

Why I Dropped Dropbox and got OwnCloud - seferphier
http://dorktech.com/why-i-dropped-dropbox-and-got-owncloud/

======
runjake

      > OwnCloud is basically Dropbox, without the data limits and pricing restrictions.
    

There's some pretty huge caveats in the above statement from the article.

I switched to ownCloud for a while and then switched back to Dropbox. I
switched back to Dropbox for a couple reasons.

First, ownCloud is written in PHP _and_ the code (and the plugins you could
add on) looked pretty janky. The UI was better than the usual open source
fair, but still janky. Second, the trouble of having to worry about
maintaining backups[1] for the ownCloud data store and server redundancy made
the $10 a month I pay Dropbox look a lot more attractive again.

And finally, a lot of iOS apps integrate with Dropbox specifically. I didn't
include this as an official third item, because fuck vendor lock-in, but it is
nice to have when you're in a walled-garden environment like iOS.

In the end, I decided that I was better off overall sticking with Dropbox and
doing a better job of encrypting particularly-sensitive data that resides
there. Dropbox has had some security incidents and stability issues, but
they've always responded to them in a manner I would consider sufficient.

I'm paying Dropbox for it's service (SaaS, after all), not it's storage. I'm
paying them to worry about keeping things up and running. Not because I can't
do it myself, but because I want to devote my limited time to other things.

 _1\. Let me explain. I still do backups on the client side with a mix of Time
Machine, CarbonCopyCloner, and tar. So my data 's safe._

 _But I still need to worry about backing up the ownCloud instance, as well.
Because if that gets munged up, I can 't use ownCloud anymore without
reinstalling and reconfiguring it. With Dropbox, they worry about the back
end, so that I can focus on other things that I want to focus on._

~~~
shocks
If your very first reason for not using ownCloud is "because it's written in
PHP" then I'm probably not going to read the rest of your comment.

~~~
jmcqk6
That's too bad. You missed out on some good points. Avoiding something because
of the programming language can be a very reasonable decision. Personally, I
could probably hack on some PHP if I really needed to, but I want to avoid
putting myself in a position to need to do that. There are other options
available that are better for me.

~~~
shocks
Parent might have made some good point, but this whole "PHP sucks" attitude is
pretty juvenile. How can we have constructive discussion about some software
if the knee jerk reaction this community has is "lol PHP, so shit"?

I'll take open source code over proprietary crap any day of the week.

------
fdask
"OwnCloud is basically Dropbox, without the data limits and pricing
restrictions.

The only catch is that you have to run and install OwnCloud on your own
server"

Your own server which adds its own data limits and pricing restrictions.

~~~
dspillett
_> Your own server which adds its own data limits and pricing restrictions._

And potential reliability issues too. The storage infrastructure of something
like dropbox will (or at least should) be massively redundant to reduce to
near-zero the risk of people losing data due to hardware fault.

With something like OwnCloud you need to provide your own live redundancy and
backups if your data is important enough to need them.

Having said that I'm looking at using OwnCloud for myself, and might suggest
the group I work for use it too if my experiments with it show it to match out
needs. But do be aware of what else services like dropbox provide that you
need to manage and support yourself when replacing them with an in-house
service.

------
jgillich
> I have about 400GB of data backed up and synced between all my offices onto
> external drives at each location

I can't even get it to synch 100MB properly. I'm using ownCloud for about a
year now and I run into issues all the time. Simply put a Git repo in your
ownCloud folder and it will never stop synching.

~~~
synchrone
I cannot find your github issue about that. Could you paste a link, if you
managed to find 10 minutes of your precious time to post the reproduce-
scenario during your 1 year long struggle?

~~~
jgillich
It's been reported a at least once already, see[1]. However, I don't see why I
am required to create an issue before I am allowed to complain. OwnCloud has
tons of open issues on GitHub, I'm sure there are doing their best to solve
them already.

