
100 time cheaper dropbox like service - sebgeelen
https://hubic.com/en/offers/
======
yoha
OVH (english website [1]) is the best French hosting company and one of the
best French domain name registar (with Gandi [2]), and are starting to make
themselves a name outside of France. Hubic is the "cloud" offer from OVH.

They both have quite a reputation of being reliable and very responsive, and
have _very_ fair prices (they are like the hosting counterparts of Free [3], a
French ISP that drove subscription fees down to what they now are and forced
other ISPs to make their prices fairer).

[1] [http://www.ovh.co.uk/](http://www.ovh.co.uk/)

[2] [http://en.gandi.net/](http://en.gandi.net/)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_%28ISP%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_%28ISP%29)

~~~
dewey
"They both have quite a reputation of being reliable and very responsive"

Have you ever dealt with their support? - I for myself am quite happy with my
service (Dedicated server) so far (because I rarely had to deal with the
support) but I've heard a few horror stories where some of their biggest UK
customers basically got kicked out even though they stayed within the TOS and
the terms they signed the contract for, or the thing about their DDoS
protection kicking in, rebooting your server even though they are legit
requests.

You can't beat their prices though.

~~~
tmikaeld
Do you have links to these "stories"?

~~~
martinml
Not exactly what dewey was referring to, but for example they unilaterally
cancelled their VoIP service to a large part of their customers in Europe,
without any kind of explanation.

~~~
tmikaeld
From what i read, they said that they didn't get enough customers and revenue
to justify it's existence - what other reason should there be?

And it was not sudden, they informed customers 3 months in advance.

I've been with 3 swedish voip providers that shut down after a couple of
years, so i'd guess it's hard to make it work.

~~~
martinml
That's what I've read too, but there doesn't seem to be any official story.
I've also read that they closed because it was being abused with services like
Classicfon where you earn a few cents per hour you call them. VoIP is a crazy
world.

------
gabriele
Seems to be based on OpenStack [1] Storage [2]. That means any client that
supports OpenStack (and Rackspace Cloud Files [3], for that matter) like
Cyberduck [4] and a lot more should already be compatible with hubiC.

[1] [http://www.openstack.org/](http://www.openstack.org/)

[2] [https://api.hubic.com/](https://api.hubic.com/)

[3]
[http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/openstack](http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/openstack)

[4] [http://cyberduck.ch](http://cyberduck.ch)

~~~
simias
Do you know a good client for Linux? Their official client [1] requires mono
and I don't want to install that on my server (or even my desktop, for that
matter).

[1] [http://mir7.ovh.net/ovh-applications/hubic/hubiC-
Linux/1.1.1...](http://mir7.ovh.net/ovh-applications/hubic/hubiC-
Linux/1.1.13/)

~~~
gabriele
Cloudfuse [1] allows you to mount remote OpenStack Storage. You'll need to
tweak with the ~/.cloudfuse config file. I haven't tested it though.

[1] [http://redbo.github.io/cloudfuse/](http://redbo.github.io/cloudfuse/)

------
drdaeman
> I confirm having read and fully understood the hubiC General COnditions

> PDF en français

Luckily, Google Translate provides mostly readable results, but if they
present site in English they really should consider translating ToS too.

Although I was unable to share direct link (Google rejects to translate PDF
from URL, only by direct upload), and the result not peeep.us-able, I was able
to save it as a paste here to save others time downloading and uploading the
PDF: [http://dabblet.com/gist/8861421](http://dabblet.com/gist/8861421)
(Dabblet seems broken, too, "view full page result" fails, so click "result"
tab to get rid of unnecessary panes)

Some points I got(but may have misunderstood) from there:

\- There're 10Mbps up/down bandwidth limits.

\- You remain the sole owner of your data.

\- Not allowed to store and/or share ("stocker et/ou partager") porn (huh‽)
and some other kind of content considered indecent, disturbing or unlawful.

\- They're not responsible for failed transfers, you explicitly agree have to
check that the files succesfully uploaded by yourself.

\- Commercial use of service is prohibited (uh... only personal accounts?)

\- I didn't really get this part: "Le Client s'engage à régler directement à
l'auteur de la réclamation toute somme que celui ci exigerait d’OVH." but
Google says it translates to something like "The Customer agrees to pay
directly to the author of the claim any amount that it would require OVH."
From the context, I may guess the meaning is, that if you somehow caused some
damage, you're going to protect OVH in court and if you/they're held
responsible, you're going to pay those damages. Hmmm...

