Free 50GB upgrade for Box promotion (cloud storage)

Box has a great offer of a free 50GB account for any Android user!  From their blog: 

This promotion ends on Friday, March 23, 2012 at 11:59pm PST, so grab your free 50GB on Box by following these steps:

 1. Visit the Android Marketplace and download Box for Android
2. Log into your account or register for a new one directly from the app
3. Start sharing and collaborating in the cloud

I have to be honest –  I have accounts on Dropbox, SugarSync, and on Box.  They all have pluses and minuses, but I use Dropbox for most of my day to day cloud storage needs. I started with Dropbox because it worked with my password vault and other apps on my Droid.  And, now on my iPhone, again Dropbox just works with my apps.  Most recently, it was so simple to set up Mindjet (a mind mapping app) with Dropbox on my iPhone.  Dropbox also makes it real easy to sync from the folder on my MacBook Pro.  Just drag a file to the Dropbox folder and it syncs.  How easy can you get?  But… there is almost always a but. But, you only get 2GB free storage.  

That’s why I have accounts on SugarSync and Box.  Their free offers gave me 5GB each.  And of the two, SugarSync has a nice sync manager that comes with the free version.  With Box, you have to step up to the business version (a paid version) to get desktop sync’ing.  So, again, when I have files I want to access from my laptop and from my tablet, and my smart phone (and if I am not using Dropbox) I almost always use SugarSync.

But Box does have a nice clean web interface.  And it integrates with LinkedIn. So I find I end up using Box for sharing documents and other files with other people. It has become my public sharing cloud storage. Box has some great features for businesses and enterprises; things like integration with Salesforce.com and Google Apps, AD groups and version control, and of course desktop sync.  But, you don’t get any of those features in the personal free version. 

So, at first, I was kind of thinking “that’s nice, but I don’t really need it.”  But in the end my thought was, “I can always use 50GB more storage, so why not take advantage of the generous offer?  What’s the downside?”  So I downloaded the Box app to my Samsung Galaxy Tablet and took advantage of the 50GB for life offer.  Maybe you should too?

External links:

Link to Box blog article http://blog.box.com/2012/02/android-users-get-50gb-free-get-your-box50gb-and-enter-the-box-mobile-giveaway/

Link to get your own free Dropbox account.
Link to get your own free SugarSync account.