Online Storage Royal Rumble (sort of)

1170 days ago in Articles, Neat & Nifty, Reviews by Brent | 8 Comments

It seems like there’s a new online storage site popping up every day. Each one touts their benefits over the others. I have used a few of these services before, use several now, never heard of others, planning on trying some and forgotten about just as many in the past.

I’m going to attempt to mention all of them and give some sort of honest opinion of each. Please feel free to add to the list or my commentary via the comments on this post. here we go… (FYI: Closer to the bottom of the article is where things get more juicy)

Never heard of (have you?)

ONLINE STORAGE SOLUTION

Well you can’t fault them for their name! It’s funny how names like this seem so old school to me now. Web 2.0 makes us gravitate to simple, cute and non-english names, doesn’t it? Anyway, $10/year and with a site looking like that… hmmmmmmm? (just me?)

STOREGATE

These guys look progressive, but still have the monthly storage pricing model which doesn’t work too well for me. It seems a little pricy to me too. Maybe I need to look them over a bit more to see why the extra cost (over the others)

IBACKUP

Yet another I found online somewhere. Looks a little “Web 1.5″ but hey, they have an iPhone interface. Monthly plan though is ‘no bueno’ for me but that’s my take.

FLIPDRIVE

Site kinda looks like an affiliate marketing site. It took me a while to find the pricing plan page (small, top left). Monthly and yearly pricing models (pretty affordable too). That’s as far as I got, haha.

ALL MY DATA

Nice, simple, inexpensive and I love the unlimited storage disclaimer, “Local laws of physics may apply”. Kinda temped to move these to the might try column.

Forgotten about (oh yeah, those guys)

ISTORAGE

Did you have a Zip drive once? I think I found an old one in my garage recently. Iomega is still in the game (apparently) and they have an online storage solution. Not a huge fan of the pricing but whatever, I’m sure it’s pretty reliable. It’s Iomega, right?

ONLINE FILE FOLDER

I used to resell these (GoDaddy). They work, are pretty cheap and well… get the job done. I have a few clients still using theirs. Nothing really bad to say, just don’t really use them anymore for whatever reason.

I’ve used in the past (kinda forgot)

MOBILE ME

So I have the iDisk icon on my desktop and MobileMe is backing up my contacts, documents and what-not. Doing the iTunes/iPhone thing and paying the $99/year. However, for some reason, I don’t use it for anything else but the backups really. I don’t really know why. Maybe you got some really spiffy cool ways to use your MobileMe account? If so, please share. I think I might be wasting money otherwise.

Might try (but probably won’t)

OOSAH

Free 1tb storage! Who wouldn’t sign up, right? They have some cool ideas about playlist sharing and streaming services or whatever. For now, I’m signed up and it’s in the “try this later” folder, sorry guys. Nothing personal, just not around to it yet.

MOZY

Cool looking site, nifty services, progressive marketing (thanks to a little friend of mine). Worth a look… one day, haha

MY BLOOP

Found these guys online somewhere, signed up and that’s where it stopped. I gotta ask how does one pay rent when you give away unlimited storage for free? Anyway with e 5gb upload limit, this works for those big transfers that just aren’t allowed everywhere else. Gonna have to try one soon just to see how it works.

Using now (and I love these!)

BOX.NET

Box.net has one of the cleanest interfaces out there, in my opinion. Not to mention a slick iPhone app. I use these guys for sharing files with my co-workers as well as delivering projects to my clients. It works great, mounts as a webdav drive in OS X, and I have never had a client complain about not being able to figure it out. All in all, this is a fav for my web-based drive solution.

DROPBOX

Dropbox has very quickly become my ultimate favorite webdav storage solution. It’s super fast (because it uses a local folder and backs up in the background) has a super clean web-interface, growl support, and easy versioning. With a 50gb storage limit for paid customers, I don’t know of any other better system out there to date. I use Dropbox to collaborate with my co-designers on projects as well as store stuff I want on multiple locations. The versioning features have saved my butt so many times, it’s just silly. Needless to say, these guys get my fave vote by far!

And in closing…

So there you have it. My thoughts on *SOME* of the online backup solutions out there. Basically summed up, I love Box and Dropbox. I wonder if I like boxes or something? Now I’m thinking… Anyway, I know there are opinions and other services out there so here’s your chance… BRING IT!!! If you are one of these providers and I have misrepresented, please correct me. I’m not too proud. I’d love the feedback.

Until next time,

Brent