Box for iPhone and iPad 50GB offer | Hacker News Reader

Box for iPhone and iPad 50GB offer

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35 pointsdeepakjc29 comments

I've developed using both. Dropbox is much more well-known overall where Box is much more well-known in the enterprise area. From the iOS developer side of things I much prefer Dropbox and here's why:

- Box's SDK authentication uses a modal view controller with a web view to authenticate. Its appearance is somewhat unpolished and glitchy. Dropbox redirects to the Dropbox app if installed and if not uses a modal view controller. Box used to use this method but no longer does for some reason. It's much more cumbersome to log in without it.

- Dropbox is path-based and all actions are based on a path. Box requires that you recursively iterate from the root to get each level's unique ID if all you have is a path.

- Box's SDK has had a much slower development cycle than Dropbox. There are many operations that are not yet coded.

- Box refreshes the login token frequently, which has a tendency to slow things down.

All of these make something as common as a file chooser much, much easier to implement on Dropbox.

50GB for free is near useless when you have a 100 MB or 250 MB monthly transfer limit.

Dropbox's desktop client is also better.

I'll stick with Dropbox.

The limit for free users appears to be 10GB/month, you're wrong by a couple of orders of magnitude!

Still, the data transfer limit is annoying, and they don't publicise it (I only knew of it through reading your comment!)

ok they've change the monthly transfer limit since the last time they offered 50 GB for free. However the 250MB file size limit is still a deal breaker for me.

Looking at the comments, you'd think the post title was "Box vs Dropbox"...

Interesting... It took a few clicks to find out what Box is: https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/201207836-What-is-...

I wonder, what's the incentive to use Box instead of Dropbox? The space is nice, but trust isn't so easily earned. I'm wondering why to trust Box with personal files.

I think they only offer such a large amount free because they don't allow you to store large files and that is what they want you to pay for.

Edit: you can see here maximum file size is 250mb without paying https://www.box.com/pricing/

"they don't allow you to store large files and that is what they want you to pay for...you can see here maximum file size is 250mb without paying"

I found that comment a bit jarring. Is 250MB file size max and 50GB total storage for free considered to be stingy now?

The 50GB is irrelevant because we're talking about file size. And yes, 250MB is 'not large', in that it blocks super bulky video files.

I would venture to say that most people use dropbox and similar services for image sync. Sure people use it for all sorts of things, but I would bet that the majority is images.

Yep, I got 50 GB free a while back (I don't remember with/from what) so I planned to use it for backing stuff up. After I discovered that the file size limit was 250 MB I had to reconfigure things in order to split files at ~200 MB in size.

(See also the limits on monthly transfer.)

Now I just use Amazon Glacier and my "Box" is empty.

You could ask those exact same questions about Dropbox.

Box has the same data protections as Dropbox (Box: https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/200713418-Data-Sec... Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/help/27/en)

Trust is something very subject but they have been in the industry over a long time. Box was started before Dropbox in 2005. It has been focusing on enterprises till now. I guess with the new iOS app and free space they are planning to move to the consumer market.

> It took a few clicks to find out what Box is

> I wonder, what's the incentive to use Box instead of Dropbox?

Surely you are trolling. Box has a much more sophisticated offering for enterprise customers, including a platform where third parties can offer apps for business users.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Box_vs_Dropbox

edit: formatting

A better (IMHO) comparison can be found here: http://www.softwareadvice.com/labs/box-vs-dropbox/

Box is HIPA compliant -- Dropbox is not.

Generally Box is well known for its security, whereas Dropbox accomplishes a solution to its problem but I wouldn't trust confidential files on it.

HIPPA

And do you have a link to what usage is HIPPA compliant? A free account probably isn't one of them. Though I could be wrong.

It's actually HIPAA, not HIPPA.

If the paid and free accounts use the same resources (e.g. same hosting configuration, same data centers), the free accounts would also be compliant.

Box basically does what 80% of people use sharepoint for. You store docs, build team rooms, integrate with crm, and have some approval workflow.

Dropbox is a great sync client with good sharing features that aspires to be like an iCloud without the apple baggage.

Box can be used with things like hippa data, so it's likely more tightly managed and secure.

Nice box vs dropbox article: http://www.softwareadvice.com/labs/box-vs-dropbox/

If it is free you could try it, no need to put your most sensitive documents on Box. Get the free 50GB and wait some time until you think the service can be trusted.

DropBox, Box, GDrive are not really designed and most importantly prices to store a lot of data. If you want space then there are Chinese services that will give you up to 36TB, Mail.Ru will give you 1TB ... which is plenty. If you want peace of mind then it is probably best to use DropBox etc. for WIP stuff and something like AWS Glacier for archival storage. Plenty of space and peace of mind.

Weiyun http://www.weiyun.com/index.html from Tencent is offering 10TB free cloud storage. It has a Mac app that will attach a sync folder on Finder sidebar similar to Dropbox. English version of apps coming soon.

36TB from these guys http://yunpan.360.cn/reg if all you really wanted was space.

0 of 10GB bandwidth, how is the 50GB upgrade going to work? lol

Account type: Personal Storage (used/total): 19.3MB / 50.0GB 0% used Bandwidth used: 0B of 10.0GB Max file size: 250 MB — Upload files up to 5GB

Happy to see that they are actually offering 50gb. Most services say 50gb but it's actually upto 50gb. So you need to refer atleast 5 friends etc. to get the space.

Even though the offer is only for ipad and iphone, you just need to login once from your (or a friend's) i-device to get the 50GB activated.

Adrive.com has been offering 50 gigs for at least 6 years. Because I still got so old backups there.

According to our review analysis, box was giving away 50gb a year ago but had a 100mb limit. Now the limit is 250mb for free users.

https://sensortower.com/ios/us/box-inc/app/box-for-iphone-an...

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