SugarSync Review : Windows, Mac and Mobile Devices Backup Solution
When we decided to review SugarSync, its features and what they offered, we were pretty impressed. SugarSync has a free package of 2GB to use as you wish with a few limited features from the paid versions. The free plan only allows you to backup & sync up to two computers – with a paid plan you can backup & sync an unlimited number of computers. The SugarSync free plan will store the current version of each document, plus 2 past versions and isn’t as speedy as with the paid version when uploading to the cloud.
Our tests of SugarSync were done on a Mac so your experiences may differ slightly. SugarSync comes with a local client to help you manage your folders. Upon opening SugarSync on my Mac, I felt somewhat daunted by the interface and even though it seemed quite simple I couldn’t help wondering where do I start.
The SugarSync client comes with a few options, Your computer, Magic Briefcase, Mobile Photos, Web Archive, and Deleted Items. It also has some quick links allowing you to go to your SugarSync account online, online photo gallery and to your online shared folders.
Clicking on your computer icon allows you to add folders from your hard drive and we mean any folder! Adding any folder is a nice feature but it can quickly blow your quota once you start adding a number of folders quickly taking up gigabytes of space from your SugarSync storage. On our first sync, files started uploading and then after a short while we noticed the upload went into a pending status. We weren’t exactly sure what that meant so we figured there maybe some limit of bandwith transfers you can use when syncing to a free SugarSync account. Over a couple of days, the files did sync and we’d say it really isn’t a problem at all.
File Syncing and Sharing
We were pretty impressed with the ability to sync existing operating system folders across linked computers. For example if you a writer and use a default folder like ‘My Documents’, SugarSync will automatically merge all the data from both computers so that they are always up to date. This is a great feature so if you work from home today on your desktop machine, and are on the road tomorrow, you can be sure your files will be there. While we only tested this feature for a short period of time, we didn’t see any error or syncing problems.
SugarSync for Mobile Devices
If you have an iPhone, you’ll find a fully native SugarSync iPhone app. SugarSyncs iPhone app is free and allows you to view your files right in your iPhone. We did find there are some limitations with larger files due to limited memory available for apps. Also when we viewed a PDF file, we couldn’t rotate the file to landscape view which would have made reading easier and is a pretty simple implementation using the iPhone developers API’s. SugarSync is also available for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android.
Selecting and SugarSync Plan
Free Plan: 2gb – Free account with no set-up fee, no credit cards, no monthly payment.
Basic Plan: 30gb – $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year
Premium Plan: 60gb – $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year
Professional Plan: 100gb – $14.99 per month or $149.99 per year
Business Plan: 250gb – $24.99 per month or $249.99 per year
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Conclusion
What we liked…
- Ability to sync any folder you choose from your hard drive.
- Syncing chosen default operating system folders across multiple linked computers.
- Ability to access your files from mobile devices. Our tests used an iPhone which worked pretty well for a mobile device.
What we think they could do better
- Initially I found the user interface a bit daunting maybe more complex that really needed.
- Removing the need to have the full application running in the task bar while your using it.
- Support for Linux would be nice.
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