MediaFire is a simple file sharing and storage platform. It allows users to store, share, and view media files within the MediaFire online, desktop, or mobile app interface. The vendor says MediaFire's file storage system is private and secure. In terms of collaboration, users can invite friends to share files via Facebook, Google, Twitter, or email. MediaFire's collaboration features include folder and file sharing, and controls for who can view and/or edit particular files. MediaFire…
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ownCloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
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ownCloud is a self-hosted open source file syncing and sharing option, from the Boston-based company of the same name.
MediaFire is similar to software like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Mega and ownCloud. All of them share similar features. I particularly like MediaFire's usability because it has a smooth, simple and responsive interface. The pricing by MediaFire is also good and the …
It is well suited for large file sharing and file syncing. Easy to collaborate the files and provide access. File encryption, some features are pretty limited like the ease of use on front end as well. Customer support can be better and improve customer loyalty. Design can be improved for easier navigation and use.
I'd easily recommend ownCloud to small businesses or teams within organizations. I've not used ownCloud in large deployments, so I'd hesitate before suggesting it in a situation where more than 10 users need support. That said, ownCloud is easy to set up and multiple instances could be used to service a large user base.
FileDrop feature. This is an amazing functionality that increases collaboration among our team. People can drop files in a specific folder related to a project and we can keep it organized.
Mobile Apps for Android and iOS. The apps works pretty well and you can carry your files everywhere.
Regular and Instant Uploads - MediaFire checks for the exact same file in the cloud. If it finds it, the upload will be instant. Otherwise, it proceeds with regular upload.
Attention and dedication to making the product a world class product with continual product updates.
Ease of use from an administration standpoint, and a very Clear UI.
The price -- you can't beat free!
Mobile applications are great.
Integration with public S3 cloud providers like AWS S3 and Wasabi S3.
2FA authentication is supported and works great!
Marketplace Add-Ons: I love this! For example, I can install an add-on that natively opens raw images. I am a photographer as well, and being able to quickly view the CR2 Raw Files direct from the camera is fantastic! This was made possible by a marketplace add-in.
Embedded Media Players: Photos, Music, and Video files can be viewed and played right in the browser window.
Sync application to keep local files on a computer updated with the files on the server.
Access control and permissions -- shareable links!
Download Page - When you generate a link to download some files it redirects users to a specific page where they can download the file. The page is sometimes confusing and with a lot of ads which can be a little bit annoying.
Customization Option - you can find a customization section in "Settings", but there are just a few things that you can really customize. Maybe improving this would be nice to allow you personalize your environment (for companies, for instance).
Blocked options for the free version - There are a lot of interesting options that are available just for business and pro versions. If you could at least test it before upgrading your version it would help users decide.
Lack of PC sync client - Would be great if you could install a PC client that would synchronize your files.
Problems when refreshing your files list in the browser. Sometimes it gets slow and you have to refresh the entire page to continue.
Inability to easily collaboratively edit the same document by several people. Some advances have been made with Collabora (Libreoffice online) but it is still very sub-par compared to Office365 and desktop/online Office editing Sharepoint or OneDrive documents.
Apps for Calendar and Contacts are not part of the basic core, and although now quite supported they cannot still be easily deployed in common email clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird, separate CalDAV and CardDAV plugins need to be installed. Embedding an email solution and plugins for major email clients so they can work just by entering username and password would be good.
Risk of moving important folders/files to another location just by random drag-and-drop on Windows. Sometimes this breaks public links that cannot be restored anymore. Reverting such mistake by any of the users is impossible automatically.
When some user deletes some data in a shared folder it is put into recycle bin of the owner of the folder. The user who deleted cannot himself/herself revert such action as he/she does not see the recycle bin (trash) of the owner. Also, there is no log in the recycle bin who deleted that file or folder.
OwnCloud is easy for me to use, and I believe it would be for others too. The barrier for most people will be the set up. For a technology professional like myself, ownCloud's setup is pretty straightforward, but it's not the sort of thing most casual users will be able to handle. Also, it's on the user to maintain the service. These can be taken care of by paying someone to do it for you.
Compared with other cloud services, ownCloud has been the most efficient. It doesn't create a noticeable drain on resources and very quickly syncs across all my devices. I'm usually able to save a file on my laptop and by the time I walk over and sit down at my desktop machine, it's already there. I don't need to wait as often as I have with services like OneDrive.
Regarding the community edition, there is a reasonably good support on the IRC, forums and in the issue section on Github. Perhaps a much more individual approach would be available if the premium support was chosen and the instance of the server was provided by the Owncloud company that also offers some premium extensions, not available generally. However, we did not need this level of support yet.
MediaFire's Pro Pricing is cheaper than Dropbox, although they're less known in the industry. I trust them with important documents, and they [have] never lost a file, whereas I can't say the same about other services like theirs. Customer service is fast and friendly if you need them, and their site is very clean and clutter free, which (to me) is important.
The paid cloud services are expensive if you need a lot of data. You're giving your personal and business information to a data-hungry organization. Local NAS solutions are too slow. We run ownCloud on an older business PC and the performance is outstanding, even for remote access, due to local syncing.
Thanks to MediaFire I have been able to recover information stored many years ago on their servers, since they usually do not delete files after a certain time.
It has helped me to be able to backup sensitive information from long before the existence of massive clouds, so if you did not make these backups you had to lose all the information, but thanks to half fire that did not happen to me.
