Copy, a competitor to Dropbox, launches today | Hacker News Reader

Copy, a competitor to Dropbox, launches today

copy.com

49 pointsshamino77 comments

" as easy as sending a text file. "

Without being snarky, why would you say a text file here? The only use case for 'sending a text file' that I can think of is a programmer sharing a .vimrc, or similar executable text file. The 99% case for someone who wants to share some plain text, even the .vimrc case, is to paste it in the email. This analogy feels very odd. How about 'as easy as sending a pdf' or word doc, or 'a single photo', or any kind of file that normal people ever attach to their emails? (Possible assumption on my part - when you say 'send a file' I think 'email to them'. If you want me to think of 'make the file available for sharing', say 'share').

Honestly, it's hard to look at this website and have some information stick in my mind.

It's gorgeous, but I think the design is overpowering the information flow (or lack there of).

That drop section for files is absolutely useless. Why would I drop my file in there as my VERY first step? I haven't even begun to learn about the features before I'm asked to drop my files.

Too much design, it looks perfect, but unfortunately, that's a bad thing this early in the launch.

Only recently did Dropbox start to ramp up design. You can't compete with simplicity. In design, in language, in the story etc..

Sorry to go on like this.. maybe I don't have a storage problem now that i'm a dropbox pro user.

The purpose of the homepage is that if you need to quickly upload a file and give someone a link, just drop a file and you're done. It lets people know how easy it is to share files.

We're going to work on getting more information about the product on the site really quickly.

"Too much design, it looks perfect, but unfortunately, that's a bad thing this early in the launch."

Whaaa...? That does not make sense to me. The UI is not complicated, so why is it bad that it "looks perfect?"

Checking the TOS I found a reference to Barracuda Networks.. Leading me to believe it's a startup within a larger company (I had been wondering how a startup could afford to buy the copy.com domain).

Given the above assumption it may have the funding to sustain the service even if it experiences slow growth. And also suggests that the company has the networking know how to scale their service (unlike my experience with bitcasa.com so far).

I think you're right. We just put in a new Barracuda Backup server this week and I noticed that, along with the usual file restore functions, it presents us with an option to share files to a Copy account.

There's going to be some cool integrations between Copy and some of the Barracuda backup hardware. I don't know many details though, you probably already know more than I do.

Bingo.

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and Registrars. Registrant: Barracuda Networks Inc 3175 Winchester Blvd Campbell, CA 95008 US

Domain name: COPY.COM

Administrative Contact: Hostmaster, Barracuda hostmaster@barracuda.com 3175 Winchester Blvd Campbell, CA 95008 US +1.4083425400 Fax: +1.4083421061

Technical Contact: Hostmaster, Barracuda hostmaster@barracuda.com 3175 Winchester Blvd Campbell, CA 95008 US +1.4083425400 Fax: +1.4083421061

Yep, we're basically a startup within a company. Barracuda has a lot of hardware, something that will definitely help with growth and scalability.

I'm curious, what is your advantage over Dropbox, GDrive, Box, etc? I like the design, but I don't see another reason to switch.

Seconding this - What exactly does this have over the competition? Looks legit, but why would I switch over, or tell my friends to?

It has a lot more configurable business options, that's the biggest differentiator.

The cost/GB is a bit less than Dropbox, too.

like?

The pricing page mentions some of the business features: http://www.copy.local/price/

Basically, you can setup companies, share items amongst employees, configure their access to the files, etc.

Nice to see someone using .local as the development domain.

Where's the API? Dropbox has a tremendous ecosystem going for it. I'm not sure how prevalent it is on Android, but pretty much all iOS text and PDF editors have Dropbox integration and their new sync SDK is only going to push integration even higher.

I can't say I'm a very heavy Dropbox user, so I don't have many complaints (if any) about their offering, but if you want to get into the space you have to address those complaints. A shiny UI and better pricing can only get you so far and there's no way they're enough to beat out a competitor as entrenched as Dropbox.

Actually, everything the app does is through a RESTful API. This API is private and undocumented (for now). I can't make any promises as to what we will do with it in the future...

