SugarSync - Bad News Bargain?

cormie · 31-12-2013 12:24AM #1

I've been a happy SugarSync user for the past 2 years (to the day!) and have found it, as a free service, absolutely brilliant. The great thing about Sugarsync is that you can choose any folder to sync and you don't have to have a "dropbox" style folder where you put the things you want synced. This makes it way easier for me.

Anyway, I learned today, only after an email telling me I've only 40 days left of my 90 day trial (

) to upgrade to a paid plan. It didn't say much else and it was the first I'd heard so I got onto Live Chat straight away who informed me they are stopping their free service and will be disabling all free accounts from February 8th :mad:

This is a bad move by them in my books, I've heavily recommended SugarSync in the past and I'm sure I've gotten them a few paying customers somewhere down the line of my recommendations and I'm sure it's the case with many free users.

Anyway, while on Live Chat, I was given this link for 75% off the annual fee, the cheapest being $74.99 or $18.75 with the discount.

http://www.sugarsync.com/account/upgrade?promocode=cbnemghzimmjy

So this is in a way a very bad news bargain. I'm sure SugarSync has popped up in Bargain Alerts a few times so thought I should announce it here for anyone who might need to stay with them. For $18.75 it's not so bad, but $74.99 is a different story come next year.

For those who will leave, any other recommendations for a similar service as good as SugarSync with folder specific sync locations and all the rest, please state below

Digital Society · 31-12-2013 12:50AM

Absolute Bargain. Easily the best backup service their is if your paying.

Only about 12 quid a year for 60gb. Proper bargain.

50 quid a year for 250gb. Thats crazy for a reliable service.

jantheman91 · 31-12-2013 12:51AM

If you're spending that much why not invest in an external hard drive?

Am I missing something....

long_b · 31-12-2013 01:00AM

Am I missing something....

You will be when your external hard drive fails

jantheman91 · 31-12-2013 01:02AM

long_b wrote: »

You will be when your external hard drive fails

It's no big deal i've it on my computer as well :P

cormie · 31-12-2013 01:13AM

jantheman91 wrote: »

If you're spending that much why not invest in an external hard drive?

Am I missing something....

I've everything I need daily on my laptop (music, files, folders etc), I then have 2 x 2TB external hard drives which each have the same content (just incase) and hold everything else such as install shells etc, as well as everything on the laptop. These get updated as I need to. All the work related/irreplaceable files are synced to SugarSync so these are backed up immediately. It's no use having an external hard drive if you've just spent 10 hours working on something and don't bother to back it up for another week. With sugar sync, it's backing up as you go along and you don't have to even think about it (dropping it in a drop box folder for example).

It's a fantastic service, the free account was enough for me and it's a real pity they are disabling the free accounts.

If there's nothing out there that compares, I guess I WILL just have to go for it at $74.99 come next year but I thought in the last 2 years given the increase in cloud technology and services, there would have been a similar service new to the market to compete and beat SugarSync?

Ghost Train · 31-12-2013 01:21AM

jantheman91 wrote: »

It's no big deal i've it on my computer as well :P

And if the house burns down?

Think I'll be moving to spideroak

jantheman91 · 31-12-2013 01:27AM

Ghost Train wrote: »

And if the house burns down?

Think I'll be moving to spideroak

I think my files will be the last of my worries if the house burns down.

polaris68 · 31-12-2013 01:36AM

I have used Sugarsync to sync files between my work PC and laptop. Everything gets backed up on their servers. It's worked brilliantly for me for the past 3-4 years.

OP, did live chat tell you that the $18.75 discount was for the first year only or do you get it for that price into the future?

cormie · 31-12-2013 01:56AM

I don't think I clarified that, but I'd say it's the first year only..

polaris68 · 31-12-2013 02:11AM

I would definitely consider paying $18.75 for 60GB. I'll contact them to see if I can wrangle a few extra years at this price.

Digital Society · 31-12-2013 02:30AM

cormie wrote: »

I don't think I clarified that, but I'd say it's the first year only..

Very easy to just jump to whoever has the best deal at the time.

I would assume they will be giving a decent deal to keep their clients anyway. maybe 50% off.

Remember that Flickr gives a TB of free photo space so dont waste your space with photos like lots of people would.

AiRcTRL · 31-12-2013 02:31AM

polaris68 wrote: »

I would definitely consider paying $18.75 for 60GB. I'll contact them to see if I can wrangle a few extra years at this price.

Or, you could just sign up to Mega.co.nz and get free 50gb forever?

Digital Society · 31-12-2013 02:32AM

AiRcTRL wrote: »

Or, you could just sign up to Mega.co.nz and get free 50gb forever?

Not the same at all.

polaris68 · 31-12-2013 02:43AM

AiRcTRL wrote: »

Or, you could just sign up to Mega.co.nz and get free 50gb forever?

It's the seamless backup and syncing between multiple devices that I like with sugarsync. If these features are available elsewhere for free then that will be great. I'll have a look at that one.

I have free 50GB with Box.com but I don't think that syncs between devices.

PeterDuggan · 31-12-2013 02:52AM

Thanks OP. Bye bye Sugarsync - lots of other services out there.

cormie · 31-12-2013 02:54AM

I don't really like the idea of jumping ship to another provider, would be nice to have a guaranteed time of a fixed price, or even better, free. $18.75 is nothing for 60GB I guess, but $74.99 is a bit different, considering I was only using 3.3gb out of my 5gb free allowance, it's a big increase.

Gmail of course offers 15GB of storage shared between your google accounts and drive but this doesn't compare to the syncing of SugarSync at all.

AiRcTRL · 31-12-2013 02:54AM

Digital Society wrote: »

Not the same at all.

