10 file-sharing options: Dropbox, Google Drive and more
Sharing files with one or more colleagues can
still be a hassle. We look at 10 online services that aim to make it easier.
Serdar Yegulalp
Remember the first time
you tried to send a 4GB video file as an email attachment? Anybody who has
tried to share a large file with a friend or colleague understands all too well
to the problems that are involved. Email attachments can get rejected, especially
if you don't know what the upper limit on a file size is for sender or
recipient. Uploads and downloads can be arbitrarily slow. And the clunkiness of
the whole process makes it hard to get real work done.
In the bad old days, if you wanted to distribute files that were
too hefty for your email to handle, you had few choices. You could buy some
web-hosting space and use that to distribute files on the fly to your
co-workers and collaborators, you could burn a disc or copy the file to a USB
drive and drop that in an envelope, or you could use that fabled legacy
transport protocol, Sneakernet. Nowadays, however, there's a bevy of free
services that offer tons of storage and bandwidth.
In this piece, I examine 10 file-hosting services that can be used
to distribute files to an audience via links or email. Four are dedicated to
sending and hosting large files in a corporate context (MediaFire, RapidShare, ShareFile and YouSendIt),
while the other six (Box, Dropbox, Google
Drive, Minus, SkyDrive and SugarSync)
are more general, personal-use file-storage services that have mass
distribution as an adjunct feature.
All of the services in question allow download links to be
generated from uploaded files, which makes it easy to distribute them to a
mailing list or other group. That said, they've all got a different mix of
storage capacities, helper apps and quirks.
To check file transfer times for each service, I uploaded a 100MB
ZIP file that contained a mixture of PDF documents, JPG images and TIFF images,
using a connection with an average 2 megabit/second upload speed.
In the following descriptions, I deal mainly with the file-sharing
features of each service.Computerworld has
reviewed a few of these services separately, looking at their other tools more
thoroughly; in that case, we've provided a link to the review.
Dedicated file-sharing services
While there are currently a variety of cloud storage services out
there, they were preceded by dedicated file-sharing services, whose main
purpose was to allow people to upload and download files that were too large to
send via email. These services may be more focused, but they also tend to offer
the chance to share larger files.
MediaFire
MediaFire is useful if you
have lots of files you want to distribute, as long as they're under 200MB each.
Uploads are scanned with the BitDefender antivirus engine; common document
types can be previewed directly at MediaFire's site via a Flash-based previewer.
Distribution includes sending file links to social media (Facebook, Twitter) and emailing
via contact lists from a variety of programs including Outlook, Plaxo, vCards
and many more.
The MediaFire
Express desktop application is currently in beta but shows a fair amount of
thought. It provides a drag-and-drop target for quick uploading of files and
folders; after uploading, a pop-up appears with a quick link to the uploaded
files.
Free account storage
space: No limit
Free account max file
size: 200MB
Paid account storage
space: No limit
Paid account max file
size: 4GB ($9/month); 10GB ($49/month)
File storage expiration: None as long as account is not inactive for more than 128 days
Other paid options: Uploads do not expire for lack of activity; direct links to
files without interstitial pages; removal of ads; custom domains and branding
Time to upload 100MB
file: 6 min. 30 sec. (includes BitDefender scan)
RapidShare
What RapidShare lacks in
paid features it makes up for with few restrictions on its core product. The
biggest limitations are on download bandwidth and file retention, not storage,
so it's a handy way to quickly throw big files somewhere and distribute them to
a broad audience on short notice.
Its desktop
manager app, though, leaves something to be desired. It runs on Java and
requires that you manually launch the installer as an administrator (most app
installers do this automatically). Once set up, though, it makes uploading easy
via an Explorer right-click context menu.
The
"RapidSave" tool allows you to repackage your already-uploaded files
for download as a single item. There's no apparent limit to how many files can
be repackaged this way. However, while you can use RapidShare to send file
links to multiple parties via email, there's no apparent way to import lists of
contacts. (You can quickly access the names of previously emailed people, but
that's not as useful.)
Free account storage
space: No limit
Free account max file
size: No limit
Paid account storage
space: No limit. With paid account, files remain, even after 30 days of
no downloads; pricing starts at 9.90 Euros for 30 days (the payment system
accepts PayPal and credit cards, but all payments are in Euros).
Paid account max file
size: No limit
File storage expiration: Files deleted after 30 days of inactivity for free accounts
Other paid options: Advanced admin tools; unlimited download speeds
Time to upload 100MB
file: 16 min. 10 sec.
ShareFile
ShareFile is clearly aimed
at corporate customers rather than consumers. There's no free plan, although
there is a 30-day free trial for all account tiers; the 10GB-and-up tiers
include access to desktop widgets and Outlook plugins. Files can be assigned an
automatic expiration period, from one day to two years after uploading.
