Liner notes





At the end of the day, Google Drive is exactly what Google fans have been looking for: a place to store all of your Google stuff. It syncs to your computer effortlessly, but Dropbox already does that. So where does it beat Dropbox? Since Drive replaces and builds on Google Docs, it's essentially a full-featured cloud document editing and storage suite. Dropbox is still the champ at syncing since it's so reliable and on so many platforms, but if you're looking for the best way to collaborate with others using online documents, Drive is the way to go. If you're looking for the ability to sync and also backup multiple folders around your computer, SugarSync is head and shoulders above the rest.

No one sync solution is perfect, so we attempted to give a fair shot to every mainstream app we've heard of and could find online. So, we wanted to provide explanations for why two mainstream options were not included in our list. First, JungleDisk was not included primarily because there is no free way to use the service, and we've compared services that you can use free of charge (like Google Drive). The least expensive option is $3/month, which includes 5GB of storage — a lot compared to other services we looked at. Additionally, most of the apps we checked out offer mobile apps that have been updated recently, while JungleDisk's iOS app has not been updated since August 2010, almost two years ago.

Another option we skipped is AeroFS, a very cool new company that lets you "sync" files between computers as long as both computers are turned on. LogMeIn's Cubby provides a similar feature, but also includes traditional "sync to the cloud" capabilities, a baseline feature for our comparison. Thus, AeroFS, which cannot sync your files to "the cloud," was not included.

A third detail we want to mention has to do with the criteria we used to judge these apps. We didn't provide each app with a Verge Score, but did measure them in terms of criteria we came up with, which we submitted to each sync app's parent company. Data from our charts is a combination of points we deduced from using the apps and points we gathered from responses to the criteria we submitted to each company.

Also, a few clarifications:

Multiple folder sync: the ability to sync multiple folders outside of your primary sync folder. For example, SugarSync allows you to pick folders around your computer to sync, while Dropbox does not.

Download to mobile: "pin" files to mobile for offline use on all mobile platforms

Password-protected files: whether links you send out to others can be password-protected or not. Clearly all of these services offer password protection for accessing all of your files.

Bandwidth-throttling: this is a negative attribute, and corresponds to companies that admitted to throttling bandwidth when you upload large amounts of files.

Finally, special thanks to our Product Database Manager William Savona for deftly constructing these beautiful comparison charts.