Dropbox Business vs. ownCloud

Everywhere as aforementioned it is well suited ... The largest and most appropriate... A business can never ever have too many locations of its data stored. This option allows my company to have our data stored in one location and everyone works it in real time whereas the updates go in "Real time" no matter who is working that file. This is the most awesome trick of the entire program not to mention that I can see everything that Bobbiesue is working on out west at the same time pull another activity report to see if indeed Peggy logged in for work from home at 2p yesterday as she stated she did. Its a check and balance for small businesses such as ours that runs on the honor system for telework employees. At this time, there just is not any less appropriate!

OwnCloud/Nextcloud is a great application for cloud storage of files, and makes sharing specific files or folders easy and fast. It also makes a great tool for real-time collaboration, including real-time chat and simultaneous editing of documents or spreadsheets. I have used ownCloud to assist clients in sending large files that could not be emailed -- for example, one of my clients is a Video Production agency. They produced a commercial to air, but could not email the file as it was 400MB. OwncCloud came to the rescue. I set up a temporary share and allowed him access to upload into that folder. Once the file was in the folder, I generated a share link that was then forwarded to TV stations for instant viewing in a browser. Each TV station then downloaded it and was able to add it to their scheduling system quickly. From the Photography side... I am able to deliver large amounts of files quickly and easily to my clients, and they can download or view on mobile devices easily. Since I use ownCloud on a daily basis, I cannot think of any reason why I would not use this software

Incentivized

• It enables us to share documents and workflow to all employees for whom access is allowed regardless of where in the world they may be located.
• Dropbox Business provides a means to safely store our documents without having to have physical copies.
• Dropbox also allows for easy organization of our documents in folders and such in the system.

Incentivized

• 100% of our data is stored ONLY on our servers and workstation. No external hosting anywhere.
• Open source, no recurring fees for any amount of data we need.
• Feature rich browser based application.
• Mature desktop sync client for PC and Mac.

Incentivized

• I deeply dislike the navigation. I find it very clunky and hard and not intuitive. A few years ago Dropbox redesigned its navigation and I'm frequently at a loss to figure out where to access the option I need.
• It should be quicker and easier to figure out how to send a file. I wish I could do that from the drop-down menu in my taskbar under the Dropbox logo.
• I wish I had the option under the same drop-down menu in my taskbar under the Dropbox logo to go to where the files are on my laptop, which I find much easier to navigate.

Incentivized

• Requires you to manage the infrastructure, software updates, backups and security because it is self-hosted
• The picture viewer in ownCloud is not really snappy by default (You need to setup plugins or some kind of cache)
• No video viewer by default
• The web UI requires a cache setup to have reasonable load times (to be fair, it is recommended in the admin page)
• I stopped using the calendar and contacts plugins because after each update they would break

Incentivized

First, because it's very price reasonable and second because it fulfills the promise it makes. It is simple to use, the learning curve is not that steep and it's easier for the new hires to understand and start using the tool as soon as they are on-boarded. It doesn't just save time but also effort

Incentivized

Well-designed, smart, packed with functionality without being overwhelming—Dropbox knows what they are doing and they do it well. They know what users want from the service and they make sure that all the normal use cases are intuitive and at your fingertips. I have never had a hard time finding things with Dropbox and I think their usability is excellent.

Incentivized

OwnCloud is easy for me to use, and I believe it would be for others too. The barrier for most people will be the set up. For a technology professional like myself, ownCloud's setup is pretty straightforward, but it's not the sort of thing most casual users will be able to handle. Also, it's on the user to maintain the service. These can be taken care of by paying someone to do it for you.

Incentivized

At least once a week the app crashes on my computer and causes files to stop syncing. It is an easy fix to re-open the app, however I have to notice the app stopped working to realize it needs to be reopened.

Incentivized

The Dropbox site and tools load in a reasonable amount of time. I don't feel like their site and app performance is any better or worse than any other paid product that I've seen offered by any other large company. Compared to a competing product like Google Drive, the performance is probably about the same.

Incentivized

Compared with other cloud services, ownCloud has been the most efficient. It doesn't create a noticeable drain on resources and very quickly syncs across all my devices. I'm usually able to save a file on my laptop and by the time I walk over and sit down at my desktop machine, it's already there. I don't need to wait as often as I have with services like OneDrive.

Incentivized

I give it a nine because I haven't ever had to use the support or help. I would give it a ten but since I've never had to use them, I can't really give a full review of how their support works. I've talked to market research teams from Dropbox about new features, but have not had to get any assistance with a problem yet.

Incentivized

Regarding the community edition, there is a reasonably good support on the IRC, forums and in the issue section on Github. Perhaps a much more individual approach would be available if the premium support was chosen and the instance of the server was provided by the Owncloud company that also offers some premium extensions, not available generally. However, we did not need this level of support yet.

Incentivized

The implementation was actually very simple. Again, as stated previously, the most intriguing part of the entire exercise was the implementation of the directory structure for each account. Once you design and implement it for one, it becomes quite simple to replicate for each account you implement thereafter. You just really need to take time to ensure you implement the first perfectly and those that follow on will be likewise work efficiently and easily.

Incentivized

Dropbox Business is dependable, adaptable, and cost-effective for our businesses. On the inside, it’s comparable to other file-sharing and storage. Also, file access and navigation are much faster. We use it to share documents and store data and files for our business purposes. And I’ve never been convinced of other tools’ integrity or dependability. Dropbox Business has good connectivity and is smooth to use.

ownCloud is better than Google Drive and Microsoft's OneDrive. I have not used Google Drive in some time now, so it may have improved. OneDrive has become better over time too, but my go-to is still ownCloud. Firstly, I prefer to have my data under my control. No other service can offer the level of control that ownCloud does. Setting that aside, in my experience Google Drive never quite got syncing right. Unless you have a very small collection of files and you're not synced across many devices, Google Drive fails to achieve a complete sync. The icon is always showing that Drive is syncing (and not up to date). I've had similar issues with OneDrive, but these days on Windows 10 OneDrive usually can achieve a complete sync across multiple devices, but it often hogs CPU and Network resources to do so, and it's still slower than OneDrive.

Incentivized

We've used this when we were 2 users and when we were 20. It did not make any difference. Even when we've had to scale down and fire 10 employees, it was still easy to salvage all the material and keep it organized within Dropbox.

Incentivized

• Improved risk mitigation - know our files are encrypted.
• Expiring Shared Links are a must have.
• Positive impact from Happy Customers. No more trying to send cumbersome encrypted emails that customers struggle with. Dropbox makes it easy for them to retrieve their files.
• Collaboration makes it faster for us to complete plan documents with our customers.

Incentivized

• The company grew from 4 employees in 2013 when ownCloud was initially deployed to about 40 in 2017 and still using it with a very similar setting without any major upgrade on the same Linux VPS. 95% of all company data are stored and shared via ownCloud successfully. No clear data about ROI but clearly the perfect adoption rate by all people and its ubiquitous use makes it an essential part of the company workflow.

Incentivized