Sure it's missing the seamless "sync," feature, but hell, for free I'd be willing to make that sacrifice :P

I have 50GB with Box as well, and 15 with Google.

MOH · 31-12-2013 10:45AM

I've been using Crashplan for the past year or so.

Not sure how it compares pricewise - paying yearly it's $60, but there's often deals floating around to get it cheaper.

Includes unlimited backups for one machine (or 2+ or the dearer plan) - think I've got about 100GB backed up at the moment. But you can also back up external drives on the 1-machine only plan.

One interesting feature is that you can put a drive in a friends house, and vice versa, and backup to each other, for free - although that might be a daily backup rather than continuous, I haven't tried it yet.

animaal · 31-12-2013 06:23PM

jantheman91 wrote: »

I think my files will be the last of my worries if the house burns down.

This is true for most files, e.g. music. But there are some types of file that I'd miss if the house burned down.

- photos
- documents relating to work

cormie · 07-01-2014 07:23AM

Bumping this again after a post or two was lost in the site maintenance. Again, if there's any similar service out there that's been released in the last two years that does the same specific folder backup from a reliable company, please share, otherwise, it'll probably be a plan for Sugarsync..

07-01-2014 08:22AM

cormie wrote: »

I don't really like the idea of jumping ship to another provider, would be nice to have a guaranteed time of a fixed price, or even better, free. $18.75 is nothing for 60GB I guess, but $74.99 is a bit different, considering I was only using 3.3gb out of my 5gb free allowance, it's a big increase.

Gmail of course offers 15GB of storage shared between your google accounts and drive but this doesn't compare to the syncing of SugarSync at all.

Are you certain?
I believe when you download google drive you should have near instant backup available on selected folders.

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/_p8xj7BHZAE

cormie · 07-01-2014 08:28AM

Oh wow, you can select folders from within windows that will automatically sync with Google drive? I thought it was just a storage place and couldn't sync

Might be no need at all for SugarSync so, unless Sugar Sync has any distinct advantages?

07-01-2014 08:32AM

cormie wrote: »

Oh wow, you can select folders from within windows that will automatically sync with Google drive? I thought it was just a storage place and couldn't sync

Might be no need at all for SugarSync so, unless Sugar Sync has any distinct advantages?

From reading through the discussion forum there on google groups it appears that the syncing is not always instantaneous, and there may be some issues with directory paths.

I can't access google drive at the minute, but have a look at the site and see if the client can match your needs.

cormie · 07-01-2014 07:15PM

I don't think Google Drive can do it with folders

I got this list of alternatives to SugarSync from a poster in another thread, Cubby looks good!?

Try iDriveSync and Cubby for similarities.

For multiple folder syncing you can also try Wuala (most secure), Spideroak, SkyDrive and LiveKive (Spideroak by AVG)

soirish · 07-01-2014 07:25PM

Happy Dropbox user with 20Gb free space which isn't likely to be cancelled.

AlanS181824 · 07-01-2014 07:46PM

I have 75GB with Google Drive but I still think I'll miss SugarSync

cormie · 07-01-2014 09:53PM

Yeah SugarSync has served me very well, never any problems, just works.

Would like something similar but don't want to just go and sign my documents up to some random site that could go bust any day. Might just go for the $18 renewal and see what's around next year, unless any of the above suggestions are as good or better?

unkel · 08-01-2014 11:47AM

cormie wrote: »

I don't think Google Drive can do it with folders

I got this list of alternatives to SugarSync from a poster in another thread, Cubby looks good!?

Cubby is good! The easiest to use of them all, you pick your own folders and "make them a cubby". It then does all the auto syncing. And it is owned by the crowd who own logmein, so a big player too, no worries about your precious data

BionicRasher · 08-01-2014 12:48PM

Ok so I don’t really know what the difference is between Google Drive and SugarSync – can someone explain?

At the moment I have documents and other important stuff in Google Drive folders (I keep photos in Google+ otherwise known as Picasa and these are auto uploaded from the mobile phone too and I then back those up to Flickr so that’s all free and safe as houses)

As for the documents and things that I like to keep I can save them to a folder on my home PC, work PC, mobile phone and tablet and they are all in sync pretty much instantly from what I can see. Also it’s very easy to share stuff and collaborate on documents in real time with others and its mega easy to save attachments in my emails straight to Google Drive as its baked in to Gmail and its all free (well I do actually pay $5 for an old legacy 25GB plan)

Can someone point out the advantages of SugarSync?

cormie · 08-01-2014 01:56PM

Thanks Unkel, that's good to know. Do you use it yourself?

tui0hcg, I don't think I ever explored SugarSyncs full capabilities but this is what it was for me:

Installed it, set up a free account and was given 5gb, no limit on file sizes or transfers or anything, as long as your total file content was less than your 5GB. Selected the folders on my pc that I wanted to backup/sync and that was that. The only other thing I ever needed to do over the last 2 years was the odd update prompt. It was so simple and easy and it would put a little mark beside each icon for when it was pending upload and successful upload, so say if you dragged a new file into one of the selected folders, it would go orange first and then about a second later (depending on file size) green to show it was now synced, just so simple and seemed to be very secure and reliable.

It also had some very nice features like being able to get a "share" link for certain files so you didn't even need to upload them elsewhere if you wanted to share, just generate a link which you could "unshare" later. It also synced between devices too, this I never really tried but I'm sure it worked well too.

So I don't think Google Drive allows you to select what folders on your computer you want to back up in the same way? Cubby appears to be the same but I'll have to look into it a bit more. I'm not sure if there are file size limits etc on the free plan, if it's exactly like SugarSync was for me then I'll probably jump ship, I just hope their free plan doesn't expire like SugarSyncs will...

SugarSync - Bad News Bargain?

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