Get 50GB of Box free for life | Hacker News Reader

Get 50GB of Box free for life

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69 points6thSigma79 comments

My first thought: I see no reason not to switch over from dropbox, it should take me about 10 minutes to switch. I could even run both at the same time for redundancy.

My second thought: from an investing perspective the danger in this space is the easy commoditization. This will lead to high competition and low profits, with hopefully some differentiation on quality (especially dependability).

This has been the case for me for the last couple of years. I used to see promotions like this constantly (even going back to when 8 free GB was on offer instead of 50), and as a result I have a small collection of different file storage services that add up to an okay amount of storage, mostly due to the couple of 50 GB promotions.

The one thing to be careful about with Box is the limitations they put on access; The promotion I got some time ago for 50 GB has a file size limit of 100 MB and doesn't allow download of folders with a free account. This makes it impossible to store a few large files and inconvenient to store many small ones (though WebDAV access makes the latter less of an issue.

Box.net has a 250MB file size limit for free accounts. Dropbox does not have any limits, AFAIK.

At least Dropbox has never complained about my ~4-5GB files.

When I got my HP TouchPad during the fire sale I got the free 50GB Box account, and this is exactly why I didn't switch. I keep various ISOs and DMGs in dropbox. What is the reason for this file size limit?

To incent you to upgrade to the paid version?

That can't be it because the business version has a 2GB limit as well. That's too small to store Windows, OS X, Debian, or FreeBSD DVD images.

The "enterprise" version has a 5GB per-file limit which would meet my needs - for now - but surely they're not expecting a single user to purchase an enterprise account.

It keeps out all the free and essentially unaccountable users who would like to use them for movie/software/game piracy.

Could be to discourage people from storing media there. OS images and videos are probably the biggest things people would store. They're also the most pirated content. My guess is either: a) they don't care to host 100TB of pirated content, or b) they're afraid of the legal ramifications of it. Imposing a file size limit keeps a huge bulk of usage away and a lot of the piracy concerns while not really inconveniencing the vast majority of normal users.

> I see no reason not to switch over from dropbox

First thing I did was check for local syncing abilities on the various platforms: no luck on the Linux front, although they seem to offer WebDAV access — a far cry from a syncing solution such as Dropbox or AeroFS.

seriously, they probably know it already but no linux client? not that google (google) drive is any better but thumbs up for dropbox for being so easy to use and send to a friend of yours a pic or a zip file...

> no luck on the Linux front, although they seem to offer WebDAV access

You can always use davfs, it worked out for me:

http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount.davfs

I had the 50GB free account from an Android promo awhile back and I couldn't find a way to use it. It definitely wasn't going to replace Dropbox. Since it was sitting around doing nothing, I recently started doing monthly WebDAV + rsync backups of local files.

I'm still evaluating but it's easy enough for me to run and I'm using the space now.

I also signed up, but had a very different feeling. Sync is hard to get right, and so far (other than a brief but inexcusable security sanfu) Dropbox has been rock solid. Just absolutely rock solid, which is something I can't say about many services. There are many ways to screw this up; just look at Apple.

Dropbox is also the most transformative pieces of software I've ever used. It's not an exaggeration to say that it changed the part of my life that involves a computer. Finally I can keep multiple computers in sync easily, and if a system ever goes down or I get a new one I can have all the data/documents I need on it in one step. This is ONLY possible if I trust that system completely. I'm not sure anyone will ever unseat Dropbox for me. I pay them with a smile.

Depends on how much you make use of the social element of DropBox. Friends, Family, Colleagues, coworkers all share their files with me through DropBox shared folders. About six months ago I finally bit the bullet and just bought a subscription.

For whatever reason, I've never had a folder-share request for anything but Dropbox, and, it's performance has been flawless for me across all my systems.

In comparison, photostream, which only needs to sync across a limited number of platforms, all controlled by Apple, has been consistently unreliable, and i frequently have to hop into my iPhone Photo application to get it to sync pictures over to my Laptop.

Syncing is hard. Dropbox has it nailed. I have zero desire to mess around with anyone else in the near future, so, they've won as far as I'm concerned.

I wish people would stop offering services 'for life'. They so rarely turn out to be for life. Having to renege on a 'for life' promise only generates the worst kind of publicity: justifiably vocal former-customers (even worse: formerly-happy former-customers).

I've already got a 50GB Box account through a free promo a while ago...but the account has file size limitations unless you pay for an upgrade. I'd assume this deal has the same restrictions. I forget the upload size limit, but it was enough to keep me from actually using them for my personal needs.

I pay $25/year for 25GB of Amazon cloud storage, which includes unlimited music storage and no upload limits. I'm happy with that deal for now.

Git Annex can store to it, and it enables automatic file chunking.

