Box vs FreeFileSync
When comparing Box vs FreeFileSync, the Slant community recommends FreeFileSync for most people. In the question“What are the best personal file-syncing solutions?” FreeFileSync is ranked 9th while Box is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose FreeFileSync is:
It will work with MTP, FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and more.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Huge Data (10 GB) in free plan
Its free plan comes with 10 GB!
Pro Sharing and privacy features built for business and IT users
Such as advanced sharing options, task assignment, notifications. Making an easy way to stay up to date on assigned tasks.
Pro Cross-platform desktop and mobile
Box is available for Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phones. Which mean access to ones files no matter the device or platform used.
Pro Extendable via plugins
There are plug-ins for applications that allow interactions with Box.
Pro Salesforce and NetSuite support
Pro It supports multiple protocols
It will work with MTP, FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and more.
Pro It can copy locked files
It supports Volume Shadow Copy Service, meaning that it can copy files even if they are in use or otherwise locked.
Pro Cross-platform
It runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS.
Pro Portable version available
Pro It is quite performant
Pro Google Drive support
FreeFileSync provides direct access to Google Drive, no additional software is needed.
Pro Completely free
Source code releases are provided under GPLv2.
Pro It supports realtime sync
It can be configured to constantly monitor two folders for changes and sync them instantly when a change is detected.
Pro It lets you program batch scripts
You can program your own jobs for execution as a script.
Pro It supports case sensitive synchronization
For Unix-like systems.
Pro It supports long file paths
It can copy files and folders with more than 260 characters in their paths.
Pro It supports versioning
Versioning is keeping multiple instances of the modifications of your files.
Pro It can sync both local disks and network shares
Cons
Con Log in on every use
Any time the app is opened the user's log-in needs to be typed in, which can become annoying. While it is a nice privacy feature, an option to turn it off would be nice.
Con No Linux client
They are not willing to listen to Linux community. They've also deleted a bunch of messages from Linux users on their forum
Con Missing collaborative apps
Not being able to easily back up office works through an integrated office suite can be a set back when comparing to backup apps like Drive. While you can set certain apps to save their files to the Box folder, it is not as easy as using something like Google Docs, which not only saves while you are working but as soon as you are done, with no extra steps.
Con Does not preserve folder timestamps when copying
Con Memory hog
It runs a little slow on computers who don't have much RAM available.
Con Limited built in history
The program only remembers the latest set of folders you synced, so you have to save your syncs or create batch files.
Con A little intimidating for novices
If you never ran a file syncing software, this can be a little tricky to configure as your first one.
Con No backup encryption
Con It doesn't run on older Linux systems
It's dependencies don't allow it to run on older systems.