Egnyte Connect vs Dropbox Business: New vs Old in 2020
Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services, and that goes for its business version, too. However, Egnyte Connect, the overall winner of our best EFSS providers, is no slouch. For that reason, it might be difficult to compare the services, so we’re going to do that for you in this Egnyte vs. Dropbox Business comparison.
Egnyte has cheap plans, powerful folder and file sharing, reliable sync, a rich library of third-party integrations tools and strong security. Dropbox Business, on the other hand, has one of the best sync capabilities, many productivity tools in its library and good security. For more details, you can read our separate Egnyte Connect review and Dropbox Business review.
If you’re a private user or need a service geared specifically toward small businesses, read our cloud drive price comparison and our best business cloud storage comparison.
Otherwise, stick with us as we compare these services. Your needs might be more or less specific, but we’re going to use general categories to see which one comes out on top. Those categories will include storage cost, folder and file sharing, sync, productivity tools and security.
We’ll declare a winner at the end of each category round, and after completing all of them, we’re going to declare the overall champion. We’re going to start the comparison by discussing the pricing plans for both services.
- 1
- Device synchronization
- Shared Folders
- File linking
- Microsoft Office Integration
- Google Docs Integration
- Monitor user activity
- 2
- Device synchronization
- Shared Folders
- File linking
- Microsoft Office Integration
- Google Docs Integration
- Monitor user activity
1. Storage Cost
It’s best if you get a lot of storage space for your money. The more the service offers for the price, the better its value. It’s also good if the service offers a lot of plans, which increases the chances of finding one that’s just right for you. Plus, making use of a free plan or trial is a great way to test the service before parting with your money.
Egnyte Connect
Egnyte has three business plans: Office, Business and Enterprise. Office can accommodate from five to 25 users and provides 5TB of online storage for $8 per month per user.
The Business plan is a better choice if you need more users because it lets you have between 25 and 100 users. It will set you back $20 per month per user and get you 10TB of storage.
Enterprise is good for businesses with 100 or more users. In fact, there’s no upper limit to how many users you can have. You will need to contact Egnyte to get a price estimate, though, but Enterprise provides cloud storage space that increases as your needs do.
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Team
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Office
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Business
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Enterprise (contact Egnyte for an estimate)
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If you’re a private user but are finding that Egnyte fits your needs better than our best cloud storage services, you can use Egnyte’s “team” plan. It’s good for one to three users and gets you 1TB of storage.
Note that, besides storage space, the plans differ in what features they offer. To compare those features, consult Egnyte Connect’s plans page. Before deciding on any of the plans, you can use the 15-day free trial to test Egnyte Connect.
Dropbox Business
Dropbox Business has three business plans — Standard, Advanced and Enterprise — and they require a minimum of three users. Standard gets you 3TB of storage space for $15 per month per user, or $12.50 if you pay for a year in advance.
If you need more storage space, the Advanced plan is a better choice because it gets you unlimited storage space for $25 per month per user. If you pay for the entire year, the monthly price drops to $20 per month per user.
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Standard
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Advanced
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Enterprise
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Enterprise doesn’t raise the storage space, obviously, but it provides access to advanced features and support. Because the needs of large companies vary, you will have to get a price estimate from Dropbox for this plan.
To compare which features the plans offer, we invite you to take a look at the Dropbox’s plan comparison page. You can also use the 30-day free trial to test either the “standard” or “advanced” plan.
Round One Thoughts
This is an interesting comparison because Egnyte’s cheapest plan, Office, is almost half the price of Dropbox’s Standard plan, but it offers the same amount of storage. Egnyte is the clear winner in terms of value.
However, Dropbox’s Advanced plan gets you unlimited storage and requires you to have a minimum of five users. Egnyte’s Business plan can’t match that because it requires you to have a minimum of 25 users and doesn’t provide unlimited storage. The annual pricing for both plans is the same.
We split the difference in this round with Egnyte’s Team plan because it’s a great choice for businesses that don’t require a lot of users. Because of that, Egnyte Connect is our overall winner.
2. Sharing
Sharing is important because it allows you to collaborate with other people. It should be fast and easy, and it’s also best if you can share your content with individuals and groups. Once you do, you’d ideally be able to exercise a degree of control over your shares. Content control options usually include passwords, expiry dates, permissions and more.
Egnyte Connect
Egnyte lets you share files and folders as links, which you can copy and paste or send via email. You can set the link to allow only viewing or to enable downloading, too. Plus, you can protect the link with a password, have it notify you when it’s accessed and set it to expire on a specific date or after a number of clicks.
