Box Reviews: 4.2/5 — Solid Choice

Security of files and compliance for HIPPA and FINRA

Hard to setup and not very user friendly for the end user

File sharing with compliance

It securely lets you access files from anywhere

It's very slow to load in the web browser. Sometimes it's just quicker to download items which sort of defeats the purpose.

We store files long term here and accept files form clients

The product actually works and actual features work as advertised.

I'm with a small educational institution. While they offer education pricing, they are only interested in offering it to all users. They insisted I pay full price when I asked about pricing for just 10-15 users. This has now happened to me with two different employers.

I was looking for cloud based storage that's accessible anywhere at a FAIR price. Box will do everything except the "fair price" part.

Provided free 50 gb of cloud space during a promotional offer when I signed up first.

Max file size per file is only 250 mb for me on my current plan,which is very less.The Mac OSX app is very bad and does not work properly

At the moment,I have a box account mainly to keep backups of my data of projects and code files

Able to share files and documents with colleagues online. Used Box as a collaboration site/platform for an online project. Went back to Google Drive, as that was easier and more familiar to my colleagues.

It is somewhat cumbersome to use and difficult for people who are used to Google Drive. We did not especially like the updating format that was used by Box. also, some colleagues had issues with logging into the created account and it was difficult at the beginning of the project to get working on it.

Online collaboration on products and ongoing dialogue on choices. It involved all of us in providing input. Used for research purposes as platform to collaborate and provide instant updates to each other. we were hundreds of miles apart.

The sync utility on box has been wonderfully functional, likewise their service is great.

Better cloud solutions have arisen since Box entered the playing field.

Box was used to backup and disseminate information as it was produced. We used the sync utility to keep newly saved files live in the cloud and get them to our partners regardless of location.

I appreciate the compatibility that Box has with Microsoft Office and Google Docs, that it is easy to upload documents from all different formats to online storage.

I find that Box does not have a particularly user-friendly organization system, and I don't like that there are fairly low storage caps. Google Docs serves my storage and sharing needs much more easily on its own, and DropBox is a better service from my experience as well.

For some projects I have worked on, Box has helped to upload and share documents with other teams and to receive feedback from other participants.

I like that files can be saved on Box and shared with other team members easily by simply saving and not firing off emails with attached files. Box did make it easy to save items that did not require an immediate share, but more of an upload to pass off to the next person who needed to access the file. It is also easier to access Box than an internal hard drive. Being able to tell other people where to access a file is also much easier so they don't have to rely on you when they need to open up, or edit a file. Makes it much easier for team based organizations where lots of document sharing (not necessarily editing) a document is needed.

I've had several occurrences where I would get a shared Box file but I did not have access to edit it.Tracking who the owner is of a specific document makes things difficult to translate back to the originator for edits to a file.

Cross functional sharing of documents. Benefits realized are along easy share and ability to have documents in one spot instead of internal, hard drives.

Ability to share files. I think it’s awesome to have a single place where we can keep our files

Adding people to files is unreliable. It seems like there’s always a bump in the road here. Always have to add someone to a file

Cloud storage

It can be accessed from any web browser.

Collaboration is marginal at best. If you really want to do anything you need to install their software and for many users they are not able to do that.

It gives us a shared location for storing files.

It’s straigtforward and easy to understand.

It didn’t offer options vastly different from other similar services.

File storage and sharing.

The automatic saving function is a life saver.

You can’t attach documents through outlook email. It doesn’t sav correctly. It’s soooo slow! The navigation buttons disappear from outlook products like excel all the time!

We don’t have to connect to a remote drive

I like that it’s easy and safe to use with my university.

You can not multitask with a group on a single document and you have to lock and unlock documents. Also it involves downloading items onto your own computer. You can’t just send links to colleagues and there is often trouble accessing files.

Sharing documents

The concept of having an ease/repository to store and update files with larger teams.

We always ran into versioning issues - having 3-4x versions of the same document, despite trying to follow the process for updating directly from the box location. Tried multiple times, multiple files - same issue.

Collaboration and ability to update documents simultaneously. Team ended up no longer using.

It's easy to collaborate and store/share documents

I really haven't found anything to dislike

Collaboration and sharing across multiple locations

I like the name Box. The search feature was cool. I did not really like Box so I do not have much more to say.

System freezes often. Can’t edit docs in system Doesn’t sync well Doesn’t always send files as requested. The interface is not user-friendly Training was not much help and seemed unorganized

I’m a remote employee. It was used as a secure way to share info. The only benefit was the ability to share large files with other virtual teammates. It was also useful to have a collaborative space to store documents in progress separate from the physical server in the office.

We could invite vendors to clients to download secure files without them having to create a profile or sign up, which was great.

Not a very friendly interface, and .ics files don't open automatically... you have to download them as a file and then hope people drag it into their calendars.

We needed a way to share large files securely and privately.

I like that you can get alerts when new files are uploaded to box by coworkers. I like the chat and message features. It's nice that everyone does not need a gmail account to use it.

Unless I am missing something, I have not found a way that multiple people can edit simultaneously - I have had to download documents, make edits, and re-upload. This is a dealbreaker for me.

My company uses it to share documents when not all parties that need access have gmail addresses. It's most helpful when the files being shared are complete and do not need to be edited further.

I like that you can upload files, obtain a link, and share that link instead of the file itself. This is useful for large files that can't be e-mailed.

I wish it were easier to organize files.

Box allows me to transfer data that is too big for email.

There's not much to like about Box, really. The web interface is nice, perhaps? But honestly, I've seen better, and I'm saying this not just an enterprise user of Box, but as a veteran tech blogger who's been using such software and services for over seven years now.

