Box

Pros

Box has great storage capacity and many useful tools for editing and syncing items. It's a very flexible, scalable tool

Cons

We rely on Box so much that on the few occasions that it has gone down temporarily, we have been stuck until it's come back online. The good news is that this has happened only once or twice in 3+ years.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Box

Switched From

Pros

We used Box for a few years as our knowledge management storage and document / installation files / customer-facing content solution.

Cons

For us there was unfortunately no unique selling point or feature that kept Box on the table when considering the other applications and tools we use as an MSP. We use Office 365 for emails, the Office suite for document creation and editing, Sharepoint for team collaboration, Teams for IM and customer communication and calls, Visio for diagramming, etc. With this investment into Office 365 and having a Business Premium license for all users, there was no reason to keep paying for Box (and other solutions) when an equivalent is 1st Party integrated with our other solutions.

Pros

I love the Box branding and aesthetic. It's a pleasant backdrop for day-to-day use. They have a lot of features on the enterprise front, and I can see they've put a lot of work into their business model.

Cons

(Note: This relates to Box Sync, which is the version that stores files locally on your device and backs them up on the cloud. This is in contrast to Box Drive, which stores on the network by default.)

There have been at least 2 occasions entire directories have disappeared from my local storage even though I did not delete them on any of my synced devices. In the most recent case, this was >50 GB across thousands of files. I had to figure out how to redownload them, which turned out to be a huge hassle in the online interface. Download size limits at 15 GB (or something on that order) prevented me from downloading the higher level directories all at once. The next best thing was making batch selections of files. This ended up being very nonintuitive and took me a long time to figure out (I had to go to a help board).

Another criticism is that Box Sync (apparently?) will be deprecated in the future. If, like me, you are uncomfortable with network storage as the default, then Box might not be the best choice for you. I understand this is their business model -- and I can't speak for everyone -- but to me the upsides of default network storage seem outweighed by their downsides for typical use cases.

Pros

Super secure and reliable. Definitely a tier-up from Google Drive services when it comes to security.

Cons

Box offers so many different great features that can be a bit overwhelming for the average user. Other than that, it will take time to learn it.

Pros

It's so easy to use- within the organization as well as for external folks. We are able to share what we want, and also keep confidential documents private.

Cons

N/A- I have no issues while using Box on a daily basis.