This topic was created by banjomike .
Sugarsync say "beginning on February 8th, 2014 we will transition to a paid service. In order to continue using SugarSync you will need to upgrade your account."
Nice. Another example of a company talking up the idea of free storage UNTIL they decide to take it away (along with your data) unless you pay for it. Very nice.
Oh gosh, how terrible, I shall call the rspca at once!! ;)
They tried that business model and for one reason or another the sums didn't work out. It was either from the advertising budget to sell other services, subsidised by profit from paid subs (although with google et al able to offer very cheap space thats a tough market) or just money to grow market share or a combination, it just didn't make sense. They have given warning and you can transfer to another provider. Theres plenty of them around, it's easy to pickup 5gb for free, you can even get 50gb for free from a few places. Owncloud is another option, either on your home pc if you are happy securing that otherwise a VM or a VPS would be another way.
It will be interesting to see if any of the major cloud providers jump on this, if they have any sense they will offer a gratis migration service for the data to help capture the refugees. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
I wonder what this will mean long term. MS \ Google will probably have a 'free' (at the point of use) tier for a hell of a long time if not forever but what it will mean for box \ dropbox \ tresorit etc will be interesting to find out. Dropbox probably has enough momentum and paid subs. The rest may go the same way.
RSPCA???
What gets me is that is that I've happily been using SugarSync for nearly three years with no problems until you think you are using a 'safe' service and then suddenly they take it away. BT did the exact same thing with their free service. Seems like any cloud backup needs a cloud backup of its own. There is plenty of free space around, I have over 120GB lying around the cloud but none of it is reliable.
The Sugarsync paid option is $74.99 after the first (special price) year.
True, but I think Google have managed to change people's perception of what to free means (with respect to reliability and longevity of service). I would rather pay because then I can complain if something goes wrong. Companies still have to pay for the free storage they offer, if it isn't coming from your wallet that creates an element of uncertainty. The very reason this type of deal needs a backup is because it's free to you. You can't guarantee the companies strategy will pay off so you stand to lose the free service. I just don't understand why people get upset at the company in situations like this. They either can the service or continue to run it at a loss and possibly go bankrupt at which point you lose the service anyway. No point being angry at them. Free services come and go, they often require something from the users like watching adverts, which people bitch about Do they reduce them and make less money then can the service. If you want to ensure the service pay for it, otherwise there's a fair chance it might stop at some point. Seems they have been very fair in allowing people 2 months to get their days off.
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