Box vs. IBM Cloud Object Storage

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Box
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Box is an online Intelligent Content Management solution that caters to individual users as well as businesses.
$21
per month 3 users (minimum)
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Object Storage is an IBM Cloud product in the endpoint backup and IaaS categories. It is commonly used for data archiving and backup, for web and mobile applications, and as scalable, persistent storage for analytics.
$0
per month
Pricing
BoxIBM Cloud Object Storage
Editions & Modules
Business Starter
$7
per month per user (3 minimum)
Business
$20
per month per user (3 minimum)
Business Plus
$33
per month per user (3 minimum)
Enterprise
$47
per month per user (3 minimum)
Enterprise Plus
$50
per month (billed annually) per user (3 minimum)
Enterprise Advanced
Contact us
per month per user (35 minimum)
One-Rate Plan
As low as USD $12/TB a month
per month
Standard Plan
Free up to 5GB—no minimum fee, pay only for what you use
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BoxIBM Cloud Object Storage
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsA discount is available for annual pricing.The One-Rate and Standard service plans for Cloud Object Storage include resiliency options, flexible data classes and built-in security. Pricing is based on the choice of location, storage class and resiliency choice.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BoxIBM Cloud Object Storage
Features
BoxIBM Cloud Object Storage
Enterprise Content Management
Comparison of Enterprise Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Box
7.3
26 Ratings
10% below category average
IBM Cloud Object Storage
-
Ratings
Content capture & imaging8.119 Ratings00 Ratings
File sync, storage & archiving9.625 Ratings00 Ratings
Document management8.324 Ratings00 Ratings
Records management7.020 Ratings00 Ratings
Content search & retrieval7.924 Ratings00 Ratings
Enterprise content collaboration8.021 Ratings00 Ratings
Content publishing & creation5.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Security, risk management & information governance8.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Contract lifecycle management8.112 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated workflows8.114 Ratings00 Ratings
Artificial intelligence2.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile support6.223 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration9.223 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Box
-
Ratings
IBM Cloud Object Storage
8.7
155 Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings6.1143 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings9.8143 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.9140 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.8144 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings9.8149 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BoxIBM Cloud Object Storage
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MediaValet
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Score 9.4 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.4 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
BoxIBM Cloud Object Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(154 ratings)
9.4
(158 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(12 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(21 ratings)
7.3
(5 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(12 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(29 ratings)
9.1
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(3 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(6 ratings)
5.8
(4 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BoxIBM Cloud Object Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
Box
I think Box is great for research teams or anyone that has a large number of files that need to be securely stored. Particularly in the case of social science research, where it is important to protect identifying data, Box is a great option. In cases where teams need a more reliable means for real-time collaboration, I would probably consider a different alternative
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IBM
In my experience, IBM Cloud Object Storage is well suited for projects like the one I am working on. This includes the use of natural language classification and the uploading of data to train a machine learning model for tag suggestions based on a body of text. Using IBM Cloud Object Storage has helped with this greatly. IBM Cloud Object Storage has also been great for Big Data Analytics thanks to its scalablilty and ease of use for large datasets. Alongside IBM Watson and our team's internal big data tools we've managed to process and analyze data more efficiently, leading to key insights that have driven business value for our clients.
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Pros
Box
  • The main feature that I like the most in Box is that it makes collaboration seamless, workers can easily check the documents any time and make changes according to the needs.
  • Box manages and backs up all of your files on its cloud servers, and provides a very nice interface for creating, viewing, editing, and collaborating on the most commonly used file types (PDF, XLS, DOC, etc.).
  • Over the past few years, Box has built on top of its basic cloud storage management with a host of other tools, such as workflows, AI, monitoring, and analytics.
  • It is helping us to make good connections with clients and our workers themselves as to its syncing and viewing feature to all is very much helpful and easy to go.
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IBM
  • IBM Cloud Object Storage is an excellent choice for disaster recovery and backup solutions. Its high durability and geographic redundancy ensure that our backup data is safe and can be quickly restored in case of a disaster. This capability is crucial for maintaining our business continuity and minimizing downtime. We have deployed our loads in an IKS cluster distributed in 3 different AZs with stateful data allocated in COS.
  • We have a video streaming application and need to store and deliver a vast library of video content to millions of users worldwide, so we store our data in COS, which is cheap and reliable.
  • We have a bunch of data that must be analyzed and stored in datasets for fraud detection, risk management, and customer insights. In these cases, this data is moved from Onprem to IBM Cloud so we can use cheap storage like COS.
Read full review
Cons
Box
  • The graphic design of the dashboard should be simpler and more tangible that can be changed to the liking of the Admin.
  • Sometimes there are some syncing issues in the background.
  • The product has very limited functionality in some areas which could be a bit frustrating at times.
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IBM
  • Searching and retrieving—full-text search or metadata search—is one of the significant areas of improvement. It isn't easy to search for data with this.
  • Integration with other IBM cloud services is trickier. For example, integrating this with API Connect to access the data from API will be difficult for users.
  • Support - I think you should have more support community.
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Likelihood to Renew
Box
