SugarSync and Cubby are both cloud storage systems. They both allow you to automatically (and securely) backup your files and, if you wish, to synchronize your files across computers. They’re very similar. And both are excellent. Both have their virtues and their weak points. What follows is a detailed comparison of them.
This comparison/review covers the following categories:
- Security
- How Sharing Works
- What You Cannot Backup
- File Versions
- Desktop Apps
- Windows Integration
- Mobile Apps
- Web Interface
- Unique Features
- Price
- Conclusion
The comparison/review continues below the fold.
Security
Both SugarSync and Cubby are extremely secure. Both transfer your data encrypted over the Internet and store your data encrypted on their servers. Everything is encrypted from top to bottom.
IMO, Cubby is a little better for business use. Here’s why:
SugarSync doesn’t actually own its own facilities. It uses Amazon S3. Now, your data is still encrypted. (The comparison chart on Cubby claims SugarSync uses 128 bit encryption, but this is outdated. They both use 256 bit AES encryption.) And Amazon stores data redundantly across multiple facilities, so there is less chance a natural disaster will knock out a facility and destroy your backups. And the facilities, which are all located in the U.S., are very secure. But the SugarSync sales rep couldn’t say 100% for sure that Amazon staff did not have access to the hardware containing SugarSync customer data. If you are as paranoid about security as I am, that makes you slightly uncomfortable.
Cubby on the other hand owns its own facility and its own servers. They have tighter control over who can get their hands on the hardware containing your data. Their facility is in the U.S. somewhere on the East Coast. They won’t divulge the exact location. They’re working on getting a second facility. But for now they don’t offer redundancy across facilities like you get with Amazon S3.
If a data storage system complies with HIPAA (the law safeguarding patient medical data) you know the security has to be good. Cubby is HIPAA compliant (see the article here). SugarSync is not.
Finally, Cubby offers an added layer of protection called a Cubby Lock. On the front end this just means you have to enter passwords more frequently to access your stuff via the web interface or the mobile app. To my mind this is an annoyance that only marginally improves security. I spoke to a sales rep to see if Cubby Locks improve the security on the backend on their servers. Even the sales rep only kinda-sorta understood this. But I believe the point of the Cubby Lock is that it removes the encryption key from Cubby’s hands altogether, so that even if a rogue employee at their facility tried to hack into your account, they’d be unable to decrypt your data. But I’m not sure this makes sense to me, because the Cubby Locks password is the same as your account password, so if a rogue employee resets your account password to something new, they should then be able to access all your locked cubbies.
Conclusion: SugarSync uses Amazon S3, so it has the benefit of facility redundancy. But Cubby owns its own facility, is HIPAA complaint, and offers Cubby Locks, giving the edge to Cubby.
How Sharing Works
In Cubby, a shared folder is called a “cubby.” These cubbies are synchronized to the cloud. They can also be synchronized across your various computers (e.g. your desktop computer and your laptop). They can be accessed via your mobile devices. And they can be shared with others in two ways:
1- You can share the entire cubby with someone. Person B must install the Cubby software, too. The shared cubby will appear as a folder on Person B’s computer, just like it does on yours. When you add files to the cubby, those files automatically appear on Person B’s computer. And when Person B adds files to the cubby, those files automatically appear on your computer. A shared cubby is therefore a folder that is mirrored across two (or more) computers.
2- The second option is to share a public link. Cubby generates a URL, which you can send to whomever you wish. Anyone who has that URL can access your files or folders via a web interface. Their access is read-only.
The public link option in SugarSync is virtually identical to Cubby. So let’s forget about that for a moment. Let’s just focus on shared folders.
SugarSync works almost the exact same way as Cubby, but there are two subtle differences that turn out to be important:
FIRST DIFFERENCE: SHARING SUBFOLDERS
SugarSync allows you to share subfolders individually within a sync’d folder. Cubby does not allow this. With Cubby, you can only share the entire cubby.
Let’s say you want to backup your “My Pictures” folder. In Cubby you make the folder into a cubby. In SugarSync you make the folder into a sync’d folder. So far both services are identical.
Now let’s say you have a subfolder in “My Pictures” called “Family Vacations” and another called “Artistic Landscapes.”
If you want to share “Family Vacations” with your spouse, and “Artistic Landscapes” with your photographer friend, you can do this easily with SugarSync. You CANNOT do it AT ALL with Cubby. There is no workaround. It’s simply impossible to do. You can share the entire “My Pictures” cubby with both your spouse and friend, but you can’t share the subfolders independently.
Of course, you can use the public links in Cubby to share subfolders, but in certain cases that’s much less convenient.
SECOND DIFFERENCE: READ-ONLY SHARES
SugarSync also allows you to set a shared folder as Read Only. Cubby doesn’t have this feature! This is bad!
This means if you share your “My Picture” folder with your computer illiterate friend, and he accidentally deletes all of your photos, the deletion propagates back through the cloud and to your computer, deleting your originals.
Suppose you want to share your “My Music” folder with your spouse. You want your spouse to have access to all the music you add to your computer, but not to be able to accidentally delete anything. You can do this with SugarSync but not with Cubby.
