SugarSync was an early innovator in the cloud storage and syncing space, letting you mark any file anywhere on your system for syncing. Most competitors have moved to a special folder setup where all your cloud files live inside a synced folder along with any subfolders, which can eliminate complexity, however. SugarSync has redesigned its apps since our last review, but it’s still overpriced for today’s market and offers fewer security and sharing options than its competitors.
(Editors' Note: SugarSync is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.)
How Much Does SugarSync Cost?
SugarSync’s pricing is well above the going rate for cloud storage and syncing services. For $9.99, you get 250GB of storage—that’s eight times the rate you pay for the equivalent tiers on Apple’s iCloud, Box, and Google Drive. You could drop down to SugarSync’s $7.49-per-month plan, but that only gets you 100GB. To get to half a terabyte, you pay $18.95 per month. The business plan includes a full terabyte for $55 per month—but that’s more than 10 times the competitors’ rate of $10 for 2TB. Microsoft charges $6.95 for 1TB, and that plan includes all the downloadable Office applications. IDrive, an online backup service that also includes syncing features, charges $79.50 per year for 2TB with unlimited devices.
SugarSync doesn’t offer a permanent free storage account option, as iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, IDrive, and OneDrive do, but you can try out the service with a free 30-day trial. That trial requires you to enter payment info, however, so you need to remember to cancel your subscription before it renews.
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Setting Up SugarSync
Setting up SugarSync is a breeze. After you sign up for an account with your email, password, and payment info, you start by downloading one of the SugarSync desktop apps.
The setup doesn’t have requirements for password security, such as a minimum length or the use of special characters. You can’t create an account with a private encryption key—that is, one that only you know and that the service provider can’t access. IDrive and SpiderOAK offer this level of security. Once you launch the app, you sign into the same account you just created on the website, and create a name for the current device.
Next, you see a folder tree of your file system and select which folders you want synced to the cloud. When you select a folder, SugarSync calculates how much space the files included will take up. SugarSync’s documentation says you shouldn’t include live data files such as those used by Outlook email (.eml/.emlx or .pst), Quicken, iTunes, or the Apple Photos folder on macOS. The documentation also notes that you should not use the service for full disk backup. Once you finish selecting folders, SugarSync takes you to the app’s main section.
When you install the client application on a second computer, you see an indication of which computer any file is from, and when you want to sync a folder, you get a choice of creating a new folder or merging it with one on the second computer.
The Merge option is unique to SugarSync. It lets you map a folder on one system to one on another. This can complicate things, which is why OneDrive and Google Drive don’t offer the option. OneDrive does let you do something similar with the main user folders—Documents, Pictures, and so on—but SugarSync expands the capability to any location on your drive. It’s a good option for those who want to replicate the folder structures on multiple machines.
One minor annoyance is that when you log into your account on the website on a second computer, there’s no download link in your account pages to install the software on the second system. You have to hunt for the installer elsewhere on the SugarSync site. Most syncing apps make it easier to find the app download link.
Security
I’m happy to see that SugarSync supports SMS-based multifactor authentication (aka two-factor authentication, or 2FA). Unfortunately, it doesn’t use an authenticator app that implements the standard one-time-password algorithm.
Like most websites today, SugarSync uses HTTPS encryption (formerly called SSL and now TLS) for transferring your files, and I’m happy to report that the site scores an A+ for its TLS server setup on Qualys SSL Labs server test. Once your data is on SugarSync’s servers, it’s encrypted with 256-bit AES, another industry standard used by banks and other organizations that require a high level of security.
One downside for the truly security-paranoid is that SugarSync doesn’t let you use a password that only you know. If government officials or even a rogue employee wanted to, they could unencrypt your data at the company’s servers. Competitors like IDrive and SpiderOAK offer the option to use a password that only you know, but the downside is if you forget or lose the key, no one at the company can help you retrieve your data.
SugarSync’s Desktop Interface
SugarSync sports a green-themed interface with a left-rail menu containing nine options: Search, Folders, Activity, Devices, Public Links, Shared by Me, File Transfers, Protected Folders, and Deleted Items. It’s a good, clear set of options, and I’m happy to see a search feature, as some cloud storage services don’t provide this. At the top-right is an indicator of your remaining storage allotment.
One important omission? Help. You can choose Help from a hamburger overflow menu at the top, but I’d prefer it to be more prominent. What's more, this Help menu merely enables you to view the program’s single Guide (basically a tooltip-driven wizard), contact support, or send logs to SugarSync. There's no real help like you see in most applications.