The Windows
desktop-sync application is written in Adobe Air, so it doesn't have amenities
like a right-click context menu to Windows Explorer, but at least the app gives
you the ability to generate a download link for each file or folder. In
addition, distribution lists for mass mailings can be created from an Excel
spreadsheet.
Free account storage
space: None
Free account max file
size: N/A
Paid account storage
space: 5GB & 2 employee accounts ($29.95/month); 10GB & 10
employee accounts ($59.95/month); 20GB & 20 employee accounts
($99.95/month); corporate plans (require rate quote)
Paid account max file
size: 10GB
File storage expiration: Only as designated by uploader
Other paid options: Outlook plugin; desktop sync; stored file encryption; drive
mappings; SAML support
Time to upload 100MB
file: 7 min. 27 sec.
YouSendIt
The lowest tier of
YouSendIt is rather constrained, but the higher tiers are clearly aimed at
business users, with add-ons like Outlook plugins (great for mass distribution)
and Active Directory integration. Links to files sent via YouSendIt's mailer
option -- as opposed to just generating a manually distributed link from an
uploaded file -- can be set to expire after a given length of time (a paid
option) or require a user login with a verified YouSendIt account to read the
file (available for free accounts).
The desktop
client works much like Dropbox: It creates a folder into which you drop files
to be uploaded, with the sync status of each file displayed as an overlay icon.
The only way to obtain a given file's direct download link is through the
YouSendIt site; the desktop client doesn't provide a way to do this. But the
site does have a good preview system for common file types.
Free account storage
space: 2GB (max 1GB of download bandwidth per month)
Free account max file
size: 50MB
Paid account storage
space: 5GB ($9.99/month or $99.99/year); unlimited ($14.99/month or
$149.99/year)
Paid account max file
size: 2GB
File storage expiration: 7 days or 100 downloads, whichever comes first (free accounts
only)
Other paid options: Expiration date control; full-folder downloads (instead of
individual files); premium file delivery options; phone support; upload to
Dropbox; Active Directory integration and enterprise security options available
via Workstream plan
Time to upload 100MB
file: 9 min. 23 sec.
General file storage
These services
are known more for file storage and backup than for the distribution of files.
However, they all have file-sharing capabilities, and if you already use one of
them -- or if you're looking for a file storage service -- it could make sense
to use that service for file sharing as well.
Box
The basic free version of
Box provides file management exclusively through its Web interface. You drag
and drop individual files to upload them, but if you want to upload whole
hierarchies of files (folders and subfolders) there's also a Java-based bulk uploader.
A list of links is maintained for recently updated items, and discussion
threads can be created for folders and files. Public file links can be
automatically distributed via social media and email, with contact lists for
the latter importable from many common services and applications.
Many features
you might take for granted with other services (e.g., Dropbox), such as a
desktop client or the ability to link directly to a file instead of just the
file's download page, are premium for-pay items. Box can display previews of
most common types of uploaded files, although one JavaScript-heavy HTML file I
uploaded rendered as a blank page.
Free account storage
space: 5GB
Free account max file
size: 100MB
Paid account storage
space: 25GB ($9.99/month); 50GB ($19.99/month); 1000GB
($15/user/month); unlimited (custom quote)
Paid account max file
size: 1GB / 2GB
File storage expiration: None
Other paid options: Full text search; item version history; Google Apps / Active
Directory / Salesforce.com integration; ECM cloud support; custom branding
Time to upload 100MB
file: 12 min. 24 sec.
Dropbox
Dropbox was among the
first services to offer seamless upload and storage via its client software.
All you need to do to sync files to Dropbox is put them in Dropbox's designated
folder on a system with the client app, and the sync happens silently in the
background. Sharing links and other admin functions can be done directly from
the right-click menu in Explorer, but the only way to share with predefined
lists of people is through your list of Facebook friends.
A special
"Public" folder in your Dropbox account allows files to be linked to
directly, without a click-though download or preview page. This way, you can
upload a web page into the Public folder, link directly to it, and in effect
host impromptu websites in Dropbox. Note that Web pages need to be encoded as
straight ASCII to render correctly, as that's the default for documents served
from Dropbox.
Free account storage
space: 2GB (up to 18GB with 500MB per referral)
Free account max file
size: None
Paid account storage
space: 50GB ($9.99/month or $99/year); 100GB ($19.99/month or
$199/year); 1TB+ ($795/year and up)
Paid account max file
size: None
File storage expiration: None
Other paid options: Unlimited file version retention; multi-account controls for
teams; at-rest file encryption; dedicated phone support
Time to upload 100MB
file: 8 min. 3 sec.
Google
Drive
As with Dropbox and
SkyDrive, Google Drive's desktop client creates a folder into which you can
place files that are automatically synced to the cloud and to other devices
running the client.
However, file
sharing can only be set up through Drive's Web interface, not the desktop
client. You can, though, use the client to easily distribute a file's link to
Google contacts and groups (assuming Google is what you use to manage your
contacts).