I’m not sure why Cubby hasn’t addressed this. I use SugarSync to share folders all the time, and I ALWAYS use the Read Only feature.
Again, you can use the public links in Cubby to share folders read only, but that’s much less convenient.
Conclusion: SugarSync wins on flexibility. But if you don’t require that flexibility, Cubby’s simplicity is appealing.
What You Cannot Backup: Databases (Outlook PST Files & Quickbooks)
As an important side note, neither SugarSync nor Cubby can handle database files, including Outlook PST files or Quickbooks database files. I use Thunderbird, not Outlook, and SugarSync can’t back it up.
These are large files with complex file locks that are changed frequently.
Cloud synchronization solutions like SugarSync and Cubby (and DropBox and a million others) don’t deal with these kinds of files very well. Some online backup solutions, like CrashPlan, that backup at regular intervals instead of synchronizing in real-time, do a little better with database files. But even with them there’s a risk of corruption.
But don’t freak out. You can still create backups on the cloud of Outlook and Quickbooks. You just need to make a copy of the database file. Put the copy in a ZIP folder or change the file extension. Then drop this in a synchronized folder.
Can this be automated? What about in an office setting? Isn’t the whole point of the cloud to make backups easier and more reliable? You don’t want manual intervention to be required. If users are forced to manually copy files at regular intervals, it defeats the purpose.
I’m trying to solve that problem right now. I think I’ll be able to solve it with some combination of batch files, the Windows task scheduler, and possibly an Outlook add-in.
File Versions
Both SugarSync and Cubby allow you to store and restore old versions of files, which is a cool perk to cloud storage.
At first blush Cubby seems to win this category. SugarSync only stores up to five old versions of each file. Cubby stores an unlimited number of versions.
However, SugarSync doesn’t count old versions against your storage space. Cubby does.
And this means with Cubby your space allotment will eventually fill up with old versions of files that you don’t care about, creating a new maintenance task for users. Users must periodically clear out old versions via the web interface.
A cloud storage system that creates new maintenance tasks for users isn’t working for the IT department, it’s working against them.
And I don’t think there is a way to tell Cubby to delete old versions meeting certain parameters. When you need more space, you just have to delete all of them. Which sucks.
So actually, SugarSync’s versioning system is much better.
Both SugarSync and Cubby allow you to view and restore deleted files via the web interface. SugarSync puts them in a Deleted Files folder. Cubby keeps them hidden in their original folders and provides a Show Deleted Files option.
Desktop Apps
The desktop applications are really similar. They both make it easy for you to decide which folders to sync to the cloud.
SugarSync’s application is richer. On the “Sharing” tab you can see a rundown of all the folders you’re sharing with others. The “Activity” tab shows you a feed of all the activity associated with your account, and this is really cool. And the “Search” tab lets you search for files by title.
The Cubby application can claim greater simplicity while still providing all the most important functionality.
IMO, the ability to search for files in unimportant, because Windows itself provides good tools for this. So it’s okay that this feature is missing from Cubby.
The ability to see an activity log, though, is pretty cool, and SugarSync wins on this point. Cubby doesn’t have anything like that.
SugarSync also has a dialog box where you can view file transfer status. You can see both the upload and download queues, and change priority levels on individual files. This is sometimes really useful and Cubby doesn’t have anything like it.
SugarSync’s app also has more settings. For example, you can choose the background upload speed using a slider.
For both SugarSync and Cubby, the desktop apps put icons in the Notification Area (near the clock in the Task Bar on the lower right-hand corner of your screen), and these icons have little animations when there’s activity going on.
Windows Explorer Integration: Context Menus
Once again, SugarSync and Cubby are really similar in this regard, but SugarSync offers a few more features.
If you’re using Cubby, you’ll see a little “C” icon on top of any folder that has been made into a cubby.
If you’re using SugarSync you’ll see a checkmark on any sync’d folder. The color of the checkmark reveals the sync status. Yellow means it’s pending upload, green means it has already been uploaded.
SugarSync takes this a step further. The checkmarks also appear on individual files within sync’d folders, so you can see the status of each and every file independently.
Cubby adds a link to “My Cubby” within your Favorites in Windows Explorer. SugarSync adds “SugarSync Drive” to your list of drives. These are basically equivalent. They are cloud-only folders that work like DropBox.
When you right-click on a file within Windows Explorer, both services allow you to generate a public link to that file, but SugarSync’s context menu also offers a few other options (but nothing crucial).
Conclusion: SugarSync’s Windows integration is a little superior. It’s nice to see those checkmarks on individual files.
Mobile Apps
Both SugarSync and Cubby permit access to your data via mobile apps, and I’ve used the Android apps for both of them. You can see all your files, search for a file by name, and open a file on your device.
SugarSync’s app allows you to set a PIN. This is important to me. If someone steals my phone, it would totally suck if they could access all my personal files. Cubby doesn’t have that. You can use Cubby Locks to password protect your cubbies on the mobile app, but I find SugarSync’s approach easier to use.
