Organized and accessible

Box allows us to work collaboratively with teammates all over the world, both inside and outside our organization. The workflow is very smooth and we are able to make live updates to documents we work with regularly. The experience has been very positive and a big improvement over what we were using previously

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.

Cloud file services that work like a real file share

I helped roll out this solution to a small (25 users) business almost 3 years ago to replace their local file server. I started using it myself vs. DropBox because the Box Desktop was so perfectly Mac, and I've since rolled it out to three other small businesses as a replacement for local file services they can access anywhere. When COVID-19 hit, and said clients needed their workers to work from home, the workflow hardly missed a beat, thanks to the fact they can work anywhere just as if they had a local file share on their desktop.

Pros

The Box Desktop app actually works to keep files in the cloud until and unless I'm using them, saving precious disk space on users' systems — unlike an unnamed popular competitor. And on the Mac, it works just like an external disk or mounted file share — right on the desktop, in the proper file hierarchy with no proprietary interface to complicate things, or presume how I want to look at my files.

Cons

Tech support can be slow to respond, as its first tier of support is via their forum and email, and I've waited as long as two days to get a response to an issue for a corporate subscription, and it's painfully apparent that the first tier team is reading straight off of cue cards, because they suggest things to try, even when my previous communication states IN DETAIL that I've already done said thing in my own troubleshooting. Beef up the support staff, pay better attention to what a customer has already said in their communications, and escalate things to engineering quicker, and they will remedy the one, glaring shortcoming in their service.

May not be best for simple/typical uses

I am not a fan of Box's move towards pure network storage as default (Box Drive) from local storage (Box Sync). This seems unnecessary to me for individuals and small organizations. If you're sure network storage is the way to go for your organization, then Box could be a great choice. They have great branding and features selection if you fall within this category. Otherwise, I'm not sure why someone would give up the benefits of local storage. This is especially the case for individuals. (Note: there does appear to be an option to mark individual directories for offline storage, but in my understanding this has to be selected from a menu.) This, together with a couple negative experiences with a buggy sync (see below), lead me to give 3/5 stars overall. But if you're sure network storage is the way to go, then I would probably give close to 5/5. I'm just not sure how many people will actually want to manage their files in this way.

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.

Great for Team Accessibility

Box is user-friendly which has allowed my team and I to overcome problems of needless time consumption. Research projects take up a lot of time because of the amount of data that needs to be uploaded and analyzed. However, Box has enabled my team to effectively work together and independently while maintaining the ethical guidelines of research.

Pros

As a tutor and a researcher, I love being able to upload videos of lesson plans and lectures so that my team and those I am working for are able to look back on what I said. Another thing I love about Box is how you can share multiple files with anyone you want and you are able to view who has downloaded something to maintain privacy and confidentiality. Box is especially useful for big groups of people. Everything is extremely accessible and easy to learn how to use. I recommend Box to my colleagues in research who want a safe way of maintaining confidentiality in research projects.

Cons

I do not have any problems with Box so far and I have been using Box for most of my college experience. I have used it for research, tutoring, and collaboration projects.

Great Product / Slightly Too Pricey for Individuals

Overall, I like Box. Better than Dropbox....maybe even better than pCloud as their UI is a bit dated and odd?...

Pros

It does offer 10GB of storage for free versus Dropbox only offering 2GB for free.

Cons

The only next option is the 100GB plan and it's $10 a month whereas Google One offer the same 100GB plan for only $1.99 a month. Now, I realize the better security and privacy potentially offered with Box versus a "big brother" such as Google is what could warrant an increased price. However, I'm not sure it needs to increase that much. Plus, it's confusing how they have an indicudual pro plan for $10 a month and 100GB and then a starter business plan with the same storage for $5 a month. I don't understand that and I think things should be more clear and make more sense. Also, I'm having issues with Box Sync not working on my laptop. It just won't sync anymore other than the initial sync. I didn't feel like messing with it or dealing with customer service so I just uninstalled it from my laptop.