A private and undocumented API doesn't do much for the people who develop or rely on one or more of the several hundred (thousand?) iOS apps that already integrate Dropbox.

To clarify, there are definite plans to document and release the Copy API. The only thing we can't make promises about is when that will happen (soon?).

Small nit-pick on the About page:

"Share view-only or let people to sync and edit"

Grammar be bad.

Blindly copied and pasted. Fixing... :)

I am pissed that dropbox makes me pay 9$ / month to have 100gb that I don't need. I do not want 250gb, absolutely not useful :(. I would love a 5$ /month plan with 50gb

Does it have LAN sync and native integrated get-me-the-URL-for-this-file? If not, forget it.

The about page says nothing about who is behind this. I have zero confidence in apps with no "about us".

The market positioning seems to be trying to take a little from Dropbox, a little from Box. To target the Enterprise market, as Box does, this is orders of magnitude off what is needed.

Sorry to be so negative, but technically I suspect this has taken a lot of effect, the marketing is as awful as it gets.

You can share files between different users on the same LAN who have the application installed.

You can right click on a file from Explorer/Finder and get a share link.

The about page update is coming soon, in the meantime go to humans.txt :p

It's sounds great, both technically and commercially. It's a shame the web site doesn't give the effect you just did in a few sentences.

We're getting a lot of feedback on the homepage and how it doesn't convey enough information. The homepage is intended for more non-tech-savvy users. We'll likely add a lot more of this technical information soon.

Oh, and we're a project of Barracuda Networks.

You're employees of https://www.barracudanetworks.com/ , you're funded by them?

I was wondering that too. The ToS says "Barracuda Networks" at the top. https://www.copy.com/about/tos/

Yes, we are employees of Barracuda Networks.

> I have zero confidence in apps with no "about us".

If you look at the code, in the FB Open Graph meta data the admin (fb:admins" content="643356033") is https://www.facebook.com/643356033 / Karl Tiedemann. On Twitter (@soapko) "Chief UX Designer for Barracuda Networks and http://Copy.com . Designer of The Perfect Heist boardgame."

Maybe that helps.

A friend of mine sent me a link to Copy and told me to sign up for it and that "it's like Dropbox." I just clicked his link to check it out and the first thing your website did was ask for permission to use desktop notifications (Safari/OS X). Of course, not even knowing what the website is I promptly rejected the prompt and then closed the tab.

My complaint with this is that why in the world would I blindly let a random website have extended permissions, before I even know what the website is?

Afte I got over it some hours later, I went back to copy.com to check it out and I found nothing in your website that would make me want to switch from Dropbox (for ease of use) or Spideroak (for encryption and security). One of the comments here said exactly what I'm thinking: I have no idea who you guys are, why I should trust you with my data, and that you'll even be around after a year.

From reading some comments here, apparently you're part of Barracuda Networks (no idea who this is, so it doesn't help) and some other snarky comments like "check out humans.txt" or "look at the html code and you'll see Facebook IDs…" No, no I'm not going to waste my time doing this.

I wonder what it cost to buy copy.com

Around $100k. http://www.namejet.com/pages/auctions/standarddetails.aspx?a...

As others have stated, I wish there was a bit more information about the service on the page. I use Dropbox and GDrive, but I'm not particularly fond of either of them. Aside from a slight price difference, what makes Copy stand out?

For example, I have a 1Password file that I would like to share amongst my team for all service related passwords. Keeping this in sync with all of our devices is a serious pain, and often results in certain members owning it (usually me) and thus having all of the responsibility.

It doesn't have to be 1Password. I have tried other apps like Keepass with similar results (and web-based versions, I do not like -- security etc.).

I realize that this is hard. Version control, multiple access to the same files and associated updates but it would really be a killer feature.

I store my keepass file like this and surprisingly the best storage provider for this I have found is Sugarsync. It's possible to have the file and changes end up on ALL of my devices, including my phones basically automagically. Check it out, might work for you.

I gave up on using any password manager program with any cloud sync service. I am back to plain old Excel file which I daily "backup" to the cloud using native backup service.

