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Get 50GB of Box free for life
- compilercreator 14y agoHas anyone used Box for personal data? How is the reliability and sync speeds compared to the competition?
- GotAnyMegadeth 14y agoI signed up during a 25GB free deal they had a while a go. I use it along side Dropbox and Google Drive and as far as I can tell it's as good as either of those.
- webwanderings 14y agoHave you tried downloading back your files? Is it as seamless as Dropbox? The other day I signed up with SpiderOak (over the recent buzz about security and all) and luckily I had to share a folder with a friend in another country. He has the fastest bandwidth available but complained that his connection would drop during the downloads out of SpiderOak. I switched the content to Dropbox and he downloaded trouble free in one go.
- mattdeboard 14y agoIn my experience throughput is much lower on Box. Also there's no desktop client for Linux.
- manishsharan 14y agoThats a lot of GB. Several times more than my free Dropbox + Google Drive. So where is the catch ? There has to be one .
- msh 14y agoMax file size is 250 megabyte.
- SanjayUttam 14y agoYep...Came here to say the same thing. They also had a 250GB promo a few weeks ago, but with a 250MB cap...it's really not going to do wonders. ref: http://bensbargains.net/deal/25gb-cloud-storage-account-free-at-box-com-295463/ http://bensbargains.net/deal/25gb-cloud-storage-account-free...
- pacomerh 14y agoYeah, thats the catch, and its a big one. I tried switching once because of this same "offer", and went back to dropbox. It's funny how a service that got more popular first makes you feel more secure, and for probably the same reason all my clients have dropbox, so when they want to share assets thats what they choose.
- noname123 14y agoHmm, someone make a plugin for Box now for splitting files into 250MB pieces and also recombining them.
- macalicious 14y agoThe user interface is not as intuitive as Dropbox's. Box, at least on the Mac, doesn't integrate es nicely as Dropbox. The web interface is very unintuitive and overstuffed with features as well. At least that's my first impression of Box, when compared to Dropbox.
- peschkaj 14y agoI don't know if they've fixed the issue, but the Box client used to spike CPU at 100% on OS X. This would occur when you have a folder hierarchy with a lot of small files in it. It turned out that their client was enumerating folders and files looking for changed data rather than hooking into the OS X file system notifications. We really liked it for the corporate account since it's possible to selectively grant outside parties access to files/folders.
- XavierMendel 14y agoThere's only 10GB of bandwidth for the month. You'd need 5 months just to upload to your max, not including any downloading that would inevitably occur. Also, it requires your phone number. Not as big a deal, but fuck that.
- buro9 14y agoOn the signup form it says "for friends or co-workers", which implied to me that this is a free account that you could use for personal or business use. But it's a personal account, NOT a business one. You can certainly gift it to a co-worker, but this isn't a way to get 50GB free on a business account with Box. So if you were hoping for something cheaper than £11 per person per month to try the business account with a much lower storage capability... i.e. a Bronze price point for small businesses and startups to get started on... well... you're out of luck. Signed up, but I already have Dropbox for personal stuff so I won't be using this.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- medicine23 14y agoprobably a reaction to MEGA
- jordan_clark 14y agoSigned up. Goodbye DropBox. Thanks for posting!
- GotAnyMegadeth 14y agoI already have a 25GB free account, is there anyway to upgrade it to a 50GB one?
- tadhgfitzgerald 14y agoIf you used GMail to sign up you can sign up again with youraddress+box50@gmail.com
- iamdann 14y agoI've already got a 50GB Box account through a free promo a while ago...but the account has file size limitations unless you pay for an upgrade. I'd assume this deal has the same restrictions. I forget the upload size limit, but it was enough to keep me from actually using them for my personal needs. I pay $25/year for 25GB of Amazon cloud storage, which includes unlimited music storage and no upload limits. I'm happy with that deal for now.
- kzrdude 14y agoGit Annex can store to it, and it enables automatic file chunking.
- the_watcher 14y agoIt does have size upload limits of 250MB.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoWhich Amazon cloud storage product do you have? Is it an Amazon retail product or an Amazon AWS one (e.g. S3, Glacier, etc)?
- clauretano 14y agoAmazon Cloud Drive (available for Mac, Windows, Android) http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000796931 http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000...
