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Good product overall. Some bugs and product support is poor.
March 28, 2013

Good product overall. Some bugs and product support is poor.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction

  • It provides for decent auditing to accommodate compliance.
  • User interface is reasonably straightforward.
  • Heavily used by other companies, so low learning curve for external collaborators.
  • Tech support is terrible. The main issue was that the support team does not know the product very well. They are unable to help with either technical issues (the sync isn't working) or with "how-to" questions on the best ways to do certain tasks. As an example, we had persistent problems with the Sync App and Support just kept telling us to un-install and re-install, which dod not resolve the problem. After months of escalation, we finally got to talk to a developer who figured out that the problems was a proxy problem. We were not even using a proxy, but just needed to to change the IE setting to "no proxy" instead of "automatic". As soon as we did this, the problem was completely solved. But it took us months to get to the right person.
  • In addition, there was a bad handoff between the sales person and our account manager. Basically, the sales person told us that the product could do certain things with workarounds, but the account manager was not aware of what had been promised and had to spend a long time researching our use case and finding a solution.
  • Box Sync app has had many bugs and, as described above, is not well supported by tech support.
  • Box.com does not support Document discovery well. It has no export or hold capability. The issue here is that legal counsel sometimes requires documents resulting from a specific search across Box to be sent to them as part of the discovery process. The first issue is that there is not "hold" capability allowing us to put all discovery files in a single container which is not affected by global purge. But, even more important, there is no easy way to export files from the system to send to lawyers. We have to export each file one by one - there is no bulk export capability.
  • We did not perform a ROI on Box.com. It's use augments rather than replaces current systems.
Migration would be difficult and we have yet to see another solution that would offer enough benefit to warrant migration, training, etc.

Product Usage

35 - Finance, marketing, IT
2 - Support is primarily how-to questions and sync app failures.
  • To synchronize files between multiple machines making multiple computer use easier.
  • Access files from mobile devices and annotate.
  • Share files amongst internal teams making internal file shares less limiting.
  • Share files with the outside world allowing for temporary deal rooms.

Evaluation and Selection

Dropbox
SugarSync
Egnyte

We chose Box primarily because it had good auditing / administration management capabilities. It allows us to to track who shared and unshared folders etc.

Dropbox: This was the main competitive product that we considered. Dropbox does not offer the auditing capabilities of Box which was a significant issue. Also, Box does not use global de-duping (storing only one version of a two files with the same name and fingerprint). This is an important issue from a security / compliance standpoint. Dropbox does use global de-dupe, so this was another reason to eliminate it.

Egnyte: Egnyte is a little different to Dropvbos and Box in that it offers both public and private storage (Box and Dropbox offer only public storage). We tested Egnyte and had a bad experience. The snyc kept crashing and support was extremely unresponsive.

SugarSync: The SugarSync product was simply not robust enough for our needs.

Implementation

Training

  • Online training
  • Self-taught
Basic use is easy. File sharing system does not have the same appearance or granular ACL capabilities of a file server. Many people have had trouble understanding the differences.

Support

The account managers are great for use case questions. I question if tech support ever uses the product itself.

Usability

The program is generally easy-to-use, but there are some issues with the file structure metaphor. It can be confusing for people accustomed to working with tree file structures. For example, if I share a folder with someone which is several levels down in my folder hierarchy, the shared folder displays at the root level for the person with which I shared. This is confusing and is not adequately covered in the training or documentation.”

Reliability

Cloud up-time is great. The failure of the Sync app should be looked at separately and does have failures..

Integration

  • We would like to integrate Box.com with Salesforce.
A weak integration already exists. However, as soon as you involve folders moves or sync the integration is unusable. Getting access to the development team / product manager kept being pushed off by Box.com so we gave up on the idea.

Vendor Relationship

Pre-sales was easy but we were mislead re: some functionality. I think this was more a case of not knowing than the sales person outright lying.
Post-sales account management people have been easy to work with but unable to help when dealing with product management questions.
Evaluate the product and step through all use cases that come to mind. There can be several ways of phrasing a question or defining a capability that can be construed differently based on perspective and knowledge. While that is normal, it was never so prevalent as it was during the Box.com implementation.