To Amazon or Box?

box.com (the chunking thing is part of annex' webdav support)

It does have size upload limits of 250MB.

Which Amazon cloud storage product do you have? Is it an Amazon retail product or an Amazon AWS one (e.g. S3, Glacier, etc)?

Amazon Cloud Drive (available for Mac, Windows, Android)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000...

it has a limit of 40.000 files (and "works best" for 10.000)

Just a marketing ploy. Box.com, formerly box.net, was initially a free 50GB offering, until they decided to make their usual offering a special promo after October 2012.

It's still at the high end of what these services offer, though.

Signed up, the desktop client seems a lot clunkier than Dropbox (I use Windows 7 for those wondering)

I don't really use any online backup service all that much -- all my docs are in Google Docs which I guess is Google Drive now and I'm a single dude so I don't have hoards of kids videos & photos. After seeing this and signing up I was planning on installing this on my mom's computer (currently she's using Dropbox -- down to 2GB after not wanting to pay for more than that) but don't know if I'm going to follow through just because this seems so clunky and un-intuitive.

Odd, it seems Dropbox somewhat perfected the model of "here's your folder (it's blue not manilla so you remember which one it is) just put your stuff in it and we'll back it up online and sync it up with the blue folders on your other computers" -- the "Default Sync Folder" is a real bummer.

Pity that blue manilla folder is the same folder as every other folder on mac

You can't see the little dropbox icon in the folder? ;) I wish it were a different color as well; I wind up differentiating by the red 𐄂 and green ✓.

Hah, I'd never considered that.

Company idea: Dropbox but with a default folder that is green rather than blue or manilla.

I would never trust Box. A long time ago (probably when they were starting up) the service made me realize that you can upload whatever you want for free but when it comes to download, you'll be SOL.

Can you expand on this?

I'm assuming Box isn't a write-only file system as they'd have few customers if it was.

As someone else also mentioned it in the thread, my experience was that you could upload folders/files but when it comes to download back, I could not download the folders. I gave up the moment I saw that limitation.

Dropbox doesn't have such restrictions, nor do any other such service I have experienced in the free tier.

Box allows you to download any files or folders. It's better than Dropbox in one respect because it automatically keeps a certain number of versions of a file (up to 25 I think) so you can easily backdate to a legacy copy in case of emergency.

Dropbox also has that feature

Has anyone used Box for personal data? How is the reliability and sync speeds compared to the competition?

I signed up during a 25GB free deal they had a while a go. I use it along side Dropbox and Google Drive and as far as I can tell it's as good as either of those.

Have you tried downloading back your files? Is it as seamless as Dropbox?

The other day I signed up with SpiderOak (over the recent buzz about security and all) and luckily I had to share a folder with a friend in another country. He has the fastest bandwidth available but complained that his connection would drop during the downloads out of SpiderOak. I switched the content to Dropbox and he downloaded trouble free in one go.

In my experience throughput is much lower on Box. Also there's no desktop client for Linux.

Comparing Box.com with Dropbox is like comparing apples to oranges in my opinion. I have a 100GB dropbox account for personal use and a enterprise Box.com account for work. They are two different service aimed at different markets. Box.com has always primarily been driven by its web interface where I can count the number of times I have used the dropbox interface on one hand.

In a business environment you cant ask your clients to install software on their computers in order to share files with you. First off it may not be allowed by corporate policies or security controls and even if it is allowed would you install software a vendor asked you to install to accommodate their workflow? Box.net is absolutely awesome in a business environment and has allowed me to get rid of insecure FTP servers and clients trying to use their web browsers as FTP clients and blaming us when they did not work. Box.com also allows project managers to create and manage permissions on their own client folders freeing up IT from that task.

In short I would not give up either account.

Only seems worthwhile using and relying on online storage, if you use two or three completely separate services, all sync'ed. So if one goes down or disappears without notice, you have backups, and can add another completely independent service.

Though with bandwidth limits and limited online storage capacity (I've over 200GB of business files, plus 450,000 photos, over 1TB), still appears more cost effective and efficient to backup to a portable hard drive every few months anything new and store at a secondary secure location, with online storage only being used for short periods until that backup is made and a local drive copy of that backup used on a daily basis.

For those with existing free accounts, there was no upgrade in storage limits (for me, it's 5GB). Of course, it's their choice since it's free, but it doesn't leave me wanting to upgrade to their paid plan (like I did for dropbox and sugar sync).

On the signup form it says "for friends or co-workers", which implied to me that this is a free account that you could use for personal or business use.

But it's a personal account, NOT a business one. You can certainly gift it to a co-worker, but this isn't a way to get 50GB free on a business account with Box.