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- andrewgjohnson 14y agoSigned up, the desktop client seems a lot clunkier than Dropbox (I use Windows 7 for those wondering) I don't really use any online backup service all that much -- all my docs are in Google Docs which I guess is Google Drive now and I'm a single dude so I don't have hoards of kids videos & photos. After seeing this and signing up I was planning on installing this on my mom's computer (currently she's using Dropbox -- down to 2GB after not wanting to pay for more than that) but don't know if I'm going to follow through just because this seems so clunky and un-intuitive. Odd, it seems Dropbox somewhat perfected the model of "here's your folder (it's blue not manilla so you remember which one it is) just put your stuff in it and we'll back it up online and sync it up with the blue folders on your other computers" -- the "Default Sync Folder" is a real bummer.
- maccard 14y agoPity that blue manilla folder is the same folder as every other folder on mac
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoYou can't see the little dropbox icon in the folder? ;) I wish it were a different color as well; I wind up differentiating by the red 𐄂 and green ✓.
- andrewgjohnson 14y agoHah, I'd never considered that. Company idea: Dropbox but with a default folder that is green rather than blue or manilla.
- j_s 14y agoLast time I checked, file size is capped at 250mb for the free tier.
- rm999 14y agoMy first thought: I see no reason not to switch over from dropbox, it should take me about 10 minutes to switch. I could even run both at the same time for redundancy. My second thought: from an investing perspective the danger in this space is the easy commoditization. This will lead to high competition and low profits, with hopefully some differentiation on quality (especially dependability).
- wutbrodo 14y agoThis has been the case for me for the last couple of years. I used to see promotions like this constantly (even going back to when 8 free GB was on offer instead of 50), and as a result I have a small collection of different file storage services that add up to an okay amount of storage, mostly due to the couple of 50 GB promotions. The one thing to be careful about with Box is the limitations they put on access; The promotion I got some time ago for 50 GB has a file size limit of 100 MB and doesn't allow download of folders with a free account. This makes it impossible to store a few large files and inconvenient to store many small ones (though WebDAV access makes the latter less of an issue.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- B-Con 14y agoBox.net has a 250MB file size limit for free accounts. Dropbox does not have any limits, AFAIK.
- macalicious 14y agoAt least Dropbox has never complained about my ~4-5GB files.
- nvr219 14y agoWhen I got my HP TouchPad during the fire sale I got the free 50GB Box account, and this is exactly why I didn't switch. I keep various ISOs and DMGs in dropbox. What is the reason for this file size limit?
- tiredoffps 14y agogood for family photos. 250MB file limit...can't really use it for much.
- jmathai 14y agoTrovebox lets you supply your own storage accounts, including Box. Proper photo management and sharing... https://trovebox.com/for/box https://trovebox.com/for/box
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoI already have 50GB from the LG promo by signing up from my Nexus 4. I guess this is only for new accounts?
- whattttttttt 14y ago"For life". More like for 18 months until the company goes bust, taking all your data with them.
- abhishekg 14y agovery doubtful. the company is planning an ipo in less than a year.
- webwanderings 14y agoI would never trust Box. A long time ago (probably when they were starting up) the service made me realize that you can upload whatever you want for free but when it comes to download, you'll be SOL.
- buro9 14y agoCan you expand on this? I'm assuming Box isn't a write-only file system as they'd have few customers if it was.
- webwanderings 14y agoAs someone else also mentioned it in the thread, my experience was that you could upload folders/files but when it comes to download back, I could not download the folders. I gave up the moment I saw that limitation. Dropbox doesn't have such restrictions, nor do any other such service I have experienced in the free tier.
- qqg3 14y agoBox allows you to download any files or folders. It's better than Dropbox in one respect because it automatically keeps a certain number of versions of a file (up to 25 I think) so you can easily backdate to a legacy copy in case of emergency.
- RubyPinch 14y agoDropbox also has that feature
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nekojima 14y agoOnly seems worthwhile using and relying on online storage, if you use two or three completely separate services, all sync'ed. So if one goes down or disappears without notice, you have backups, and can add another completely independent service. Though with bandwidth limits and limited online storage capacity (I've over 200GB of business files, plus 450,000 photos, over 1TB), still appears more cost effective and efficient to backup to a portable hard drive every few months anything new and store at a secondary secure location, with online storage only being used for short periods until that backup is made and a local drive copy of that backup used on a daily basis.
