SmartFile vs. Box

Some wonder how small businesses stand a chance against huge market leaders.  So, how does SmartFile match up to Box, one of the leading cloud service providers in the industry?  A good question, and we have a pretty good answer.

1. Box has us beat on features.  We honestly admit that.  Being a very collaborative-based service for large enterprises, Box is a great tool for those wanting to work together on a project despite the problem of being possibly 2,000 miles away from your teammates.  Using discussion groups linked directly to projects and the ability to tag members in comments made under certain files, Box creates its own social network in a way that is useful for collaborative work.  These extra (and possibly unneeded) features, however, make their system more complex for those wanting a very easy-to-use file sharing service. Being so focused on the ease of project completion and collaboration, Box becomes a file sharing contender only by default as files are technically being shared with other authorized users.  In the end, SmartFile provides a simpler file sharing service without all of the unnecessary extra features that tend to complicate Box.
2. We, SmartFile, aren’t afraid to let your company take the credit.  This deals with customized branding, and we do a lot of it.  SmartFile allows its users to customize their FTP server with their logo and company colors.  We even change the domain name, so that clients never see “SmartFile” on their account.  This is something that Box doesn’t do.  Although they may provide custom branding to their customers, Box doesn’t give up the URL.  In addition, in terms of integrating FTP, Online Storage, and Internet File Storage services into a user’s already established application, SmartFile allows the user to fully incorporate its system into the user’s application.  Box only allows the user to integrate their application into Box’s system, the complete opposite.  This goes to show that SmartFile is fully devoted to providing its users with a product completely in their name—giving you all the credit!
3. SmartFile has FTP access.  Although FTP gets a pretty bad rep nowadays in the tech world, FTP access has several advantages over cloud sharing.  With FTP, users are able to send large files more efficiently without the need of going through layers of applications (like Java and Adobe Flash) to simply move files; it’s as simple as drag-and-drop.  Also, to limit access to files, FTP has several features to heighten security, such as user authentication and encryption.  Rather than being saved on an FTP server, cloud sharing saves files on the subjective “cloud”.  This causes some businesses to make a leap of faith in trusting that their files will be secure.  Of course, security measures such as passwords and encryption are put into place, but not knowing where files are being stored is a major concern to customers of cloud sharing companies such as Box.