Dropbox alternative, is there one ?

[timmy toad]

Hi last year i Opened a DropBox PRO account, it is soon up for renewal, and as it did last year it is going to cost me a lot money, so i thought are there any cheaper alternatives that i could use, possibly fully utilising some of the features i have with my MacBookPro and Yosemite, features i havent yet used or know much about !.
There are several things that I do like about Dropbox, one of them being the fact that it Syncs very efficiently with a Folder i have on my Hard Drive which i can easily see in Finder. secondly the ability to easily obtain a Link to any of the files so they can be shared with a friend and/or a Forum like this one.
I do believe with my MacBookPro i can create a FTP folder etc. but i am bit to inexperienced to simply jump in without first finding out a little more, helped I hope by some Answers to my questions above !

I do have a Hosting account for my Web Site which doesnt seem to be limited for Space, but officially they tell me that i am not allowed to STORE files on this web space, i can only use it for Web Site files !!!.

If anyone can advise me i shall be very pleased

Tim

 

[mac8867]

I installed an OwnCloud server on my mac and published it to the public internet. Check out this blog:

OwnCloud Server for Mac

 

[macchelsea]

IMHO, the real value of Dropbox is that it's supported by dozens of apps, especially on mobile devices. No other service even comes close to it, not even iCloud Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. Of course the cheapest way is to build one on your Mac or a NAS, but you can't access your files on a mobile device. So my advice is unless you use your files primarily on computers, not smartphones or tablets, stick to your Dropbox Pro account.

 

[awair]

ownCloud has an iOS client - working fine on iOS versions 6 & 8.

 

[Martin29]

I have a My Cloud Drive which is accessible by all my devices from anywhere. Great for serving my files when I need them and stores my photos and iTunes music library too.

I also use iCloud drive which for me has always worked extremely well.

 

[campyguy]

I used to love Dropbox. I have an account. Over the weekend, I realized that I haven't used Dropbox in months.

I won a free Office365 subscription last October, and have been testing Apple's "new" iCloud Drive with the El Capitan betas. Since trying out Office365 and using the new iCloud Drive setup, I hadn't even realized that I hadn't used - or missed - Dropbox in 5 months. I purposely name my files with revision names - file name/date - from habit going back 20 years, well before revisions were a "feature" in applications like Word, so it's not a deal-breaker for me.

The "killer" for me was Dropbox's compromised servers earlier this year. I'd passed on links to one of my attorneys a couple of days before that - I used my OneDrive account, and just never went back to using Dropbox. Now that I write this, I've not used Dropbox since then.

I have a 5GB partition in iCloud Drive and a 10TB partition in OneDrive. I'm likely going to delete my paid and free accounts with Dropbox - I just don't see the need for keeping that service around any longer.

 

[mw360]

The "killer" for me was Dropbox's compromised servers earlier this year.

Do you have more info? A quick search isn't turning up anything for a compromise in 2015.

Anyway, for point to point syncing without any 3rd party BitTorrent Sync is worth a look. It doesn't provide a way to share files though. WeTransfer is good for that, but doesn't integrate with any cloud storage so you need to upload the file every time.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

They were hacked last year, not this year.

 

[mw360]

They were hacked last year, not this year.

Thanks but can't find a hack last year either. There's that 400 password story which blew up for a day, but that seems to have been a hoax/scam. Is that what we're all talking about?

Handily though, the panic evident on the 'news' sites reporting that event throws up tons of suggestions for alternatives. Eg Google Drive, Box, SpiderOak, OwnCloud, OneDrive etc.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Thanks but can't find a hack last year either. There's that 400 password story which blew up for a day, but that seems to have been a hoax/scam. Is that what we're all talking about?

I assume this is what he was referring to, as it made quite the media noise.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I use Google Drive more than Dropbox but DB is a bit better for sharing files.

Not sure how your website is hosted but the ones I've used have always had FTP access to the extra space with which I could do what I wanted (and I have used it to send large files).

 

[campyguy]

I am alluding to the selective sync issue that was first called out in October 2014 - the "issue" occurred again in March of this year, but I didn't see any "press" about the later event. Both events coincided with my transmitting files to one of my attorneys, and resulted in files I had to transmit the old fashioned way but also cost me several hundred dollars (I was on the other side of the country and the court wanted the documents within 48 hours) and lost them one staff person's productivity for a day as her PC crashed hard - and I got and paid the bill for that. It was a paid account, and Dropbox doesn't divulge all of their issues to the public. Like the 2011/2012 issues they had at the time, Dropbox wasn't very forthcoming about what happened IMHO.

I've gone back to transmitting files on a USB stick or CD/DVD via courier - it's just easier. I just don't trust them any longer. I don't dissuade anyone from using their services, opting to describe my own experience and decision.

There's nothing on my OneDrive of any significance, and there's at least 3 backups of any "stuff" there.

 

[jakebrosy]

I installed an OwnCloud server on my mac and published it to the public internet. Check out this blog:

OwnCloud Server for Mac

I put OwnCloud on my leased server and have been happy with it for 2+ years. I use OwnCloud to store files I need when traveling, backing up files when I'm away from home (photos, etc.), sharing files with clients and allowing clients to send me files. Super easy to set up and have had zero problems.

 

[hobowankenobi]

For those wanting to run ownCloud on a Mac, there is a nice pre-made installer over at Bitnami that is dead simple to install.

 

[timmy toad]

Thanks Chaps, sorry i havent got back sooner, i obviously overlooked signing up for notifications, DAM

Tim