You can also choose to give users access to a folder and provide them with adequate levels of permissions, including “owner,” “full,” “editor” and “viewer.”
We like that Egnyte included a separate page that shows the links you’ve shared and links others have shared with you.
Dropbox Business
Dropbox Business supplies you with a shared folder right from the start. It’s a “team folder,” which all your users have access to. When you create a team folder, you can invite people to it and give them either “can edit” or “can view” permissions.
Edit permissions give users the option to edit, delete, comment and add files. View permissions enable users to only view, download and comment. Whatever permissions you set, you can send the invite to a specified email, user or group.
However, you can also generate a link for a file or folder, which you can restrict to people with the password, to team members or make anyone with the link able to open it. In addition, you can set the link to expire on a certain date and disable it for download.
Dropbox also integrates with Slack and Trello by default, and there are options to share files to Slack or add them to Trello.
In addition, Dropbox Business lets you invite people to share files with you via file requests. File requests let you set a deadline and specify which content you need and where to store it.
Keeping track of everything you’ve shared can be difficult, but Dropbox Business supplies a page that details what you’ve shared with others and what they’ve shared with you.
Round Two Thoughts
Both services are great for sharing and include all the necessary features we like to see. Dropbox lets you even share to Slack or add files to Trello, and Egnyte Connect has a fine-grained approach to folder sharing. That’s a more important feature, and Egnyte Connect can also integrate with both apps. That makes Egnyte Connect the winner of this round.
3. Sync
File synchronization is the key mechanism of an EFSS service because it mirrors your files to all your other devices and lets you access your files in the cloud from any of them. The standard sync model consists of a system tray icon and a sync folder.
A sync folder looks like any other file system folder, with the exception that any file you place in the sync folder will be synced to the cloud and all your other devices. It’s useful because it enables you to use multiple devices without managing your files yourself. That way sync makes it easy to work on your files using various devices.
However, sync depends on your connection bandwidth, how close you are to a server and the presence of block-level file copying. Block-level file copying speeds up file transfers by copying only the parts of files that changed, rather than the entire file.
Egnyte Connect
Egnyte Connect doesn’t use a standard sync folder. Instead, it uses a network drive folder. The difference is that the network drive doesn’t download your cloud content by default, but only shows it. Because of that, you can see and access it without sacrificing space on your hard drive. The downside is that your files won’t be available when you’re offline.
You can circumvent that by marking files for offline use. On the other hand, you can use selective sync to choose which files you want to sync and those you want to stay in the cloud.
Egnyte Connect doesn’t use a block-level transfer algorithm, but that’s normal for many EFSS services. We tested its transfer speeds, though, using our 1GB zipped folder, and Egnyte took exactly the time it should, considering our upload speed.
Dropbox Business
Dropbox Business has great sync capabilities, which isn’t surprising considering Dropbox invented the common model of sync. It works the same way we described at the start of this section, but Dropbox provides smart sync to enhance it. Smart sync enables you to tag your files to store in the cloud but lets you still access it from your devices.
This is a similar approach to Egnyte, but one that works from the opposite starting point. We tested how fast its sync transfers files using the same 1GB zipped folder, and Dropbox Business took a bit more time than we expected, but it was still fast. The initial upload is less important if you’re collaborating with others, and that’s where Dropbox shines.
That’s thanks to its implementation of block-level sync. In fact, it’s one of the rare services that offer it. For example, OneDrive for Business, another popular service, has it but only for Office files. That said, OneDrive has other benefits, such as great value, and if that interests you, read our OneDrive for Business review.
Round Three Thoughts
Egnyte and Dropbox provide capable sync with features that let you save hard drive space, which is important if you’re using a slim business laptop with an SSD. That said, the main difference is that Dropbox Business provides block-level file copying while Egnyte Connect doesn’t. That makes Dropbox Business the winner in this round.
4. Productivity Tools
In this category, we’ll take a look at the available native and third-party apps that can boost your productivity, collaboration and more. Services can have only native apps, integrate with many third-parties or provide a mixed approach.
Some of the most useful integrations are with Microsoft Office, Google Office suite or sometimes both. Third-party apps often include task management, workflows, tasks, security and more.
Egnyte Connect
Egnyte, unlike many other EFSS services, offers native task management features, which is nice because you have a choice between it, and, say, Trello. That said, Egnyte also integrates with Trello and other third-party task management apps. Plus, Egnyte can connect with other partners, such as Microsoft Office, Google G Suite, Slack and more.
