Just heard about a Canadian company the other day called Sync.com. They are still in private beta BUT you can sign up and give them a try. I was surprised I had not heard about them yet considering they have been around since 2011 but I guess they have only been sending invites out to use the service since July 2013.
@CloudStorageBuz We've been building Sync from the ground up over the last few years and launched our Beta July 1 2013.
— Sync.com (@Sync) January 14, 2014
Now you are probably thinking does the world need another Dropbox clone. Sync.com is not just another Dropbox clone, while the desktop application works a lot like Dropbox that is pretty much where the similarity ends. The reason is simple, Sync.com guarantees a zero-knowledge cloud storage service. To quote from their website:
Our Complete Privacy Guarantee
Sync.com guarantees that your data is completely private. Our unique secure storage environment ensures that only you have access to your data. We can’t read your files — nor would we want to. Only you have the keys to access your data — nobody else.
Now I am not an encryption expert, but this looks promising to keep your data stored safe in the cloud.
Sync.com is available for both Windows and Mac OSX, but finding the download links on the website right now is impossible. Once you get your beta invite keep that email because it has the download links to the applications. I am sure that will change once they leave beta.
Installing the desktop app is pretty simple and only took a few minutes. I captured a screen grab video that you can see below if you like. Using the desktop app is very similar to using Dropbox. What is missing is the integration with Explorer to create links and share right from the desktop. You can login to the website and easily share files and manage links but it is just missing from the desktop app.
Uploading was quick and I had no problems. Just like Dropbox it looks like it is only the one folder that syncs so you need to copy the files you want to sync into that folder. Would be nice if you could sync any folder you wanted and perhaps that will be a feature that will be coming still.
The web portal is easy to access and makes it easy to share files and manage your links. I am curious how they manage to keep a zero-knowledge environment if you use the web portal. This is often where there are problems, even SpiderOak who also provides a zero-knowledge cloud backup and storage, states that to maintain a zero-knowledge environment you should only access through the desktop application. Sync.com seems to have found a way for the browser to decrypt the files to maintian zero-knowledge. I asked them on Twitter and they stated the browser does decrypt the files.
Sharing files and folders is easy to do through the web portal and you get this nice warning that they cannot send the email for you. You can also easily delete the shared links for files you have shared as well.
Sync.com currently offer two plans. A free 5GB plan that has a limit of a 30-day revision history. You can also earn 500MB extra space for every referral you send. They also offer a 500GB that is usually $9.99/month or $99.00/year. When I wrote this that plan was currently on sale for 50% off so you could get it for only $49.50. You get unlimited devices and unlimited revision history. A pretty good price for 500GB of storage compared to some other cloud storage services.
It is always great to see more competition in the cloud storage space, especially secure encrypted services like Sync.com. It will be interesting to see how they do once they come out of beta. If you are interested in trying Sync.com feel free to use my referral link.
Have you tried Sync.com? What was your thoughts and impressions of the service? Let us all know in the comments.
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