from Hacker News

Why I Dropped Dropbox and got OwnCloud

by seferphier on 1/31/14, 4:37 PM with 73 comments

  • by runjake on 1/31/14, 5:13 PM

      > 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.

  • by fdask on 1/31/14, 4:56 PM

    "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.

  • by jgillich on 1/31/14, 5:07 PM

    > 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.

  • by da_n on 1/31/14, 5:05 PM

    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.

  • by orjan on 1/31/14, 5:02 PM

    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.

  • by rayanm on 1/31/14, 5:16 PM

    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.

  • by j_s on 1/31/14, 5:04 PM

  • by jaredstenquist on 1/31/14, 5:59 PM

    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.

  • by aabalkan on 1/31/14, 5:38 PM

    Getting hostgator HTTP 500. (why the fk 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.

  • by Karunamon on 1/31/14, 5:19 PM

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

  • by acomjean on 1/31/14, 5:30 PM

    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.

  • by henryaj on 1/31/14, 4:56 PM

    "ERROR 500 - INTERNAL SERVER ERROR"

    Can't seem to get a cached version either.

  • by junto on 1/31/14, 7:24 PM

    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.

  • by seth429 on 1/31/14, 5:36 PM

    I've been pretty happy with Space Monkey (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.

  • by mokkol on 1/31/14, 5:09 PM

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

  • by kuebelreiter on 2/1/14, 8:29 AM

    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.

  • by billyhoffman on 1/31/14, 5:50 PM

    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/

  • by grandpa on 1/31/14, 6:05 PM

  • by dpacmittal on 1/31/14, 5:20 PM

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

  • by ToastyMallows on 1/31/14, 5:00 PM

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

  • by 1986v on 1/31/14, 5:02 PM

    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.

  • by SethMurphy on 1/31/14, 5:52 PM

    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"

  • by monksy on 1/31/14, 5:35 PM

    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.

  • by scottydelta on 1/31/14, 6:46 PM

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

  • by Timmmmbob on 1/31/14, 6:28 PM

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

  • by cdrewsgo on 1/31/14, 6:24 PM

    OwnCloud is jelly because DropBox just got that money.

  • by z3bra on 1/31/14, 5:10 PM

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

  • by xacaxulu on 1/31/14, 5:30 PM

    Why I dropped Hostgator for anything else.

  • by CompleteMoron2 on 1/31/14, 8:45 PM

    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.

  • by frankphilips on 1/31/14, 5:05 PM

    OwnCloud got Pwned