We’ve been posting here for a couple of months about Microsoft’s price rises, the CMA’s cloud investigation and what happens when a US company decides you can’t use the thing you paid for. All of it pretty serious, so it’s time we stopped to introduce ourselves.

So, hi. We’re Bigby.cloud 👋

Who we are

We’re Adam and Jamie, two lifelong friends with a lifelong love of tech. Between us we have long and varied careers in engineering, and management roles across fintech, energy, trading, publishing, retail, and more, often in the same teams on the same desks. We both have well over a decade of experience building, running and supporting platforms at scale, for many thousands of users.

Why we’re building Bigby

The honest answer is that we got fed up.

Not with cloud storage per se. Having your files follow you between a laptop, a desktop, your phone, and someone else’s computer is one of the genuinely good things about the modern internet. The problem is who provides it, and everything that gets bolted onto it.

At some point, keeping your own files safe turned into a relationship where you hold almost none of the cards. The terms of service change and you click accept, because the alternative is losing ten years of photos. The price goes up because an AI assistant you never asked for has been added to your plan, and there is no version of the plan without it. Your files sit on servers owned by a company in another country, subject to that country’s laws and political uncertainty. And when you finally think about leaving, you find the way out has been made as tedious as possible.

None of this is an accident. It’s the business model working as designed. What actually pays for these large tech companies is your attention, your data, and how expensive it is for you to walk away. We think there’s room for something more honest, more simple. You pay us money, we store your files in the UK. That’s the entire arrangement.

People, businesses, and governments across the EU and rest of the world are seeing the opportunity and value in home-grown services as an alternative to US Big Tech. We want to show what’s possible and lead by example in the UK.

What we’re building

Bigby.drive is our file storage, office and collaboration platform, our first service to launch in support of UK data sovereignty and “small tech”.

Your files are encrypted in transit and at rest on servers in the UK. If you want to work on documents, spreadsheets and presentations without leaving your browser, that’s built in. Shared folders, access control and real time editing are there for teams and groups. It works in a browser and on your desktop, and it speaks WebDAV, so it plugs into tools you probably already use. If you’re looking for an extra level of security, it supports end-to-end encryption with readily available third-party tools (and we’ll be integrating this with our own, entirely optional tools in future updates for a more seamless experience).

The bits that matter to us most:

  • We don’t look at your files. No scanning, no analysis, no AI training on anything you store.
  • UK company, UK servers, UK law. Better access, better legal protections, and no US CLOUD Act exposure.
  • You can leave whenever you like. WebDAV means you can pull everything out with standard tools. No export fees, no hostage-taking.
  • Open source first. We’re built on it, and we contribute back.
  • Honest prices. Plans start at £3.99 per user per month, you can see the whole price list here. No bloated tiers designed to confuse you into overpaying, and no subsidising cheap storage with data harvesting.

What we’re NOT doing

There’s no free tier. Someone always pays for storage. When it isn’t you, it’s an advertiser, and the service gets shaped around them rather than around you. We’d rather charge a fair price and be straightforwardly on your side. As the saying goes; “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

We’re not an AI company, we’re not an advertising company, and we’re not a search company. We sell cloud storage, based here in the UK. There’s nothing else we’d want your files for.

We have no aspirations to be the next Zuckerberg or Bezos! We just want to build something useful, and to be clear about what your money gets you.

Where we’re up to

We’re currently running limited alpha testing before a full launch. The waiting list is open, and joining it costs nothing and gets you first access when we open the doors.

If you’re weighing this up, or you’ve got a question we haven’t answered, or you think there’s something we’ve missed, get in touch. We’re real people who read our own inbox, and we’d genuinely love to hear from you.