Companies, whether big or small, have a lot of digital stuff.
By this I mean everything from billing tables to emails, contacts or legal documents to invoices or business cases.
Many small businesses don't use a shared or cloud-based file storage system - their files are small enough to be stored on local machines. But there is often a tipping point when...
Archiving requirements – sometimes prescribed by law – become too demanding
Data and files cannot be transferred from the office to external locations – or to employees who work from home
it is unclear who owns or is responsible for files, so data is lost
sharing files, usually via email or USB stick, is not very efficient and intuitive
cannot meet business hardware file requirements
However, file storage isn't always cheap, and choosing the right software for file and document management isn't always straightforward . Many companies go straight to Dropbox , which Gartner calls "the best-known cloud file storage and sharing provider, with the largest user base for consumer services."
However, “most popular” doesn’t necessarily mean “best for small businesses.” In fact, there are plenty of free Dropbox alternatives that are better than the original.
Alternatives to Dropbox
Dropbox alternatives
To be clear, there's a lot that Dropbox does absolutely right. As I looked through the many free or open source file storage services, I noticed that businesses tend to value the following five features the most:
Dropbox's free storage starts at a meager 2GB with the potential to upgrade to up to 18GB (users get 500MB for each successful referral plus a bonus when they recommend Dropbox on social media).
When looking for Dropbox competitors, I found that a lot of free storage solutions offered a maximum of 2GB or 5GB, so I set the minimum for this list at 10GB. This eliminated some more popular file sharing services like SugarSync .
Locally hosted options are only limited by hardware capabilities, so they did not fall under south africa telegram data this limitation.
2. Security
Dropbox uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) network encryption protocols when transferring your files ( TLS and SSL are technically the same thing ). It also uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for stored files. AES is so secure that it is the first publicly available encryption algorithm approved by the NSA and used to protect sensitive government information.
All of this means that Dropbox is super secure, and small businesses will want a similar level of security for their file storage. That's why all of the software solutions recommended here offer TLS/SSL and/or AES encryption.
3. Mobile Apps
Dropbox offers free apps for Android , iOS and Windows . My requirement for the recommendations here was that they offer at least one free app for one of these services.