- calvinlough 14y agoWhy do I have to provide my phone number to sign up?
- gokulk 14y agoYeah it does not appear to be a *required field but still throws an error. I say its bad design. Just right click and inspect and delete that input field parent.. =) class='all_plan_group_row' to be specific
- KMag 14y agoThey accepted my Hong Kong phone number, which has a plus in it and has a different number of digits than a U.S. number. Either they're using better phone number validation than 95% of sites, or they're not validating the phone number format at all. Edit: I was able to activate my account and log in with out getting a txt or anything, so presumably you could make up a fake phone number with the wrong number of digits, and no real person would get spammy calls. You could always try setting your phone number to Bobby'); DROP TABLE STUDENTS --
- calvinlough 14y agoI provided the single digit "1" and they accepted it right away. If they don't care if you provide a valid phone number I don't see why it should be a required field.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- renatosc 14y agoYes, file size limited to 250mb. Account type: Personal Storage (used/total): 0B / 50.0GB 0% used Bandwidth used: 0B of 10.0GB Max file size: 250 MB — Upload files up to 5GB
- jrs235 14y agoWhere did you see this? 10 GB of Bandwidth? That's sounds awfully limiting!
- Maven911 14y agoThe 10 gig is the montlhy bandwidth for shared links only, not for personal downloads: The bandwidth limitation refers specifically to your usage of shared links in a given month. Once you reach 10GB you can no longer download via shared links until the next month
- myth 14y agoExcellent. I've been trying out Dropbox lately. I will give Box a go and do a write up comparing both.
- dbarlett 14y agoTwo limits of free accounts: no sync agent, and you can't be logged in on two browser sessions simultaneously.
- obviouslygreen 14y agoThis reminds me of a recent "for life" promotion having ended; it was some kind of virtual server hosting, I think. Bad advertising, in my opinion; this may or may not mean "free for the life of the service," which is the best possible case, since they have absolutely no way to guarantee this thing is available for the life of a user.
- KMag 14y agoWell, they do have names and phone numbers. They could ensure the thing is available for the lifetimes of their users by hiring some assassins. I suppose technically taking out a hit doesn't guarantee results, but I really wouldn't argue that technicality with them if they started killing customers.
- solox3 14y agoJust a marketing ploy. Box.com, formerly box.net, was initially a free 50GB offering, until they decided to make their usual offering a special promo after October 2012.
- mcintyre1994 14y agoIt's still at the high end of what these services offer, though.
- sambeau 14y agoI wish people would stop offering services 'for life'. They so rarely turn out to be for life. Having to renege on a 'for life' promise only generates the worst kind of publicity: justifiably vocal former-customers (even worse: formerly-happy former-customers).
- ylem 14y agoFor those with existing free accounts, there was no upgrade in storage limits (for me, it's 5GB). Of course, it's their choice since it's free, but it doesn't leave me wanting to upgrade to their paid plan (like I did for dropbox and sugar sync).
- lttlrck 14y agoWith inflation I hope otherwise its an empty gesture.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- junkblocker 14y agoTheir Android app wants access to all contacts/social information.
- digitalabyss 14y agoComparing Box.com with Dropbox is like comparing apples to oranges in my opinion. I have a 100GB dropbox account for personal use and a enterprise Box.com account for work. They are two different service aimed at different markets. Box.com has always primarily been driven by its web interface where I can count the number of times I have used the dropbox interface on one hand. In a business environment you cant ask your clients to install software on their computers in order to share files with you. First off it may not be allowed by corporate policies or security controls and even if it is allowed would you install software a vendor asked you to install to accommodate their workflow? Box.net is absolutely awesome in a business environment and has allowed me to get rid of insecure FTP servers and clients trying to use their web browsers as FTP clients and blaming us when they did not work. Box.com also allows project managers to create and manage permissions on their own client folders freeing up IT from that task. In short I would not give up either account.
- jyothepro 14y agoWhy phone number is a required field