File Folder Sharing

I’m looking to transition to a paperless office and want to share electronic files and folders with 2 people. I use about 5 gb of space at the moment.

Requirements:

  • up to 10 gb to share
  • free or up to $5/mo/user
  • collaboration of same document is not needed
  • files are primarily jpg and pdf’s.
  • sync by Mac app that I can have a local copy
  • web interface for an employee and access while traveling
  • share a folder and all the subsequent subfolders and files

I’ve looked at:

  • iCloud - limited functionality
  • Dropbox - little too expensive to start with and I don’t need that much data
  • Google drive - trying this at the moment but they are changing the way sharing works. Permissions are on a per file level which is annoying to manage.

What other options would y’all recommend?

You might consider hosting your own cloud service. I know this can be accomplished but I don’t know the details.

GoogleOne is $1.99/month for family sharing of 100Gb.

Aside from that, as you’ve found the free plans don’t cover 10Gb, and everything else goes over that… for more money.

Personally I’d just cough up the extra $60/yr and use Dropbox.

Didn’t know about google one. I actually have enough space on my google drive but am running into the annoying sharing of folders and then ownership of files.

Dropbox lowest tier for individual is $120

That’s why I said the extra $60. Dropbox has the convenience, features and power you were looking for. While GoogleOne is the only option in your budget for your smaller storage needs, it’s not as slick and easy for other people to use.

What about BOX.com. 10GB free I believe

Not for collaboration, unfortunately; you’d need to upgrade to Box’s $5/month per-user Business plan for that.

I’ve had a devil of a time trying to install iCloud on Windows. Could be the machine I use, or could be fat fingers, but after spending hours trying this in the past, I gave up.

A month ago. From the Windows Store at that time. On Windows 10. I continually run into this error

I’ve researched and applied all manner of fixes for this, finally ending up with a various suggestions to run a set of PowerShell commands designed to modify the Outlook installation on Windows 10. I stopped trying at that point, since risking damage to Outlook due to something I found on the internet was not where I wanted to be.

I though OneDrive provided 15GB for free, but it appears it’s only 5GB. However, like Google Drive, 100GB is $2 a month.

You could consider Resilo Sync (or there is the FOSS alternative, but IMHO slightly less polished Syncthing). As long as one machine is one, it will sync the data across to the other devices. Resilo has an iPad app and you can selectively download items to it. I have the paid for version - it’s a one off fee, however, there is a free version and should do what you need.

Sorry I read too quickly. I’ll keep it in the running.

Icloud

@wolfie. Point well taken. I’ll test it out. I was hoping to find a better web interface so that an employee can access the files. I also couldn’t tell where to share the files with somebody else.

box

@craig_r Oh I’ll check it out. Thanks for the suggestion
@bowline What do you mean by collaboration? I’m working with pdfs and jpg files. Would only need to keep the most recent version. Don’t need to edit files at the same time.

OneDrive

@drezha Honestly, haven’t even thought about Microsoft. I’ll take a look. I think I have an old account that should still have 15 gb

Resilio Sync

Doesn’t look like there’s a web interface. I’ll want the files locally synced for two computers and an employee would access over the web.

Somehow I read iPad access for some reason! Yes, unfortunately there isn’t a web interface - I’ve got a web interface to it as it runs on my Synology so I can access files via that (and I use instead of the Synology software provided as I know it works), but yes, that is otherwise a big downside.

If iCloud is not enough (but from your requirements it should be)
Why not try owncloud?