~~~
agumonkey
Not sure if that will help, but here's my understanding:

"Le Client s'engage à régler directement à l'auteur de la réclamation toute
somme que celui ci exigerait d’OVH." If an author ask compensation to OVH, you
(OVH Client) pay the author directly the wanted amount.

~~~
drdaeman
Ah, right. Thank you. Seems this part is about copyright violations. Sounds
reasonable to me then.

~~~
nodata
It doesn't sound reasonable to me - how do they find the violations?

~~~
Loic
Hubic is run under French law, this means that you need first to get a
complaint, the complaint must go in front of a judge and then if the user is
found to have broken the law and if the result is a compensation, the user
will have to pay. But of course, the user can push against the judgement to a
upper court etc. Standard copyright law, _dura lex, sed lex_.

~~~
nodata
So how would someone discover that they can make a complaint?

~~~
n3o59hf
hubiC allows file sharing by link/email etc (they call it "Publication")

------
mike-cardwell
Android client wants access to my calendar and contacts for some reason. I'm
gonna install it anyway because I can prevent it from accessing those things
after the fact because I'm running an OpenPDroid modified Cyanogenmod.

------
tmikaeld
Wow, that's sickly cheap!

Seems to be owned and run by OVH France.

But without encryption and private keys, i'd rather rent a server and use
Duplicati.

~~~
certainly_not
I can't understand how people trust (or even care about) server-provided
encryption. There's no guarantee they or their friends can't open it on their
servers. Unless you use your own solution, their encryption only provides
protection in transit, against unaffiliated third parties.

~~~
tmikaeld
When it comes to zero-knowledge encryption, it is hard to know how their
implementation holds up without external audits. This is the same for other
encryption applications (google Truecrypt audit).

EVault, Wuala, Tarsnap, SpiderOak, Norton Zone, KeepVault, Jungle Disk,
ElephantDrive, CrashPlan, Carbonite, F-Secure, Handy Backup, IASO Backup,
MediaFire, MEGA, OwnDrive, TeamDrive etc..

..all provide Zero-Knowledge encryption for their cloud backups, i think OVH
should be able to at least the same.

~~~
drdaeman
What's the point of "supposedly zero-knowledge encryption" if you can't even
be sure it's there?

If you care about your data security, you'd better consider there is no
encryption in such cases. If you don't care - why ask for encryption at all?

------
nodata
Jesus that's cheap. Anyone know how good their differential syncing is, or
what they are using (librsync?) Are they using inotify or is it a regular tree
walk?

~~~
throwaway_bNwm8
(Fires up a decompiler) Let's check...

1\. From a quick glance I can't find anything related to patching in backend
or change handling classes. Either I'm missing something or it doesn't handle
arbitrary changes well. There's some suspect-driving long ByteDelta property
on Change class, but I fail to see where it's used in a meaningful manner.

2\. It uses a lightweight abstraction over System.IO.FileSystemWatcher. This
means inotify, when ran on Mono on GNU/Linux.

~~~
rawland
The hubic desktop app crashes on Fedora 20.

Basically it says good bye with:

~/Downloads/hubic> hubic main-loop [INFO | 2/9/2014 9:05:08 PM |
Ovh.Hubic.Sync.Linux.CLI.Server.MainLoop] Application starts (Version:
1.1.13.22-64; Platform: Unix 3.12.9.301) [ERROR | 2/9/2014 9:05:08 PM |
Ovh.Hubic.Backend.HubicAccountHandler.GetGreetings] Got error while getting
greetings: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly
'System.Runtime.Serialization, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies.

------
TheAnimus
Just tried to sign up for the 10TB plan, figure it's a good price for backing
up my archive of DNG photographs, which is about 1TB.

Not going well so far, credit card form was in french... Said it failed, it
refreshed itself, says it's worked, but it isn't showing up on my account.

