Jumpshare Review

File sharing is one the key ingredients of any cloud storage service, but not many do it nearly as well as the subject of this review, Jumpshare.

Of course, some might argue that Jumpshare doesn’t classify as a cloud storage solution at all, but rather a focused cloud file-sharing service like WeTransfer. That’s because Jumpshare can’t be used to sync files across devices, another common cloud storage feature.  

Jumpshare can be used to clear up space on your hard drive, however, with both free 2GB and paid 1TB plans. On top of excellent file-sharing features like link passwords and share scheduling, Jumpshare also provides customized looks and analytics tools that make it an ideal solution for an SMB looking to advance its brand.

Whether or not that makes Jumpshare a better fit for your needs than Dropbox or some of the best Dropbox alternatives is a question you’ll ultimately need to answer for yourself. However, during this Jumpshare review, we’ll hopefully provide everything you need to determine whether or not your best move is to jump on the Jumpshare bandwagon.

Don’t forget to check out our best cloud storage guide, too, for some alternative cloud storage services that also provide excellent file sharing features, in addition to file sync.

Alternatives for Jumpshare

Strengths & Weaknesses

Features

While it can be used for cloud storage, offloading files to the cloud to clear up space on your desktop, Jumpshare is best used as a file-sharing service. True, we can’t think of a cloud storage service that doesn’t allow file sharing, along with many online backup services, but few do it as beautifully as Jumpshare.

Most of the advantages that make Jumpshare great for sharing content do require a paid subscription plan, which you can read about in the pricing section, next. However, for many SMBs looking to compliment their brand image and keep their intellectual property safe, Jumpshare Plus is going to be worth the cost.

We’ll detail the file-sharing process later in this review, but key features include folder sharing, file linking, link passwords, share scheduling and upload links to let others put files in your cloud storage. Jumpshare also has unusual feature called “self destruct” that causes files to be deleted after a certain number of days. It’s the bomb.

Jumpshare Plus also lets you share files of unlimited size and increases available download bandwidth by 40 times over the free plan. Specifically, free users get 5GB of download bandwidth per month, while subscribers get 200GB.

Jumpshare Analytics

Another advantage of going with Jumpshare over a typical cloud storage service is that it has some great analytics options to track file shares and other behavior. It’s a great tool for business professionals to track how content usage for marketing, security or other purposes.

On top of that, you can customize your Jumpshare URL to match your business or personal name, and brand your Jumpshare account with your company logo.  

As with most cloud storage services, deleted file recovery and versioning are both included features, too. File versioning lets you revert to previous file states in case of unwanted changes. Jumpshare keeps an unlimited number of file versions, but only for 30 days. Similarly, deleted files are kept for 30 days before being removed permanently from your Jumpshare trash bin.

While packed with file-sharing features that you won’t find with most cloud storage services, Jumpshare doesn’t do file sync, another common cloud storage feature. If that’s a need, check out our best cloud storage with sync list for tips.

Despite not having sync capabilities, Jumpshare does have a desktop client, and a good one at that. Not only does it save you from having to login online to share files, it includes both screenshot and screen-recording features. While not sophisticated enough to make our list of best screen capture software, both are still a very handy features and nicely incorporated into the Jumpshare experience.  

The desktop client also has a notes feature to type out quick notes, plus a voice recorder. Clients are available for Windows and MacOS. There’s also an iPhone app, too, with an Android app reportedly on the way.

For a cloud storage service that doesn’t sync files, Jumpshare is packed with features both common and uncommon, making it worthwhile choice depending on your needs. With a sync folder, there’s no question that Jumpshare would belong in the conversation for best cloud storage service overall.  

Pricing

Many who are just looking to Jumpshare for a basic file-sharing tool should be just fine with using the free version of Jumpshare, which gets you 2GB of cloud storage space. If that doesn’t cut it for you, if you want more storage and the full Jumpshare experience, you’ll need to purchase a Jumpshare Plus subscription.

Jumpshare Plus includes 1TB of storage for $9.99 per month. That’s about the cost of Google Drive and Dropbox, but not quite nearly as good a deal as Sync.com and pCloud, both of which offer 2TB plans for around $8 per month.

Storage isn’t all you get with a subscription, however. The features we detailed in the previous section of this Jumpshare review all add to its base value, making it well worth the cost in our opinion.   

We would like to see a nice referral program to add storage to both free and paid accounts, but otherwise Jumpshare Plus provides perfectly acceptable value for small business owners and others looking for a file-sharing tool to compliment their brand image.

Ease of Use

Signing up for Jumpshare takes a few minutes, after which you can log into your account online to use the Jumpshare GUI. The online GUI has a sparse design, which a good thing when it comes to user experience

Navigation links are listed down the left margin, with plenty of whitespace on the page to keep you from being distracted. Each link leads to a different GUI view, including: general activity, uploads, favorites, shared, analytics and trash.

