encryption, limited scope, priced accordingly.

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