The main area of interest in the interface is the Folders section. Here, you can exclude folders from a right-click menu, but not individual files. A new option lets you create multiple backup copies. Nothing was stopping you from making multiple copies of your files before, but the new tool recopies the folder periodically (you choose the number of days between making new copies) and the number of copies.
I like how SugarSync adds a right-click menu option in File Explorer that lets you add folders to your online storage no matter where they are in the drive structure. The menu also lets you share the folder or file to specified email addresses or create a public link.
Sharing Files With SugarSync
When sharing a folder via SugarSync, you can add a note, specify whether the recipient (who must have a SugarSync account) has editing privileges, and have a daily summary of the file’s activity sent to the email. There’s still no password protection for shares or timeout options like you get with Microsoft OneDrive. You can share folders with particular users, but for individual files the only option is to get a public link, and that doesn’t offer any options like editing rights; you just get a link to the cloud download of the file. Fortunately, sharing this way doesn’t require the recipient to have a SugarSync account.
SugarSync claims that it supports collaboration, and it does, but not in the same sense that Office via OneDrive or Google Docs via Google Drive does. With SugarSync, you can simply share a folder with other SugarSync users, opening and closing files one at a time. You can’t have multiple people working on a document at the same time as you can with those first-party syncing services. Nor do you get their autosave features. Dropbox has a proprietary document format that provides real-time collaboration, and both Dropbox and Box integrate with Google Workspace and Office 365 for the same.
Should two versions of a file you’re collaborating on (or simply working on between two PCs) exist in SugarSync’s cloud at any time, the service creates a second file with the name of the computer it comes from appended to the name. This could get messy if you end up with a lot of duplicate files. When you delete a file, it’s moved to a Delete Files folder, which works like a cloud version of your computer’s Recycle Bin.
SugarSync keeps the last five versions of a file and lets you restore versions from a previous date. This falls far short of other syncing services, some of which save 15 or 30 versions. Dropbox saves all versions of files for 30 days, and Google Drive keeps 100 versions for 30 days and has a Keep Forever option that saves all versions for all time. OneDrive keeps up to 25 versions for personal accounts and business account managers can set the number to whatever they want.
Web Interface
SugarSync’s web interface is simpler than the desktop one, with just three buttons across the top: Cloud, Sharing, and Activity. That said, it is easy to navigate, showing your folder structure and the device location(s) of the current folder in a side panel. You simply click on a file entry to download it.
Unlike in Google Drive and OneDrive, files you’ve just added to SugarSync storage don’t appear in the web interface unless you refresh the page. In that sense, it’s more of a webpage than a live web app, and for a long time web apps have had live refresh capability thanks to a number of technologies from AJAX to Azure SignalR.
Mobile Apps
There’s nothing in the web or desktop application interfaces that lets you send a store link to your phone, though you can find those on SugarSync’s main site page—as long as you’re not logged into your account. Of course, apps for Android and iOS are both offered, and I tested on a Google Pixel 4 XL and an iPhone X. Once you download and install the SugarSync mobile app, it takes you through a tour of its capabilities. The app lets you mark files for offline availability, create public links, protect folders, and it can automatically back up all the photos and videos from the mobile’s camera roll.
The menu interface on mobile is identical to that on the desktop, with the same green color pattern and the side menu design, though with some different menu options. For instance, you get options for Offline, Photos, and Settings, and you lose Devices and File Transfers. The rest are in a different order than on the desktop, for some reason.
The apps let you view photos and play videos and music, but when testing the latter two capabilities, I received a Failed to Retrieve Stream URL error. On the iPhone, the error for was No Network Connection, though the phone was connected to the internet. And when trying to play an MP3 file on that device, I encountered an endless Buffering… message.
I should note finally that SugarSync has made canceling your plan easier than it used to be. Now it’s simply a matter of confirming the cancellation with your password and rejecting the offer of a cheaper plan. In the past, leaving SugarSync required interacting with an agent only during specific business hours.
How Sweet Is SugarSync?
SugarSync has improved since our last review, and it works well for what it does. It just doesn’t do as much as competitors like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, which offer live collaboration and sharing options—and SugarSync costs far more per GB of storage. The one feather in SugarSync’s cap is that you can specify any folder on your computer for synchronizing to a specific folder on another computer. For the most cloud storage and syncing options at more reasonable prices, check out PCMag Editors’ Choice winners Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.
SugarSync is unique in letting you sync folders wherever they live on your computers, but it's expensive and lacks advanced collaboration features.
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