Dropbox or Box – Which Cloud Storage For Small Businesses

Cloud storage enterprises gives businesses the liberty to access their resources irrespective of their location. Businesses and their employees can share, edit, collaborate and integrate their documents and other official stuff over the internet with ease. There are a lot of cloud storage and online backup services floating in the market and these permit your business to be less prone to server risks that lead to severe consequences. Cloud computing companies strive hard for you to keep your data safe and secure. This makes us not surprised that several businesses have embraced the cloud as a part of their virtual IT environment to expand themselves.

Introduction to Box and Dropbox

Box is an enterprise that provide cloud storage and file hosting services for personal accounts and businesses. It is an established product when it comes to file sharing and collaboration within business giants since 2005. Dropbox on the other hand which was launched in 2008 is another file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc. Dropbox after initially dominating the customer market stepped into the enterprise world. It initially started by offering several gigabytes of space and a neat user interface and now it has upgraded with enterprise perspective by offering cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. Dropbox’s entry to the enterprise world makes it a tough competitor with Box that was established already. Both offer unlimited file storage, secure access to files across devices and collaboration tools as a part of the basic plan.

Both companies are striving their best to be one among the top cloud computing services by capturing the enterprise customers who want to safely and securely store sensitive data in the cloud to minimize risks.

Plans and Pricing

Dropbox

Dropbox offers a basic plan which is free of cost with 2GB of space. Basic plan has 30 days of file recovery, and integration with Microsoft Office 365 and other third parties. This makes it preferred by small businesses and customers who have less crucial data within 2GB.

Then comes Dropbox is Pro at $8.25 per month and provides an increase to 1TB of space, higher sharing limits along with free priority email support in the customer support point of view.

For a much larger business, the plan called Dropbox Business starts at $12.50 per user per month with a minimum of five users. The business plan offers enhanced collaboration tools, advanced security and control, and unlimited file recovery and storage space. These prices and storage space are negotiable too.

Box

Box offers a basic plan which is free of cost with 10GB of storage with a 250MB file upload limit.

For more space, Box offers Personal Pro at $10 per month for 100GB of storage and a 5GB file upload limit.

Box’s built-for-business offering is Starter at $5 per user per month with a minimum of three users and a maximum of 10. Starter offers 100GB of secure storage with a 2GB file upload limit, with mobile access, desktop sync and standard business support, among other features.

Box’s Business plan comes at $15 per user per month. It offers unlimited storage and a 5GB file upload limit, which includes single-sign-on integration, advanced user and security reporting, mobile security controls, etc.

Design and Ease of Use

Dropbox has a neat UI and is simple to understand by anyone. Its simple design makes it easy to use and facilitates easy navigation which means navigation is easy on mobile devices as it is on computers. Box is also user-friendly, but not as much as Dropbox due to a lot of features it has. Unlike Box, however, Dropbox doesn’t allow users to configure how the files are displayed on its website. This is a drawback for users who want additional controls.

Collaboration

Collaboration is highly required for an organization in cloud to enable the teams to work together by accessing the same file. DropBox has permissions and privacy controls that enable the users who uploads the file to set who’s permitted to access it.

The collaboration tools in Box distinguishes itself by giving administrators significant controls to set defaults and limitations on file access by outside collaborators. The company says it allows the users to write notes, share files and collaborate in real time with the team without having to leave the application.

Dropbox retains revision history which is highly an added advantage when a project involves multiple uses accessing same file to edit it. There are options to revert the changes based on the revision history after committing a change. Box locks down the files that is being edited by the user till completion this avoids versioning problems in projects with large teams.

Security

Dropbox has a history of security phishing scams which were rectified later as it does not support local encryption of files. This cloud storage provider encrypts data in transit and while saved on their servers.

Box is better at security, as it uses tier-3 data centers whose locations are monitored around-the-clock and audited constantly .it also holds SAS70 Type II and Safe Harbor certifications.

Best feature of both:

Dropbox: Performance and Efficiency

Leading industry analyst IDC agrees: their independent “EFSS Evaluation Guide” conducted a study comparing the Dropbox sync client against products like Microsoft’s OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, and Egnyte, deduced that Dropbox sync technology delivers the fastest update performance and the fastest upload and download speeds It also came up with a point that Dropbox sync is smart, saving time, network costs, and bandwidth by only syncing the part of file that was edited instead of the whole file.

Box: Security is the best feature