Before the cloud became a thing, storing and sharing photos and other files was a very manual and analog experience. Who hasn’t got an attic filled with old photo albums and banker boxes of dusty printouts?
Like storage, sharing was a labor-intensive and awkward experience involving complicated file transfer protocol applications (if you could figure them out and be sure they were secure), duplicating files onto CDs or DVDs (remember them?) and physically handing them over, maintaining a collection of USB drives, or attaching files to emails and hoping the file size wasn’t too large—even resorting to multiple emails if necessary.
Today, there are many cloud-based online storage services that let you store, access, and share your files in real time. Popular features include file sharing, collaboration tools, various levels of free, paid, and premium plans, synchronization across devices, and the peace of mind that your photos, videos, files, and so on, are safe—potentially forever.
What is Dropbox?
Officially launched in 2008, Dropbox is a file hosting service that lets users store, share, and access files organized in folders across multiple devices. With more than 700 million users, Dropbox has seen significant growth since its launch, although it faces increasing competition as the market space becomes crowded with newcomers.
It’s also had its share of public concerns over privacy and security—particularly because like several other file hosting services, it lacks end-to-end encryption, also known in the security world as zero-knowledge.
Currently, Dropbox offers a free plan with up to 2GB of file storage, in addition to numerous paid plans for individuals, friends and family, teams, and businesses—each with monthly charges based on storage space and number of users.
What to look for in a Dropbox alternative
If you’re looking for an alternative to Dropbox, there are several things to consider, in addition to plan costs. Here are some of the things to think about:
- How often are you going to upload or download files?
- How easy is it to transfer files from one device to another?
- How much storage do you need?
- Who else are you likely to share your files with and how tech savvy are they?
- How secure is the cloud storage solution?
- Does it use encryption and password protection?
- Do you need other kinds of collaboration tools as well.
When it comes to your most valuable and precious documents, it’s always worth looking around to find an easy-to-use, affordable, and secure solution, whether it’s for work or home. And while extra bells and whistles may sound attractive, be sure to examine the features, tools, and add-ons very carefully. You may end up paying a premium for something that’s difficult to navigate and that you never use.
What is the best alternative to Dropbox?
While there are many file-sharing options available today, Kinscape stands out for its versatility, affordability, and security. Privacy and safety are at the very foundation of every feature and capability, and Kinscape understands the importance of your photos, videos, and other documents. We know how to keep them secure yet accessible.
Kinscape offers a number of benefits together with features that make file sharing easy, including:
- Your own private vault: Kinscape provides a private Vault where you can safely store your files for safe keeping or for sharing. Kinscape automatically stores the content you upload into your communities here, but you also have the option to upload other precious digital items, such as PDFs, videos, voice files, and more. Your content remains accessible at all times, but safe and private, until you’re ready to share.
- Easy-to-create communities for sharing files: Communities in Kinscape can be as small or as large as you like, and you can have as many as you like—keeping them all distinct so you only share what you choose with who you choose—family, friends, club members, work colleagues, and so on. Or you can simply keep them safe till if and when you’re ready to share them.
- 100% control of your data: In Kinscape you control everything about your data and only you can share if, when, how, to whom, and where you choose.
- Access from desktop and mobile without losing features: The Kinscape experience can be enjoyed on your mobile device or on your laptop or computer. The experience is the same—no different and confusing views or limited features. Kinscape is easy to use and quick to access as possible, and you don’t have to learn multiple apps to access, upload, or download your files.
Free Dropbox alternative
While Kinscape offers the basic file-sharing features you’d expect from a cloud-based document-sharing solution, it also provides other networking features that help people stay connected, share precious moments with loved ones, and keep memories and treasured moments safe. These features include:
- Ad-free social networking
- No targeting or newsfeed manipulation
- Members have 100% ownership and control of data
- Quick mobile and desktop access
- Easy-to-create communities and groups of specific contacts
- Private chat function
- Collaboration tools for storytelling and information sharing
- Safe, private, photo, video, voice, and document storage
Rather than simply offering file storage and sharing as yet another Dropbox competitor with similar security limitations and hard-to-use features, we designed Kinscape, a new and exciting kind of subscription-based social media network.
Not only is privacy and data security at the heart of everything about Kinscape, but we took the kinds of features people were already enjoying and improved them.
To make Kinscape an easy decision, our pricing plan offers three subscription levels. If you’re looking for up to 500 MB of storage and the option to create one online community, Kinscape is completely free. See our pricing details here for additional plan options.