It’s no surprise it integrates with YouTube, given the site’s popularity, but Usenet? This sets Offcloud apart from the competition, even if it does cap your Usenet downloads at 20GB daily. This might be enough daily usage for light users, or those who supplement torrents with occasional Usenet downloads.

Offcloud’s web interface is easy to use and presents you with a dashboard showing you your remaining bandwidth and space. The free trial limits you to 10GB of data transferred and only three links. When you have data you want to save, you simply paste the link into Offcloud and select from three options: instant, cloud or remote.

The instant option is essentially a proxy. You input a link, and Offcloud creates a tunnel delivering the content to your device over the web. It’s downloaded to your device, and not stored on the cloud, so if the original content is removed it will no longer be accessible in Offcloud. The cloud option fetches data and stores it on Offcloud’s in-house servers. You’ll get a new, secure link to access your data anytime, from anywhere, even if the original content is taken down.

The remote option requires some configuration on your part, as you’ll need to provide Offcloud with access in order to store data. The service supports FTP, SFTP or cloud storage services such as Google Drive and Dropbox. This is an excellent option for those who deal with spotty connections like mobile broadband or slow WiFi, but deal with large amounts of data.

This system allows you to grab the data you need and store it until you’re on a fast enough connection to download it locally.

To test the service, I used the “instant” option to download a free, public-domain movie, and the speeds weren’t very impressive. This is most likely due to the fact I’m in the U.S. and the Offcloud server was in France. Selecting the “cloud” option made the file available in a few minutes.

Note that Offcloud doesn’t intend to act as a “seedbox,” which is a server used to boost a user’s ration on private trackers by perpetually seeding a torrent. A spokesperson for Offcloud stated that they typically only seed torrents on a 1:1 ratio, uploading the exact amount they downloaded. For users that rely on public trackers or don’t care about ratio, Offcloud is a fine solution.

If you’re only looking for a cloud torrent provider, Offcloud may seem like overkill. But at $59.99 a year, it offers unlimited storage and bandwidth which makes for a better deal when you consider the limited storage offered by other providers. With all the feature  included with Offcloud, it’s easily one of the best options available.

Bitport.io’s service is fast and lets you stream your media to several devices, including Apple TV and Chromecast, as well as supporting Kodi. The company prides itself on making torrenting as easy as “Ctrl-C,” and it really is that easy. Bitport.io offers a free account that limits users to one torrent per 24 hours.

The interface looks great and works well on mobile, allowing you to pick a torrent while you’re away from home and access it later. I wanted to see what speeds were like with less popular torrents, so I picked a low-quality version of the same test movie and watched the speed steadily increase until it topped out at almost 30MB/s, finishing in three or four minutes.

The cheapest plan starts at $5/month and provides 30GB of storage and five download slots, meaning five actively downloading torrents. You can download an unlimited amount of torrents per day on all plans except the free one. In addition to the extra storage and torrent downloads, paid plans offer HTTPS downloads and anti-virus scanning, a nice bonus feature for wary users.

Bitport.io also seeds to a 1:1 ratio, but paid users can contact tech support and have this changed to a custom ratio. It’s a simple service, lacking extra features, but it serves its purpose well and at an affordable price.

You simply paste a link or upload a torrent file and it will quickly download, or in the case of popular torrents, it will appear instantly. Initially there was a file already in my account, courtesy of Seedr. Deleting it freed up some space and I selected the same torrent used in my previous tests. It appeared instantly, available to download or stream.

I tried an Ubuntu torrent, and had the same results. Popular torrents will show up as “collecting seeds” for a few seconds but instantly copy to a folder and are available for download or streaming.

Out of the three providers I listed, Seedr was the fastest, hands down. It took me longer to copy and paste the torrent link than it took for Seedr to deliver the files. For users of private torrent trackers, Seedr is unique in that it offers static IP addresses and private tracker support with the “pro” and “master” plans. Since private trackers rely on unique .torrent files, you can’t simply copy and paste the link as you would with public trackers.

You download the .torrent to your device and simply upload it to Seedr, and they’ll seed it to either a 2:1 or 5:1 ratio depending on your plan. Seedr offers fast, often instant downloads of torrents, and let’s you stream your media right away on whatever devices you own. Paid tiers start at $6.95 a month for a simple, fast service to take your torrenting to the next level, in the cloud.

All of the providers discussed here have a strong stance on user privacy. Bitport.io’s main page even states “download torrents to a secured cloud; anonymously; fast.” Your IP address is never exposed to anyone when you download a torrent in the cloud, except to the service provider you’re using.

There is always the chance that the government could have a court compel a provider to hand over logs, and depending on the provider this could include your IP address and the list of files you have downloaded or stored under your account. The chances of this happening are unlikely, as services like Put.io have been active for years now without facing legal issues.

There are legitimate uses for torrenting, and the providers do not knowingly offer illegal content. They simply provide users with a way to quickly and securely access content on the web and store it. To date, there hasn’t been a single case of one of these providers handing over user data.

The solution is simple: use a VPN and an email created solely for cloud torrenting. Pick a provider that keeps zero logs and allows a payment method such as bitcoin or gift cards to ensure privacy and anonymity. Even if a cloud torrent provider is forced to hand over logs, you’ll remain anonymous thanks to the VPN (not to mention that it protects you from ISP snooping as well).

Check out our best VPN reviews to get an overview of which provider is best for you. Remember: if they didn’t protect their users, cloud torrent providers would be out of business quickly. It’s a safer, more convenient alternative to torrenting using a client.