Files created
and stored in Google Docs can also be synced to your Drive folders, although
you can elect not to sync selected subfolders in Drive. Documents saved in
Drive can also be opened as Google Docs documents, if Docs supports the format
in question. Note that files converted into Google Docs-compatible formats aren't
counted towards the storage total.
Free account storage
space: 5GB
Free account max file
size: 10GB
Paid account storage
space: 25GB ($2.49/month); 100GB ($4.99/month); various other plans up
to 16TB ($799.99/month)
Paid account max file
size: 10GB
File storage expiration: None
Other paid options: None
Time to upload 100MB
file: 6 min. 55 sec.
Minus
A still-evolving service
(the company doesn't offer a paid tier yet), Minus allows signup via Facebook
or Twitter and has browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox that allow
fast uploading of images and content.
Apart from
allowing files to be shared for download, most of Minus's features seem geared
towards Tumblr/Pinterest-like social sharing, not professional use. Users can
follow each other and see feeds of newly uploaded content, which can be
organized into publicly browse-able categories. Sharing is limited mostly to
making a link public and manually distributing it.
The desktop
client works as both a drag-and-drop uploader and a remote management tool for
your stored files. It also has the ability to snap and upload screenshots. One
handy function of the browser add-on: You can take a snapshot of a whole Web
page and upload it.
Free account storage
space: 10GB (up to 50GB as reward for recruiting other members)
Free account max file
size: 1GB
Paid account storage
space: None
Paid account max file
size: N/A
File storage expiration: None
Other paid options: N/A
Time to upload 100MB
file: 6 min. 50 sec.
SkyDrive
Part of the Microsoft Live family of services, SkyDrive provides
client apps for Windows and Mac that sync to and from folders on a client
machine. Drag-and-drop uploading through Web browsers is also supported, but
only for individual files and not whole folders; to do the latter you need to
use the client software.
The PC client comes off like a poor man's version of Dropbox;
there's no way to share files with other users except through the SkyDrive
website. On the plus side, the website previews Microsoft Office-format
documents using Office Web Apps; these files can be created directly in
SkyDrive with Office Web Apps as well. Files can also be mass-distributed
easily to users in your Hotmail contact lists.
Free account storage space: 7GB
(25GB for users eligible for free upgrade)
Free account max file size: 2GB
Paid account storage space: +20GB
($10/month); +50GB ($25/month); +100GB ($100/month)
Paid account max file size: 2GB
File storage expiration: None
Other paid options: None
Time to upload 100MB file: 8 min.
37 sec.
SugarSync
SugarSync, a competitor to Dropbox and Box, has a somewhat more
complex usage model. You can designate existing file folders in your computer
to be synced to the cloud and to any other computers you designate. SugarSync
also creates a "Magic Briefcase" folder in the Documents folder;
anything placed there is automatically synced across all devices registered to
your user account.
A "Web Archive" folder, on the other hand, stores files
from devices but does not sync them automatically if the originals are changed.
This makes the Web Archive a useful place for files intended mainly to be
distributed to others, so they're not replicated unnecessarily.
The desktop client also includes a file manager application that
lets you see what files are synced into the cloud and across your devices, all
in one place. Note that files in your account can also be browsed via the Web,
with limited preview functions for some file types (e.g., music).
Free account storage space: 5GB
Free account max file size: None
Paid account storage space: 30GB
($4.99/month or $49.99/year); 60GB ($9.99/month or $99.99/year); 100GB
($14.99/month or $149.99/year); 250GB ($24.99/month or $249.99/year); 500GB
($39.99/month or $399.99/year)
Paid account max file size: None
File storage expiration: None
Other paid options: Business
plans include at-rest encryption; Outlook integration; user management;
unlimited devices per user account
Time to upload 100MB file: 9 min.
20 sec.
Conclusions
If you already have Dropbox, Box, Google Drive or SkyDrive accounts,
it makes sense to use them as default choices for file distribution -- as long
as you don't mind the restrictions on storage, or the lack of contact-list
support in some of them. Minus might be an interesting contender in time,
although right now its feature set is still very simplistic.
If you only want to share files, MediaFire is a good choice
(although a major constraint with free accounts is that individual files are
limited to a maximum of 200MB); in addition, it makes mass-mailing easy. RapidShare's
lack of file-size limits is a plus, but its distribution tools leave a bit to
be desired.
My top selections? If you're looking for a service that both syncs
and shares files, SugarSync is a good choice, since it doesn't have file-size
constraints and does have some remarkable pro-level features. For sharing-only
tools, YouSendIt's got heavy restrictions for free users and ShareFile's got no
free tier at all, but both of those services have excellent professional-level
features. They, along with SugarSync, are the best of the services to grow into
as needed.
Serdar Yegulalp has been writing about computers and information technology for
over 15 years for a variety of publications.
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