Program To Sync Files Between 3 Users

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rosco

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I am working with a tiny business that does not have a brick and mortar office. They have 3 guys out in the field with laptops.

They would like to be able to share files amongst themselves where all the changes that are made update the files on each person's laptop.

What would you recommend for this? Dropbox for business? Buy a NAS and setup bittorent sync?

Thanks!
 
You can use almost anything, GDrive, OneDrive, Dropbox....
The thing I'd be most concerned about is how often are these files going to be updated, will those updates happen concurrently, and how large are the files?

Keep in mind the bandwidth of the 3 on the road and the file sizes....it may not be an issue, but it could be. Depending on the setup, you may be best using GDrive and having them work on stuff in Docs/Sheets/Slides at the same time. At least that way, the files are updated in the cloud and no one has local files where you have to worry about sync issues and versions being more up to date than others.

Personally having just recently switched from Dropbox to GDrive (mainly for size given for free), I'd go with GDrive unless you'd be paranoid about Google having eyes on your files. Dropbox's TOS is a lot more "user friendly" regarding your files being yours; Google doesn't really specify anything close to this, and people (typically) think that Google is quite the opposite (taking EVERYTHING of yours they can). :)

Supposedly O365 will be getting the capabilities for multiple users to access and edit files simultaneously, but a) I haven't seen any dates on that rollout and b) O365 is not "free".
 
Dropbox Business is probably overkill. If you decide to go with Dropbox, the Pro plans ($99/year per person) is fine. Dropbox's Business plans are double that, if not more.

Honestly, I'd start out with the free accounts for DB, Gdrive, and OneDrive and see which one fits best before buying anything. You may find the space and features on the free plans are plenty.

Bittorrent Sync + NAS is a good idea, but I'd try the mainstream cloud services first.
 
One thing I forgot to mention is that they share a lot of PDF files that they create and mark up and edit among themselves.

How would Google drive handle those if it's not a format that Drive can edit? Would those still sync OK?
 
They do already have Office 365 for email and office etc. I will have to look into how sharing works with that.

For Dropbox Pro, would it be one account that they need and then each user signs into that account from their laptop? Or, would it be 3 separate accounts?
 
rosco said:
One thing I forgot to mention is that they share a lot of PDF files that they create and mark up and edit among themselves.

How would Google drive handle those if it's not a format that Drive can edit? Would those still sync OK?
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter if it's a format that GDrive can open or edit. The marked-up PDFs will still be synced to each computer for use in a desktop PDF program.

I know GDrive/Dropbox/Onedrive can all open and view PDFs, but I'm not sure if they have mark-up tools built in.
 
rosco said:
They do already have Office 365 for email and office etc. I will have to look into how sharing works with that.

For Dropbox Pro, would it be one account that they need and then each user signs into that account from their laptop? Or, would it be 3 separate accounts?
Click to expand...

Yes, each person would have a Dropbox Pro account, so you'd have 3 separate accounts. You can then setup a shared folder that is read and write accessible to each account.
 
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