Egnyte also integrates with third-party integrations, such as SAP and Salesforce. The library is large, and you won’t have issues finding an app in any category you require. To make it easier, Egnyte lets you search for the app you need and select only the relevant categories. You can see the complete list of third-party apps here.
Dropbox Business
Dropbox Business has a native tool called “Dropbox Paper,” which lets you add various content — such as text, images, videos and more — to a “blank page.” You can read more about it in our Dropbox Paper review. However, if you want apps geared toward note-taking, consult our best note-taking apps list.
Another Dropbox’s native app is Showcase, which lets you present your content in an attractive page, which you can then share.
Dropbox’s library of integrations has many popular apps including Asana, Slack and Zapier. You can browse all of them on Dropbox’s app integration page. The apps are searchable and the page lets you only preview apps from specific categories.
Round Four Thoughts
Both Egnyte and Dropbox do great in this category, thanks to their expansive libraries and native apps. However, Dropbox Business integrates with more apps and provides both Dropbox Paper and Showcase. That helps it win this round, if by a small margin.
5. Security
Security is the last category, but certainly not the least. Having good cloud security is key to making the most out of an EFSS storage, without cybercrime compromising your business data. To help you protect your data, cloud services use many security methods.
Encryption scrambles your files so that reading them requires a special decryption key. The ideal approach would be to have private encryption, which enables you to manage your key, and then password protect it. However, most EFSS services manage your decryption key. Once encryption finishes, the TLS or SSL protocols will help protect your files in transit.
These methods won’t help if you or your users create weak passwords, though. However, two-factor authentication will. It prevents unauthorized access by requiring users to enter a special code when accessing content from an unfamiliar device.
Even with two-factor authentication, you should create a strong password. Creating custom password requirements also help with that.
Egnyte Connect
Egnyte Connect uses AES 256-bit encryption — the standard and widely used encryption today — to scramble your files. There’s no private encryption by default, but you can enable Egnyte Key Management if you subscribe to Egnyte’s “enterprise” plan. If you don’t want to do that, another option is to integrate with Boxcryptor, a private encryption add-on.
To help protect your credentials, Egnyte provides two-factor authentication. Plus, as the admin, you can mandate password length and strength. You can also require users to reset their passwords after a period of time, disable login after several failed attempts and more.
If you want to enable users to log in to multiple apps using the same credentials, you can use single sign-on (SSO) options, such as Bitium, Okta and OneLogin.
Another feature of note is the ability to remotely wipe cloud data from devices. That helps reduce the risk of compromising your data if someone steals your device.
Egnyte keeps your data in hardened data centers, which use redundancy, surveillance and biometric access controls, and are able to resist natural disasters, such as earthquakes, fires and floods. As a testament to that, data centers comply with ISO 270001, SOC 2 and SSAE 16 security standards.
If you think that doesn’t suffice and you want to implement your own security measures, you can do that by creating a hybrid cloud solution of your own. That way, part of the data will be on Egnyte’s servers and part will be on the premises.
Dropbox Business
Dropbox Business also uses AES 256-bit encryption to scramble your files, and like Egnyte, it manages your encryption key. You will have to integrate with Boxcryptor if you want to manage it yourself. The TLS protocol will protect your data in transit to Dropbox’s data centers.
You can protect your credentials by enabling two-factor authentication and by using password-control features. Those features include the ability to sign out all your team members, require them to reset their password and notify them when password requirements change. You can also reset all passwords. Dropbox also offers SSO options, such as Okta and OneLogin.
Like with Egnyte, Dropbox lets you remotely wipe a device. To protect data that has been uploaded from your devices to Dropbox’s data centers, Dropbox adheres to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 standards.
Round Five Thoughts
Although both services provide capable security, Egnyte Connect manages to stay ahead of Dropbox Business by a small margin. That’s thanks to its hybrid cloud ability, slightly more numerous password control options and its native Key Management feature.
6. Final Thoughts
This was a pitched battle because it was close in several categories, and Egnyte has only one win more over Dropbox, at three wins versus two. That makes Egnyte Connect our overall winner. That said, Dropbox Business is a valid choice if you need native productivity tools and unlimited cloud storage.
Winner: Egnyte Connect
What do you think about these services? Is Egnyte Connect the better choice for you, or do you lean toward Dropbox? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.
Branko has a bachelor’s degree in software engineering and likes to write cloud storage, backup and privacy laws. Naturally, he thinks Assange and Snowden are champions of the internet age. In his spare time, he does all sorts of stuff, including photography, reading, salsa dancing and learning languages. He also likes barbecue, hiking, traveling and skiing. Favorite movie never made: Jodorowsky’s Dune.