The SugarSync app is just generally richer. It lets you view your photos better. It also lets you stream your music, and I’m not sure yet whether Cubby does. And lets you view your shares and your account activity.
The Cubby app is not worse. It’s very well designed and seems to work well. It’s simpler, more minimalistic. It’s missing some of the features of the SugarSync app, but if those features aren’t important to you, then the simpler design is actually superior.
Conclusion: SugarSync wins on features, Cubby on simplicity.
Web Interface
Both offer excellent web access to your data. Again, SugarSync offers more features, but most of them aren’t essential.
When viewing your files, both have a List View that is very similar. With both of them, when you click on a file it will attempt to download and open it.
SugarSync’s List View shows different icons for different file types, whereas Cubby shows little green document icons for everything except photos. Cubby’s list view lets you sort by columns other than filename, it shows you the number of versions without having to click on something first. And it allows you to view deleted files.
With both you can drag and drop files into a folder in your web browser to initiate an upload. SugarSync’s interface makes it more obvious when you can use this feature, but Cubby lets you use drag-and-drop in every folder, whereas it appears SugarSync only allows it in empty folders, so Cubby’s implementation is better.
Both also have a medium icon view, which SugarSync calls the gallery view. Again these are very similar, except SugarSync stacks files in four columns instead of three, fitting more on the screen. Also, when viewing photos SugarSync’s gallery view lays photos out more intelligently.
SugarSync also offers a third view for photos, Large View, which is basically a slide show view, and from the Large View you can also view a photo full screen. If you click on a photo in Cubby, it does load it into the browser so you can see a large version of it, but this isn’t nearly as nice as the Large View in SugarSync. Yet again, SugarSync is far superior when it comes to viewing your photos.
SugarSync gives you the following file options: Share (Public Link), Download, See Versions, Edit File, Rename, Copy, Move File, Delete. Cubby gives you these options: Link, Versions, Download, and Delete File.
Notice that SugarSync allows you to edit files directly from the web interface! This is a bit like Google Drive. In order to edit files within your web browser you need to have Java installed on your computer. (Most people do have Java, but I don’t. I decided Java sucks and I hate the constant updates. I discovered life is better without it as long as I can survive without the ability to use one or two nominally useful web apps. And I can.)
In SugarSync if you select multiple files, which you do by clicking checkboxes, you can Download, Move, Copy, or Delete them. In Cubby if you select multiple files, which you do just by clicking on their rows in succession, you can Download or Delete them.
SugarSync gives you the following folder options: Share (Sync’d folder or Public Link), Upload, Open, Download, Rename, Move, Copy, Delete. In Cubby the options are: Link, Download, Delete Folder, Erase Versions, and Erase Deleted Items.
In Cubby you do have the option to create a New Folder at any place in the folder heirarchy, which for some reason SugarSync appears to only allow at the root folder.
Overall, both are very similar. SugarSync allows more options for file manipulation and the interface for viewing photos is much better, which is great if you intend to use SugarSync as a photo sharing system.
Cubby has fewer options. Not everything SugarSync does is important, but it would be nice if Cubby allowed you to rename and move files and folders.
Conclusion: SugarSync wins.
Unique Features
SugarSync: Remote Wipe
If your laptop is lost or stolen, you can login to the website and direct the desktop application to delete all your data. Your stuff is still safe on the cloud, but it gets erased from the missing computer.
Cubby doesn’t have this, but there’s a workaround that involves deleting the files from the cloud temporarily.
It should be noted that these solutions require the desktop application to be running on your computer and the computer to be connected to the Internet. If somebody steals your laptop and wants to read your documents, in all likelihood they won’t bother connecting the laptop to the Internet first. So, Remote Wipe is kinda a gimmick.
SugarSync: Outlook Plugin
Do NOT get excited. SugarSync’s Outlook plugin does NOT let you backup PST files to the cloud. It just makes it easier to use public links in place of attachments.
Cubby: Cubby Locks
I discussed these in the section on security.
Cubby: DirectSync
You can use Cubby to synchronize cubbies between two computers, skipping the cloud altogether. This is neat but I can’t think of a practical application.
Conclusion: It’s a wash.
Price
As of Dec 15, 2013…
For 100GB for a single user for one year, SugarSync costs about $100 and Cubby costs about $84.
With Cubby you’ll only pay $48 for your first year, then it will go up. SugarSync sometimes has promotions so you can get the first year deeply discounted with them as well.
So SugarSync costs a little bit more, but not much.
For 600GB for six users for a year, SugarSync costs a whopping $925. The sales rep to whom I spoke offered me a 10% discount (renewable) but that still adds up to $832.50. Cubby, on the other hand, only costs $288 for the first year, and then $503 thereafter.
Conclusion: Cubby wins.
Conclusion
For a home user, SugarSync is the better choice. It’s sufficiently affordable and secure, and it works better with photos and music.
For a small business, Cubby is the better choice. It wins on price, security, and simplicity. The features it lacks compared to SugarSync are unimportant for a small business.
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