I think for important and daily-used files, relying on cloud service (read: keeping and working off of cloud) is not trust-worthy. I'd rather keep things local and only use cloud for backup.

I keep my KeePass file in Dropbox, it means that file is actually on my computer but also synced to the cloud. Copy offers the same behaviour, unlike Wuala: in Wuala you can't access your files without having their Java-based monster running.

There's a buried comment in here about the login being a javascript popup. Here's a normal HTML page for doing logins: https://www.copy.com/auth/login/

Can you put some words up there about how safe my data would be?

Because it looks like the site is based on twitter bootstrap, my mind has immediately led me to think you're doing the storage etc on a bootstrap budget. Potentially leaving it all up to S3.

Seems this wont be the case as you are part of Barracuda Networks, can you put some more words up there to help ease my (and other users') concerns?

I can assure you that there was no Bootstrap involved in the making of Copy :p

We're taking a lot of this feedback and looking into rewording things.

All of your data is encrypted and stored in the Barracuda Networks cloud, which is not based on a third-party service like S3.

Reading through.. And no mention of client-side encryption. I'm not sure I see the point - We have lots of competition in this space.

Traffic from the desktop clients to the server is all done over HTTPS

What happens to the files on the server? Do they sit unencrypted (so sensitive files are a no-go)?

@atto - We encrypt the data on the server, AES256 I do believe.

I'm very impressed with the Copy web interface. Drag and drop works flawlessly. The in-browser preview is really nice as well.

Does anyone have experience with Barracuda Networks (the owner of Copy)? The name sounds familiar, are the reputable?

Barracuda has like 200k customers and has been around for at least several years. Here's more information: https://www.barracudanetworks.com/company/

Somewhat unfortunate name?

It seems to be appropriate.

I think it was tongue in cheek as in a copy of DropBox.

Maybe?

Only thing one would excel over dropbox is that create some context aware data to be used without manually searching the whole files. other wise there already far too many service

You mean where I can type in a search term and have it search within the files and tell me which one has that content?

Origami.com is close to launch... when you About page said "origami is an...." I at first thought you guys were related.

Especially given what Origami.com is trying to do...

Front page looks broken on chrome for android:

http://imgur.com/k2mNFVc

We will buy our GUI programmer an Android tablet :)

Could you be so kind as to post the viewport resolution of your tablet in both portrait and landscape mode?

The About section does not say who is behind. The only thing you have going for you is your domain name.

https://www.copy.com/about/tos/ says Barracuda Networks, but that was all I could find.

Copy is a Barracuda Networks project. The about page is being worked on and should be up later today.

Actually, the very bottom of the About page has a link to and logo of Barracuda networks, but yeah - the about page needs a lot of work.

We added that logo because of some of the comments on here. :) We're definitely going to improve the site to give more information about what Copy is. Our main focus so far has been on the product.

That must've been an expensive domain name purchase.

If you read the comments you'll see that someone was able to hunt down the price...

Are you an actual employee or a PR minion?

renownedmedia and I are two of the developers of the Copy product. I can assure you that he is not a "PR minion" - he can sling code better than most.

Thanks - the rapidity with which they were answering questions and the username made me suspicious it was a PR campaign (professional)

Unfortunately not available for Linux.

There was a link for Linux in the Download modal dialog.

Check again. It is.

Yes it is. I thought the same when I clicked "Install App", but the big button in that popup window downloaded a tarball for linux.

They definitely need to label it better then. I know the wording, 'also available for Windows and Mac' should have explained it to me, but my brain was being dumb and all I saw was Window/Mac and I just left the site.

I run the Copy client apps exclusively on GNU/Linux boxes. There is even a handy CLI (command line interface) if GUI's aren't your thing.

Are stored files guaranteed to stay on US soil?

Yes. All of our data centers are currently located in the US, and if we do offer overseas storage, we'll make that an explicit choice.

i download the mac app and created the account, still its not able to login

@helloamar

Will you please open a support ticket by emailing support@copy.com?

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