Oh God, where to start. You cannot share individual files, really Box? What century is this? Mobile apps and support is crappy. Collaboration sucks. Online file viewer is a hit or miss at best. Box claims outstanding integration with MS Office suite, and guess what, it's hardly worth a nod. And what's with the insanely rigid security requirements? It's supposed to be a secure collaboration and file sharing tool - what good is that if I cannot access it outside of work?

My organization is using Box as our file storage and collaboration tool, and honestly, they might have realized some benefits, but I have yet to see those. We came originally from Google Drive and then OneDrive, and they stand miles taller above this Box crap.

It's a pretty decent way to back up files IF you're willing to click entirely too many buttons.

Seriously, why would you make Linux users use a web-based application? It's SO cumbersome. Dropbox (which I've since switched to) enables consistent syncing and command-line-based uploads/downloads. It makes my life so much easier.

My company switched to Box because of security/privacy. I assume it's better, though I have no real need for it.

What I liked most about Box is how simple it is, it's a simple software where you can save your files safely and share them without many complications to the people you want. My favorite thing about Box is the favorites section, because sometimes you save so many things that finding a specific one can take a while and even you can get lost, but this software gives you the option to bookmark the files you want and these are saved in a special section where you can access them quickly, gaining time. It's a very organized program. Also, the accessibility is very dynamic, because you don't have to worry on losing a pendrive or a disk because you can access to your files from any desktop anywhere.

What I didn't like about Box is that you can't edit the files once they are in the program, and also I didn't like that sometimes when open the files, those get stuck and can be time consuming.

It has helped my company a lot because we used to have a lot of files on our computers, so the memory of them were full and we couldn't keep saving documents which makes all the work more complicated. But with Box, now we can save all the files we want and our computers memory are free to save other things, so we have a balance now. Also, the sharing process has helped us a lot since we often have to share documents, and now we can send all the files we want by just one click without worrying of losing the pendrive or disk, because it's all there. It's secure, fast and easy.

I don’t find it helpful when I could just use google drive.

It is not easy to use or helpful or easy to navigate.

Hippa compliance with sensitive info

The online interface is quite good -- it is comparable to Dropbox if not better. My institution provides me free unlimited access (which is a partnership issue and not really specific to something Box has done).

Box Sync application syncs slowly -- it usually takes at least 1-3min to sync even small files to the cloud and another 1-3min for them to sync onto another machine logged into the same account. By comparison, this happens within 10sec for both Dropbox and Google Backup. In addition, the way Box Sync is written (at least on Mac) seems to lead it to not sync certain folders until you open them. I have never had this issue with Dropbox and Google Backup, both of which I also use regularly. For these reasons, I am currently in the process of switching over to Google Drive from Box, even though Box is free. (Google Drive is an excellent deal, with 100GB of space for just $2 per month.)

Box is excellent for sharing files which don't need to constantly be synced. If you would like to sync to desktop, both Google Backup & Sync and Dropbox are much better choices, because the sync happens almost instantaneously across devices vs. several minutes with Box Sync.

I like the fact that you can share files

that two people can work on something it causes issues with version control and we should jsut be able to edit at the same time

i am honestly not sure

It's independent and worth trying a new tool from a different company that isn't one of the most well known but it has many pitfalls. It's great for accessing all document types that need to be centralized within a company and easily integrates on all computer types (Mac and Windows) but that is a basic expectation of most centralized document sharing softwares right now.

The workflow and user experience of the tool is quite poor. Similar to Dropbox, you need to have a clear process and IA at a company in order to utilize these tools to their max. I relied on the search first and foremost in order to find ANYTHING ANYWHERE in Box which is okay if it was more powerful and user friendly. Furthermore, the design is pretty basic and could be updated a bit more to be modern, cleaner, compact and showcase more of the structure one sets up on a homepage versus having to dig several clicks in to figure out what lies within each folder etc.

1) Centralized sharing of documents, pdfs, images, artifacts etc. 2) Not storing anything on our computers for security and storage purposes.

Technically nothing good as I have used DropBox, SharePoint and SCM. this is no near match

1. have to login everytime I connect. 2. offline BOX configuration doesnot show all files. 3. UI is bad, not like Website nor Windows folders look

Sharing files

I love being able to write quick Box notes - I use a running note to keep track of my To Do list, and use the easy checkmarking to knock things off once completed. I also like that I can collaborate on Box notes, so that projects can similarly create quick lists of tasks and mark them off. It's much easier than Google Drive.

I hate that I don't get solid notifications when an upload has failed. Box Sync is awful and I've lost files because I wasn't notified that my system backup didn't completely finish.

Box is the best tool for collaboratively editing documents and sharing small files across a team. It has definitely also streamlined my personal tracking of tasks, which is a major benefit.

I like that Box integrates into my desktop filing organization

I do not like that Box does not have a Cloud component

Easy file transfer

Employer is OK keeping business-sensitive material on our box subdomain.Authentication redirected to employer-hosted sites and services.

Really wonky interface... must use browser interface under Linux, which seems to be a severe limitation. For example, box allows access to Google docs, but won't allow for simultaneous edits from multiple people with whom the doc is shared with. If one loses connectivity (or the originating browser tab), then changes are lost. Consequently, some of the best features of Google docs (real-time editing by multiple users, constant synching/saving while editing, rather than just when one closes the doc window opened within box). Similar problems exist for some of the other editors (e.g., with Word Online, which seems to have its own problems with fonts and formats).

Editing and sharing documents. Main benefit is that we can share business-sensitive information.