I like the security features and I like the website. It's easy to use and create and move things around as needed. The main reason for a lower rating is because the Box Sync app is just not a good program. It's a memory hog, it's slow, transfer speeds are slow, and it's not the most efficient route. If you have a large Box account and you need to get a computer up to speed on a large amount of data within Box, you are in for the long haul. Last time I had to do this, it took 3 days to sync all of the files and we are talking around 100 GB worth of data
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IBM
because it is a robust, safe and flexible product
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Usability
Box
Everything with Box is seamless. It can be integrated into virtually any other software or application. You can even get the app for your phone or tablet to work on the go. File syncing is so quick. The only reason I gave it a 9 is the issue I discussed earlier about the local file application rebooting and not continuing to sync files. Other than that, it's great!
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IBM
For my use cases, it has been a very smooth experience. Even my new colleagues have been able to get on top of things very quickly. This shows how easy it is to work with
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Reliability and Availability
Box
Yeah, it's always worked, I've never had any kind of connection issues, the only issues I've had it I've been on our end when the Internet hasn't worked.
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IBM
We rarely face downtime or access issues with IBM Cloud Object Storage. It’s mostly available when we need it, even during peak hours or heavy data loads.
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Performance
Box
The general operation and management of Box is very efficient, both when accessing the account, and when adding files, downloading or modifying any document directly. The web platform, mobile and desktop versions work really well and quickly, making all the work and process flow smoothly and without setbacks. So far I have not been able to observe any inconvenience
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IBM
I would give it a 9 because it works smooth with our AI and analytics tools, no major slowdown. Pages and dashboards load fine most of the time, and reports finish in decent time even when data is heavy.
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Support Rating
Box
I found their support community lacking in clarity when I experienced a login issue. The error messaging was poor on my Box Sync application. I did not reach out to support staff for help, instead, I reasoned that I should try downloading the Box Sync application again and reinstall it. That fixed my issue, thankfully. I think a less computer-savvy user would've been much more frustrated.
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IBM
I have been working in IT sector for more than 15 years. I have worked with various vendors. IBM's sales team, support team have been really helpful. After we start to use their product, their UX design team also contacted us to get feedback from us. They are really interested about our experience.
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In-Person Training
Box
The in person training was done in house and I helped with the training, people seem to respond well.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Box
The documentation is good. Since Box is a popular service, there were also a number of YouTube videos and other sources that were helpful as we were considering the product and planning for deployment. Also, the ability to try the free version helped to prepare us.
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IBM
I just researching and applying the tools on their platforms to ensure a good learning path, based on my needs. Reading the documentation related with resources, tools. Is too big, but I am trying to know more about it every day. It is a good way to know more about their resources. A new way to attract new customers. At the end of the day, we are all involved in improvement and automation of our tasks and resources for customers and end-users.
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Implementation Rating
Box
Be careful with settings. It is easy to get overwhelmed with updates. For example, you don’t want to be updated when doing historical data uploads. I recommend taking off notifications initially and then turn on post you have done your historical data upload.
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IBM
Yes Our organization used IBM professional services to implement IBM object storage because of its data consistency and multiple way to upload and download data and its encryption security features. Also that its brand matter for the any organization to secure the layer and storage. It sis also verify that application and system are compatibale for this product
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Alternatives Considered
Box
They are kind of the same. And both of them do their job as promised. But for company and project wise I think that Box slightly wins for some points. Which [makes him] win over Google Drive (don't forget that Google Drive is very easy to use and has a lot [of] nice features too).
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IBM
Amazon S3 is a great service to safely back up your data where redundancy is guaranteed, and the cost is fair. In the past I have used Amazon S3 for data that we backup and hope we never need to access, but in the case of a catastrophic or even small slip of the finger with the delete command, we know our data and our client's data is safely backed up by Amazon S3. Amazon S3 service is a good option, but based on the features it provides compared with IBM Cloud Object Storage, it is less suitable. IBM Cloud Object Storage is also integrated with more services, like IBM Cloud SQL and IBM Aspera, which AWS does not provide to transfer files at maximum speed in the world.
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Scalability
Box
It's great, as we put more files on there it's done very well.
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IBM
Scaling up the number of users can lead to significant increases in licensing costs, which, while not a technical limitation, can be a practical constraint for some organizations
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Return on Investment
Box
  • Box has been an only positive experience. It provides a seamless way for me and my team to collaborate on documents in such a way where we're not sending the document back/forth via email. It's a huge timesaver.
  • Box reduces the risk of sharing a sensitive document to the wrong person via email.
  • Box has provided a platform where my team can share notes in meetings - this has helped streamline and organize our meetings. Our meetings are more productive and actionable.
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IBM
  • This allows us to recommend a platform to our clients that will quickly help them create new, efficient business processes with very little development.
  • This saves clients hours and days of manual analysis of images, allowing the system to do the work when attaching Object Storage to models.
  • There is a learning curve in utilizing the storage and the modeling, but once up and running, it works well during deployment.
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ScreenShots