[1]:
[https://github.com/owncloud/core/issues/2470](https://github.com/owncloud/core/issues/2470)

------
da_n
Excuse the friendly jibe but you might consider dropping Hostgator next! I
really respect and find valuable the idea of OwnCloud, but I have heard so
many horror stories about files being deleted, slow sync times and bug fixes
being secondary to the development of new features I have been put off. Has it
now matured and can be considered more viable? I have been using BitTorrent
Sync (with a Raspberry Pi as 24/7 server) personally and have experienced zero
issues. I wish it was open source but it is great as an alternative to DropBox
if 'owning your data' is important to you.

~~~
jnamaya
We implemented owncloud in our company of about 500 users spread out in 33
countries last year, and besides some minor glitches with some users ( mostly
user errors ) the implementation has been very successful. our original
purpose of owncloud was for people to have a backup of their working files in
our server ( because they travel a lot and equipment loss rate is high ) but
they are now using owncloud for file sharing and work collaboration...we use
server version 5 with the latest client which right now is 1.5. some teams in
our company were using dropbox, but now are using owncloud...I guess for
security reasons.

------
orjan
One aspect that is overlooked here is the actual safety of your data. If you
feel that your own server has the safety and backup resources of e.g. Amazon
(which Dropbox uses), you're probably deluding yourself.

~~~
icebraining
Backup is irrelevant, you can always encrypt it and send to S3. As for safety,
well, at least you're a considerably less visible and worthy target than
Dropbox. And you can implement systems (e.g., stronger authentication) that
Dropbox might disregard since they're targeting a less technical user base.

Personally, I use git-annex as my sync server, and all non-local transmissions
are done over SSH using public key authentication, which is something that
Dropbox will never implement.

~~~
orjan
I'm not arguing that you can't have a private server that's secure. I'm
arguing that setting up an OwnCloud box is probably more insecure than using
Dropbox.

------
rayanm
I was also looking to host my own cloud service. I tried OwnCloud (2 weeks
ago) and I was fascinated by it... Well until it failed me and lost my test
data. There is a major bug in it (try renaming a directory by changing one
letter from small to capital).

That being said, I started using BitTorrentSync which is a peer to peer sync
and I am happy with it so far and I am still testing it.

~~~
enscr
How exactly does it (BitTorr..) sync data between my mobile & my laptop? If I
have 100 Gigabytes of pics on my laptop. Will it attempt to copy it on my
phone or does it cache a small portion? Does that need internet connection or
will ad-hoc wifi work?

~~~
jablan
AFAIK, it'll try to copy it all. However, the practice is to separate content
in a number of folders and sync only certain folders on certain devices.
Slightly different approach than Dropbox, but works OK.

------
j_s
Read the article here:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140130215227/http://dorktech.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140130215227/http://dorktech.com/why-
i-dropped-dropbox-and-got-owncloud/)

or here:

[http://pastebin.com/pudxiTmC](http://pastebin.com/pudxiTmC)

------
jaredstenquist
I've been trying for days to get OwnCloud working properly with for my 30
person startup. I wish I could say it was going great but I'm a couple hours
away from trying out DropBox for business.

I went with Ubuntu, 200GB EBS, M1X-large and the latest OwnCloud (6.0.1
stable)

Syncing has been brutal. We have a 100MB connection, and even the few test
users I've put on it all are complaining of it not consistently syncing.
Additionally there is no LAN Sync like Dropbox, so you're paying for all the
bandwidth.

Since i't at somewhere between $250-300 for OwnCloud and it's been working so
poorly, the $450/month for Dropbox isn't looking as bad.

It's a shame. There is good potential here, but as others mentioned the UI is
really janky, and it doesn't consistently work as expected.

~~~
soundsop
Have you considered the AeroFS
([https://www.aerofs.com/pricing](https://www.aerofs.com/pricing))? I have not
used AeroFS, but it would be on my list to evaluate for your use case,
especially if external storage is undesirable. Pricing seems in line with
Dropbox for Business, although this does not take into account the cost of
maintaining your own storage.

------
aabalkan
Getting hostgator HTTP 500. (why the f __k in the world someone chooses
hostgator as their error page) I am quite suprised how people are so
successful at not handling Hacker News load? Even my $5 handled #1 on HN for
hours with %0.1 CPU load.

~~~
coldtea
Or you know, they could not care less.

------
Karunamon
Been there, done that, switched back to Dropbox. Dropbox has a very nice API
that everybody has integration with.

------
acomjean
I use owncloud, as a document repository for a non-profit. It replaces google
drive for us. It doesn't see a ton of use but has worked well for us as a
simple document archive.

I did like the fact that you can go into linux and find where the files are
stored and back them up.

------
henryaj
"ERROR 500 - INTERNAL SERVER ERROR"

Can't seem to get a cached version either.