So if you were hoping for something cheaper than £11 per person per month to try the business account with a much lower storage capability... i.e. a Bronze price point for small businesses and startups to get started on... well... you're out of luck.

Signed up, but I already have Dropbox for personal stuff so I won't be using this.

Last time I checked, file size is capped at 250mb for the free tier.

This reminds me of a recent "for life" promotion having ended; it was some kind of virtual server hosting, I think.

Bad advertising, in my opinion; this may or may not mean "free for the life of the service," which is the best possible case, since they have absolutely no way to guarantee this thing is available for the life of a user.

Well, they do have names and phone numbers. They could ensure the thing is available for the lifetimes of their users by hiring some assassins. I suppose technically taking out a hit doesn't guarantee results, but I really wouldn't argue that technicality with them if they started killing customers.

Thats a lot of GB. Several times more than my free Dropbox + Google Drive. So where is the catch ? There has to be one .

Max file size is 250 megabyte.

Yep...Came here to say the same thing. They also had a 250GB promo a few weeks ago, but with a 250MB cap...it's really not going to do wonders.

ref: http://bensbargains.net/deal/25gb-cloud-storage-account-free...

Yeah, thats the catch, and its a big one. I tried switching once because of this same "offer", and went back to dropbox. It's funny how a service that got more popular first makes you feel more secure, and for probably the same reason all my clients have dropbox, so when they want to share assets thats what they choose.

Hmm, someone make a plugin for Box now for splitting files into 250MB pieces and also recombining them.

The user interface is not as intuitive as Dropbox's. Box, at least on the Mac, doesn't integrate es nicely as Dropbox. The web interface is very unintuitive and overstuffed with features as well.

At least that's my first impression of Box, when compared to Dropbox.

I don't know if they've fixed the issue, but the Box client used to spike CPU at 100% on OS X. This would occur when you have a folder hierarchy with a lot of small files in it.

It turned out that their client was enumerating folders and files looking for changed data rather than hooking into the OS X file system notifications. We really liked it for the corporate account since it's possible to selectively grant outside parties access to files/folders.

There's only 10GB of bandwidth for the month. You'd need 5 months just to upload to your max, not including any downloading that would inevitably occur.

Also, it requires your phone number. Not as big a deal, but fuck that.

I already have a 25GB free account, is there anyway to upgrade it to a 50GB one?

If you used GMail to sign up you can sign up again with youraddress+box50@gmail.com

Yes, file size limited to 250mb.

Account type: Personal Storage (used/total): 0B / 50.0GB 0% used Bandwidth used: 0B of 10.0GB Max file size: 250 MB — Upload files up to 5GB

Where did you see this? 10 GB of Bandwidth? That's sounds awfully limiting!

The 10 gig is the montlhy bandwidth for shared links only, not for personal downloads:

The bandwidth limitation refers specifically to your usage of shared links in a given month. Once you reach 10GB you can no longer download via shared links until the next month

Why do I have to provide my phone number to sign up?

Yeah it does not appear to be a *required field but still throws an error. I say its bad design. Just right click and inspect and delete that input field parent.. =) class='all_plan_group_row' to be specific

They accepted my Hong Kong phone number, which has a plus in it and has a different number of digits than a U.S. number. Either they're using better phone number validation than 95% of sites, or they're not validating the phone number format at all.

Edit: I was able to activate my account and log in with out getting a txt or anything, so presumably you could make up a fake phone number with the wrong number of digits, and no real person would get spammy calls.

You could always try setting your phone number to Bobby'); DROP TABLE STUDENTS --

I provided the single digit "1" and they accepted it right away. If they don't care if you provide a valid phone number I don't see why it should be a required field.

Signed up. Goodbye DropBox. Thanks for posting!

Two limits of free accounts: no sync agent, and you can't be logged in on two browser sessions simultaneously.

I just downloaded a windows sync agent and started syncing 20+GB from an external disk (symlinked a folder there with junction). Works like a charm

Sync used to be part of the paid plans. They've made it free now.

I already have 50GB from the LG promo by signing up from my Nexus 4. I guess this is only for new accounts?

Excellent. I've been trying out Dropbox lately. I will give Box a go and do a write up comparing both.

"For life". More like for 18 months until the company goes bust, taking all your data with them.

very doubtful. the company is planning an ipo in less than a year.

probably a reaction to MEGA

It seems to be a promotion with Dell. Dell often has little perks like this for employees.

Doubtful. Box has been running 50 GB promotions for quite a while.

good for family photos. 250MB file limit...can't really use it for much.

Trovebox lets you supply your own storage accounts, including Box. Proper photo management and sharing... https://trovebox.com/for/box

Their Android app wants access to all contacts/social information.

With inflation I hope otherwise its an empty gesture.

Why phone number is a required field

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