Something tells me that 10 euros is going to cost a hell of a lot more than
that of my time getting to the bottom of this.

~~~
Jacqued
I like OVH and everything, even if I don't host with them anymore.

However I tried this service a few months ago, and it was very unreliable and
slow to sync files. Sharing files between different people in particular was
quite a hassle, which is why i quit using it. Also, I had a lot of trouble
with the Linux client. It may get better with time though as the project was
only started in 2013 i believe.

It's good to have cheap alternatives but if you can pay for Dropbox there's
just no comparison in the products.

------
maz-dev
I started using it a year ago. I'm happy with it. It's lacking a polished
linux client (cli atm), but they're working on it.

On a Sdsl line my upload rate (pc <-> hubic) is 45kb/s, download is 120kb/s.
Not mind blowing but it's enough for me, running in the background.

For casual sync and backup, I totaly recommend.

------
mike-cardwell
They seem to have clients for all the major operating systems. Desktop and
mobile: [https://hubic.com/en/downloads](https://hubic.com/en/downloads)

Linux (BETA), OSX, Windows, Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8, Blackberry

~~~
kybernetikos
Do you know if it works on ARM? I'd be interested in running this on my
network harddrive enclosure or perhaps a raspberry pi.

~~~
kseistrup
The Linux client requires mono 2.10+, so I assume this is something written in
.NET.

~~~
mverwijs
I wonder.. could this be a fork of the ol' iFolder by Novell?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFolder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFolder)

~~~
throwaway_bNwm8
No, it's proprietary software.

The project structure is completely different, so it's probably not even
inspired by iFolder.

------
egeozcan
It seems that their links are already running at half capacity.
[http://weathermap.ovh.net/](http://weathermap.ovh.net/)

OVH is a big company though, so I'm more or less confident that they can
handle this smoothly.

~~~
jlgaddis
OT: Anyone know of a "weathermap" like this that can be overlaid w/ Google
Earth or similar?

------
dewey
From their forum: "As nearly 270,000 of you now use hubiC, we have been able
to confirm our technical decisions and this volume has enabled us to further
optimise our infrastructure and its performances. Result: we're now able to
lower our prices again, and this time we're aiming for nothing less than a
million users!"

Let's see how that works out, OVH isn't really known to run a uncongested
network. I'm still excited because it's just a crazy cheap place to move
additional backups to.

------
gabriel34
For backups Backblaze is even cheaper, but I could see the advantage in using
it as data storage and duplicating to my computer as needed. Probably cheaper
than buying and managing my own hard drives; definitely safer.

Does anyone know how fast is the download from their servers?

~~~
balladeer
Earlier when I used to see people mentioning BackBlaze and not CrashPlan I
used to be pissed in a way,but after I used its (BB's) native app for a month
(on trial) I could see the difference.

~~~
drdaeman
BackBlaze only keeps deleted files for 30 days. They are backup copy, not
backup archive. At least CrashPlan could be used as both with "remove deleted
versions: never" setting.

~~~
balladeer
Yes, that's one thing. But if that's not a big issue for me (which is not)
then the CrashPlan interface and app makes me cry. (I am still a CrashPlan
user though; "friends" as destination is sth very important to me).

------
kraag22
I tried hubiC and it exactly same as dropbox, but worse services and better
prices. So it is useless. I need cloud storage which I could use
"unsynchronized". If I had 10TB hardrive in my MAC, I would use it. But I have
only 100 GB so it is useless

------
ksec
I dont know why everything about OVH 's graphics and design all seems to have
a distinct lack of taste. In other words they are ugly.

Now back to topic. How much is it in USD then? Since it paid in Euro and
includes VAT by default. What if i dont need to pay VAT?

------
Paul12345534
Pretty happy with Crashplan but I might sign up for this also just to have
some storage I can access via an API. Crashplan only works with their client
and their client isn't exactly lightweight to leave running 24/7.

~~~
uptown
LOVE Crashplan, but you're absolutely right about their client being resource-
intensive. It's my number one complaint about their service.

------
Aoyagi
I can't seem to find their privacy policy and ToS document is in French. I
think I'll pass.

In fact, the only mention of privacy I found is "respect for privacy" in data
security.

~~~
icebraining
Encryption is harder to break than any privacy policy.

