A few months ago we covered Dropbox as a recommended app. Since then I have frequently been running out of space and struggling with its limitations. So I started looking around some of the other online storage apps for Android. I came across Sugarsync as I started to see referral links being emailed around or on Twitter. I thought I would check it out.
The basic idea behind Sugarsync is to synchronise your mobile devices and your computer (as long as it is not a Linux computer). It basically uploads a copy of your files to your online “cloud” and allows any other devices to access these. You also get a public area called the “Magic Briefcase” which is an area that is synced across all devices and allows you to create public web links.
Where I felt Dropbox lacked a little was with “My Documents” and “My Pictures” you needed to create a duplicate of your files or not keep you pictures in “My Pictures”. This may sound a little picky of me, but it gets tedious having to remember where you need to save your latest spreadsheet to get it to sync across your devices. Sugarsync allows you to sync any folders you want, it will even allow you to sync your “My Documents” folder across different computers and mobile devices. Sugarsync also allows you to stream any music that you have stored as well via a basic inbuilt music player, this is miles behind Google Music in its functionality, but it works. The mobile app will allow you to sync any folders again but it also handles your photos separately, so you can sync your files but not your hundreds of photos or vice versa.
Sugarsync isn’t just an Android app either, there are mobile clients for the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian so regardless of what device you have you can still sync your files and folders. The only slight problem is that there is not a Linux client for your pc, Sugarsync the have only made a client for Mac OSX and the various versions of Windows. So any Linux computers you have you will have to access the files through the web client instead.
One thing I should mention is what you get when you sign up. The basic free account gives you 5GB of storage space, you currently seem to be able to sign up for a free 10GB account for a year at the moment via something called Trialpay. There is also a way to boost your storage space as well, if you sign up using a referral link you and the the person who gave you the referral both receive an extra 500MB of space, if the person decides to go for a paid plan you both get an extra 10GB. Here is my referral link 🙂
Overall it is a great app, it is slightly more complex than Dropbox but I feel once I had got used to it, I could do a lot more such as synchronise “My Documents” across several different computers and then access this all from a mobile device. So below are a few links to get you started.
Hi James,
Another advantage is that you can share a ‘read only’ or ‘publish only’ folder. This is really handy. With DropBox the share is readwrite in both directions so the person you are sharing with can overwrite your documents.
S.