A Worthy Competitor To Dropbox? [1]

You'll be aware, if you're a frequent visitor to this site, that I'm a huge fan of Dropbox, the online file sharing/sync service.  Copy something to your Dropbox folder on your PC, and it instantly gets synced to the cloud, and also copied to any other computers which are linked to your account and on which you've installed the Dropbox client app.  You can sign up for a free account at www.dropbox.com [3], and that gets you 2 GB.  Or do it via my personal referrer link at https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTYxNjE2Mzk [4] and we both get an extra quarter-gig of free space.

Much as I love Dropbox, someone mentioned to me the other day that it's really aimed at the consumer and home user, and isn't really business-oriented enough.  And then he went on to mention www.box.net [5], which he claimed was more business-oriented.  I can see what he means.  Like Dropbox, you can sign up for a free account, and sync your files to the cloud and to other computers.  There are client apps for Android, Windows and iPad, with Mac coming soon. 

But it's the business features which set it apart.  Primarily, the control panel from which the company's administrators can set up new box.net accounts, manage quotas, set the security options, and generally manage everything.  Which means that your company can have its staff store all their documents online, without the need for an in-house file server, and still have excellent control.   Not bad, especially as it's only $15 per user per month, for 500 GB of storage.

But while $15 isn't expensive, it's still not free, so I guess it won't appeal to you, dear reader of Gizmo's.  Until I tell you that, if you sign up with www.box.net [5] for a personal account, you get 5 GB of space for free.  It may not be 500, but it's still more than twice as much as Dropbox currently gives.  So if you want to explore the world of cloud-based file storage, box.net is definitely one to add to your shortlist.

Plus, unlike Dropbox, box.net lets you choose friendly URLs when you're sharing files with friends or colleagues.  So it's now easy to make any document, photo etc that's stored in your box.net account available to others via a simple URL.