Box Screenshots

Screenshot of an overview of Box's intelligent content management platform. It provides a unified, AI-powered approach to managing and securing your unstructured data, or content. ICM provides organizations with collaboration, AI, security, compliance, and workflow tools, interoperable and customizable, to get the most from their content.Screenshot of how with Box AI, AI can be accessed right where enterprise content exists. While that work can reside within Microsoft, Google, Apple, and other productivity suites, Box helps users to tap the full potential of AI for unstructured data.Screenshot of how Box creates a central workspace to edit, review, and assign tasks. Users can automate business processes and centralize content workflows in Box, including a configurable content submission, unlimited e-signatures, user-drive no-code workflow, and task assignment to power approvals.Screenshot of how Box secures content from threats, including malware and ransomware, and recover from attacks if they happen. This helps to maintain a zero trust architecture to ensure proper usage of corporate data, and prevent data theft.Screenshot of how Box can connect to any productivity suite, including Microsoft, Google, and Apple. This extends any existing security investments with integrations into key DLP, SIEM, and network security tools. Thus, seamless experiences can be built for users in any system they use, whether that’s a business tool like Salesforce or ServiceNow, or communications engines like Zoom and Slack.Screenshot of an overview describing Box's scalability. With unlimited storage capabilities Box has an exabyte (1,000PB) of customer data plus 1 gigabit per second upload and download speed. At its core, Box is a multi-tenant global SaaS platform with enterprise-grade reliability and end-to-end encryption to secure content.

IBM Cloud Object Storage Screenshots

Screenshot of Cloud Object Storage set upScreenshot of storage bucket creationScreenshot of the Access Management interfaceScreenshot of the interface to create, add and management of Storage BucketsScreenshot of data uploadingScreenshot of usage details