~~~
mateuszf
Don't see any mention about encryption on the page. Or are you suggesting that
it can be done manually by user?

~~~
icebraining
The latter.

------
Uchikoma
"The company has eight datacentres housing at least 145,000 machines."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OVH](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OVH)

------
endijs
Upload is slow. From web interface it's around 300KB/s at the moment for me.
Just for fun tried out Mega and it's 4MB/s-7MB/s there.

------
oal
Does anyone know if HubiC supports file versioning, like Dropbox? Or will
older revisions be lost when a file is changed?

------
omasque
Last name and first name fields are mislabeled (switched) when I go to sign
up. Cheers!

------
prottmann
Only restricted time for sharing ?

Or is an add-on planed for permanent shares (e.g. for companies)?

------
kseistrup
I wonder if hubiC uses deduplication across accounts like dropbox does.

~~~
lubos
I think the answer to this question is pretty much obvious.

~~~
kseistrup
I don't think this is so obvious. They write that the files are encrypted with
my password and that only I have access to them.

~~~
drdaeman
Could you provide a link for this statement?

I found only statements about transport layer security, not about storage.

Maybe it meant not "encrypted" but "protected"?

~~~
kseistrup
[https://hubic.com/en/discover-hubic](https://hubic.com/en/discover-hubic)

“Only you will have access to your data, using your login and password.”

I admit that the statement above is ambiguous, which is why I think the answer
isn't obvious, and which again is why I asked the question in the first place.

~~~
jlgaddis
_> “Only you will have access to your data, using your login and password.”_

I don't remember their exact wording, but that sounds very similar to what
Dropbox originally claimed (before it was determined that their employees
absolutely _did_ have access to your data).

------
dbecker
Are there really people who are turned off by dropbox prices?

I would take notice if someone made a dropbox with a valuable additional
feature, or a dropbox that worked better (recognizing that already dropbox
works very smoothly).

But price seems like a nonstarter.

~~~
drdaeman
I'd use Dropbox as write-once-read-occasionally personal junk archival
storage, but they don't offer anything in that area.

This service does, and for an astonishingly great price. 10TiB for 10€, and
they even promised something about internal 3x storage redundancy. I'm
unzipping my wallet right after I run basic checks with free account.

~~~
jlgaddis
_> I'd use Dropbox as write-once-read-occasionally personal junk archival
storage ..._

That's what I'm using Amazon Glacier for. I have tons of old files that I'll
likely never need/want again and that I would normally just blow away in order
to regain the disk space. It's so damn cheap, though, that I've started
archiving them all to Glacier and then blowing them away.

~~~
drdaeman
Well, this offer seems to be about 10x cheaper.

Not to say you don't have to wait for hours before you retrieve the file, and
it's flat rate, not "download some percent from what you've uploaded today for
free, otherwise pay for the bandwidth" plan.

For example, I've used Bitcasa before, but consider them too unreliable as a
long-term business and left their service. It didn't cost me a cent to pull
all the data back (with some minor exceptions their buggy software managed to
lose unrecoverably, but I never considered them rock-solid-reliable from the
beginning and had backups). With Glacier, I guess, I'd have to shell out $150
(~1.5TB) just to leave with my data.

There are other unlimited/large storage offers of various pricing and quality,
but this one seem the best to me this far because of OpenStack API (I'd wish
Cyphertite had a datacenter in Europe or Russia, but nope, so they're too slow
for me, and I'm not really sure even though they're "unlimited" they'll be
happy with terabyte archives). That is, unless one has more than 10 terabytes
to archive.

------
jmnicolas
Those prices are crazy and are not sustainable. I don't think they're going to
disappear, but customers should expect prices to rise in the future ...

~~~
lingben
actually according to dewey:

From their forum: "As nearly 270,000 of you now use hubiC, we have been able
to confirm our technical decisions and this volume has enabled us to further
optimise our infrastructure and its performances. Result: we're now able to
lower our prices again, and this time we're aiming for nothing less than a
million users!"

~~~
jmnicolas
I don't see in any part of his statement that they're profitable and that they
won't rise the prices once they have established dominance in the storage
market.

It's only by being so cheap that they can carve themselves a place in this
saturated market.

