Dropbox alternative AKICOLJ

[philmophlegm]

I'm looking to move away from Dropbox. In the past I was happy enough with it that I actually had a paid account, but I reduced my usage a couple of months ago and went back to a free (2gb) account. My current usage is about a quarter of this.

However, due to some glitch that I can't trace or find a solution for, both the Dropbox app and my online account are telling me that I am out of space. (I am suddenly "using 202.0% of my 2.0gb Dropbox allowance".)

I've done the usual googling and forum searching to see if this is a known problem, but it doesn't seem to be. So I put in a tech support request. Several days later I have received the following reply:


"Hi,

Thank you for your support request. Recently, we have been receiving a high volume of support requests and haven't been able to get back to you within a reasonable amount of time.

The volume of inquiries we receive on a daily basis prevents us from responding to all requests. Although requests from Pro and Teams users will be given priority assistance, we will do our best to get back to other inquiries when possible. If you are not a Pro or Teams user and you're looking to resolve your issue before we can respond, you may want to check out:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/

If you need to restore a large number of files and are unable to do so, please visit the following instructions to help us speed up the restoration for you:

http://db.tt/2QPImJ3g

If you are still experiencing problems, please reply to this message. We will try our best to get back to you, however we cannot guarantee a response. We're very sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,
The Dropbox Support Team"


So, that's not exactly helpful. And since there are alternatives to Dropbox out there, I'm wondering if I should just switch to another cloud storage / synching service. Any such service needs to support both Windows and iOS, and ideally Windows Phone too (although the latter isn't a dealbreaker). I'd much prefer a free service, and need a minimum of 1gb. It needs to synch automatically in much the same way as Dropbox does.

So can anyone recommend such a service?

Comments

[tobyaw]

Earlier this year I tried both Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive as alternatives to Dropbox. (I currently have around 20GB of data in Dropbox, which I share between my home Macs and my work PC, and access on my iOS devices.)

SkyDrive came close to replicating the Dropbox experience, and I would consider it to be a useable alternative. I came close to moving away from Dropbox, and plan to look again next year when my annual Dropbox subscription comes to an end. I appear to have 25GB for free, due I think to my upgrading from my previous Microsoft Passport account.

Google Drive, on the other hand, felt a lot less polished, and it didn't instill me with the sort of confidence that I wanted in a product that would be looking after my data. Looks like it provides 5GB for free.

[ozisim.livejournal.com]

I'm tentatively using Google Drive...
I do like the collaboration elements, but not a great big fan of it insisting that all email functionality goes only through my googlemail address.
Which I don't use.
but it crashes ALOT less than the MS Skydrive that my mum makes me use to share files.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I've used (and continue to use) Dropbox, MS SkyDrive and Google Drive all without incident, and without cost. I've also got a (free) Box account, but haven't actually used it yet: it seems the least polished of the lot of them, requiring an active sync app. I haven't used any of them with Windows Phone or iOS, but they seem to all work happily with Android.

[ggreig]

This may be a bit late for you, but I was forced to look around earlier this year when Live Mesh, which I had previously been using, bit the dust.

The solution I settled on was Cubby, because it can also do the thing which was Live Mesh's unique selling point, namely synch between machines without necessarily storing a copy on the cloud (although of course you can do that too).

There are clients for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android - no Windows Phone unfortunately, I have to fall back on SkyDrive for that.

I could e-mail you an invitation if you'd be interested; if you want to take me up on that you can e-mail me indirectly through my i-name. That way we can exchange e-mail addresses without putting anything online. If you take up my invitation, I'd gain an extra 1GB of free storage that I'll never use :-)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I went with Skydrive in the end and it seems to do everything I want it to, even supporting Windows Phone.

But thanks anyway!



(By the way, I've friended you on LJ. And looking at your interests, I see we have a very obscure software package in common - Campaign Cartographer, which I keep meaning to do more with.)

[ggreig]

OK, no problem. (And likewise with Campaign Cartographer :-( )

[ggreig]

This prompted me to check on the latest updates, and since I last looked Cubby has announced support for accessing cloud-stored files through WebDAV - and there's what looks like a fairly decent app, WebDAV Navigator, available for Windows Phone at a couple of quid. I expect there'll be some limitations in what you can do because of the way the Phone file system is locked down (I've only just bought it and played around a little, no serious use), but it does give you an option.