News: It’s Time to Break Up With DropBox

Do you use a cloud storage service like DropBox or Box.net? If so, I bet you use their limited free accounts for much of your needs since the extra space can get pricey. What if you could have the same service for a fraction of the cost? Not convinced? Allow me to break it down for you.

DropBox offers their 50GB storage space for $10 a month ($120 per year). Box.net offers their 50GB service for double that at $20 a month ($240 per year). Those both sound expensive for cloud storage, right? Well, a new service, called Insync, has just come out of a closed beta period with some exciting new price points. They utilize Google’s cheaper storage space to provide a more wallet-friendly alternative to cloud storage. Insync offers an 80GB storage plan for only $20 per year! That’s right, only $20 per year for 80GB. That basically works out to $0.25 per GB for Insync storage, compared to $2 per GB for DropBox and about $4.79 per GB for Box.net.

The only catch is that this service is still fairly new. There are several functions and features not present just yet. There are no file management functions available on the site other than file sharing. All file operations must be done from a PC or Mac. Other than that, anything placed in your shared folder gets synced across any computers that you set up. You get 1GB for free, but at the low cost of $5 per year for up to 20GB of storage, I’d bet that you’ll have plenty of space in no time.