Comments on: Small group cloud based file-server review of Egnyte, Box.net, and GetDropBox.com

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:05:49 +0000

And their pricing has been updated (Egnyte’s)

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:04:41 +0000

Egnyte is an excellent solution! I tried Box and thought Egnyte had much better features.

By: colton

colton — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:45:22 +0000

I am an egnyte user and think its a great service. They have many features others do not offer. The local cloud for off line access and iphone access is great. Very easy to use as well.

By: Troy

Troy — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:33:25 +0000

Yes, I agree that it’s cheap and that was obviously their thinking with the service – let’s put a thin layer on top of S3. But it’s the essence of value proposition. How much value do I need to add before what I’m charging makes sense. Adding 1 penny worth of value and charging $10 (not their numbers, I’m using this for the discussion) makes no sense. Yes, you get an interface but it’s shitty and complicated and difficult and you have two billing entitities and amazon keys and…and…and…

It’s just an awful design. Ask me how I really feel.

By: Boris Mann

Boris Mann — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:52:01 +0000

I use Jungle Disk plus Dropbox. I agree that the “small business / multi user” version of Jungle Disk is painful.

I use Jungle Disk in addition to Dropbox because I can use my own Amazon S3 account and use it mainly for “Archival” purposes – stuff that I don’t need to look at regularly, but do want to keep. It’s the least expensive option (pure S3 costs plus one time client software).

By: Carl Johnston

Carl Johnston — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:44:12 +0000

I agree with your comment on Jungle Disk – horrible product and not very fully featured. I am based in the UK and was in the same position as you – small business, distributed team of 6 and we wanted a file sharing solution. We made our mind up to use Amazon S3 but we also had an FTP server in which clients uploaded files so we wanted something that also took this into account if possible.

After a long look around we came across SMEStorage.com and something they call the Organisation Cloud. It is priced at 5 and 10 users and you can pay monthly or pay a one off lifetime fee to use.

After using some of their free services to get a handle on the offering I can highly recommend this offering. The Organisation Cloud supports a mixture of Amazon S3, Mosso CLoud Files, Gmail as a cloud, Email as a Cloud, Box.net and Private CLoud which hooks into an FTP Server. Interestingly as you add more clouds you see all your files in one virtual files system which we discovered allows you to build up your storage from a mixture of free and paid services or just free services. The free services (gmail, email) actually work so well we are considering using these instead of paying for Amazon S3. Especially as you can create a primary cloud and a backup cloud which are automatically sync’d i.e. if one goes down your files are available in the other.

The Private Cloud really worked for us as well. You basically map an FTP file location in the settings and the files become available in the virtual file system just like any other cloud. You can also schedule an automated backup which means the files are backed up into another cloud.

There are a myriad of clients and tools and integrations to use also. Although the site does not look as flash as some others, the functionality is spot on and so far it has exceeded our expectations.