~~~
izzydata
Guess he should have stuck with dropbox.

~~~
ceejayoz
Dropbox shuts you off if HN hits your URL, too.

------
junto
I run OwnCloud on my Synology NAS at home. The Synology has got dynamic DNS
and I have then CNAMED the synology.me address with cloud.mydomain.com. The
sync client seems OK to me and I can access my files and contacts remotely.
Everything goes over SSL with a free StartSSL cert.

I also use dropbox for work stuff that I don't care about from a privacy
perspective.

Overall I'm happy with OwnCloud. Sadly they don't have an officially supported
OwnCloud package for Synology, but you can have everything I guess.

------
seth429
I've been pretty happy with Space Monkey
([http://spacemonkey.com](http://spacemonkey.com)) -- 1TB of local and remote
backup, $199 for the device and free first year, remote backup $49 after the
first year if you want to keep doing it.

And I have access to the full 1TB as if the files were local, even on my
measly 120G macbook air, since the filesystem is backed by the network. It's
kinda cool.

------
mokkol
Next post: Why I dropped HostGator.com and got <xxxx>

~~~
minimaxir
Hitting #3 on Hacker News will murder any website which uses shared hosting.
It happened to me with Dreamhost, and it got so bad that my website was
irrevocably corrupted.

Needless to say, I switched away.

~~~
ceejayoz
HN will definitely cause trouble for shared hosting, but I'd move away from
HostGator because they're serving a giant ad for their own service on the 500
error page.

------
kuebelreiter
If you want to spend your time being your Owncloud admin use it. Security
updates, finding reasons for Error 500 after updates and version upgrades -
there's always something to do, you never will be bored.

If you just want a solution to sync data with your server use bittorrent sync.

------
billyhoffman
Agreed on the janky-ness of it all. If you are switching to ownCloud because
you want to control your date, I'd suggest Transporter.

[http://www.filetransporter.com/](http://www.filetransporter.com/)

------
grandpa
Mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://dorktech.com/why-
i-dropped-dropbox-and-got-owncloud/)

------
dpacmittal
I feel [https://github.com/mycozycloud/cozy-
setup](https://github.com/mycozycloud/cozy-setup) should have a special
mention here since it looks more polished and stable than ownCloud.

------
ToastyMallows
Blocked by IT under the category of Pornography. Guess I'll read it later?

~~~
rexreed
My guess a generic domain keyword block of "dork"? Remind me not to register a
domain like that for my next must-have business app.

------
1986v
I have always felt that OwnCloud was just a personal "fun" alternative to
great services like Dropbox. The DropBox business package, for the price, is
not bad all in my own opinion.

------
SethMurphy
If you install OwnCloud on one server, it's not a cloud, but just remote file
storage. IMHO cloud implies redundancy and reliability, not just "on a server
on the internet"

------
monksy
OwnCloud did not work for the needs of my friend and I. However, I absolutely
love Seafile. It sallows for you to share files based on groups and folders.

------
scottydelta
I use Amazon EC2 and I can assure its not a feasible solution due to the
bandwidth it will consume.

------
Timmmmbob
I just wish it wasn't written in PHP. Makes me not entirely trust it.

------
cdrewsgo
OwnCloud is jelly because DropBox just got that money.

------
z3bra
Dropbox secure? A joke. One key to open all.

~~~
Karunamon
This is why you just upload a Truecrypt or similar volume for things that
absolutely must be private.

------
xacaxulu
Why I dropped Hostgator for anything else.

------
CompleteMoron2
Just a quick smattering of thoughts:

You can get free DropBox space when you buy android tablets and phones. I
think between a tablet and a htcone I scored like 500GB's at Dropbox.

Public cloud is not for sensitive data - its for transferring lame documents
and media between places. Usually the people who are worried about security
for data in public forums usually dont actually have any data anyone wants to
steal.

------
frankphilips
OwnCloud got Pwned

~~~
bittercynic
What do you mean?

~~~
Angostura
I think he means their site is currently crawling under the load - I can't get
the home page to come up.