The general activity view gives you a quick overview of everything going on, while the favorites view lets you access files you’ve tagged as “favorites,” saving you from having to go hunt for them.

The analytics view, available only for Jumpshare Plus subscribers, makes it easy to track various user behaviors to gain business insights. Points of analysis include top referrers, top files, total views and downloads.

As noted earlier, there’s also a desktop client, from which you can perform many of the same actions you can using the online GUI, saving you from having to login every time you want to share something

While you can’t access some features using the desktop client, like analytics, you can use the client to upload folders and files, capture screenshots and screen recordings, and compose notes and voice recordings.

From the desktop client settings, you can tell Jumpshare to automatically upload screenshots to the cloud, saving you from having to do so manually. Configurable hotkeys are also available to quickly perform actions like opening the client, sharing via email and recording your screen.  

Overall, the Jumpshare experience is very well designed. While it packs quite a few features, a minimalistic design and automation options keeps things from feeling overwhelming, which is what you should want from any cloud tool.

File Sharing & Sync

File sharing is what Jumpshare is mostly about, and so long as you’re a Jumpshare Plus subscriber, it executes in this area as well as any other service we can think of.

To share from the online GUI, right-click on any file to access an actions menu.

The “share” option in this menu lets you share files to specific individuals based on their email address, up to 100 with a Jumpshare Plus subscription.

You can also generate a URL link pointing to your folder or file, which can be shared manually. Links can be shortened, too, ideal for social media since shortened links look better and take up fewer characters.

In terms of content control, links can be made temporary, good for only a few days, so that you don’t have to remember to disable them yourself. There’s also an option to disable download on links, meaning that others can only view your files. You can set links to expire after a certain number of views or downloads, too.

Another useful control feature to limit unauthorized access is the self-destruct feature, which automatically deletes files instead of just expiring links.

Jumpshare Link Passwords

There’s no option to set link passwords like you can with another CommQueR.com file-sharing favorite, Sync.com (here’s our Sync.com review), but you can separately set a password on any file using the “lock” option available in the file menu. That approach works, though it’d be more convenient to just roll the feature into the link settings.

If you’re sharing via email address, Jumpshare has a very cool “scheduling” option that lets you plan shares for a later date that we liked quite a bit.

Many of these web GUI features are available through the desktop client. The  web GUI does have the additional advantage of providing a “shared” view, however, where you can audit what files and folders you’re currently sharing.  

Subscribers can also enable desktop notifications to alert you when your files are viewed or downloaded, or when someone shares a file with you, which is convenient.

Usually, during this segment, we also review cloud storage sync capabilities. However, Jumpshare doesn’t have that feature. We did adjust our score for this section down some due to this, but also took into account that Jumpshare is primarily a file-sharing service, and a really good one at that.

Speed

Usually in this section of a cloud storage review, we test sync speed. However, given that Jumpshare doesn’t sync files, we simply tested its upload and download speeds through the web GUI.

The tests we performed were with a 1GB test file, which was a compressed folder made up other various other file types. Tests were run over a WiFi connection with 26.79 Mbps download speeds and 33.72 Mbps upload speeds.

Here are the results of our Jumpshare speed tests:

The results are pretty good, which is probably in part due to the fact that Jumpshare uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host files, a cloud infrastructure service with excellent resources.

At best, a 30 Mbps connection can transfer a 1GB file in around five minutes. While our times were double that or more, we also conducted our testing from SE Asia. If you live closer to the Virginia AWS data center and have a better internet connection, you can expect much faster speeds.

Security

Given the data breaches and other instances of cybercrime that seem to hit the headlines routinely these days, cloud security and privacy are always a popular topics with our readers. Jumpshare takes quite a few measures to keep your files safe, but could go further.  

We detailed some of those measures, like file password protection, when we talked file sharing earlier. Another key security step taken by Jumpshare is to encrypt the files you upload, both in transit and at rest, server-side.

The encryption protocol used is AES, which is the protocol recommended by the U.S. National Institute of Technology and Standards, and the one most commonly used by most cloud services today. In particular, Jumpshare uses 256-bit AES, which by all accounts has yet to be brute-force cracked, and would in fact take billions of years to do so.

Jumpshare does not, unfortunately, have an option for two-factor authentication. This is a pretty big miss, because while encryption keys might be impossible to crack, weak passwords are not, and even strong passwords can be stolen. Two-factor authentication would lessen that problem.

Jumpshare doesn’t have an option for private, end-to-end encryption, or zero-knowledge encryption, either. That means the company manages your encryption key and can decrypt your files for legal reasons. If you’re a criminal mastermind, or simply a privacy advocate, you many want to have a look at our best zero-knowledge cloud storage guide.

Jumpshare does not run its own data center, as mentioned. Instead, the company has built its service using the Amazon Web Services platform, using the AWS data center located in Virginia.

That’s both good and bad. On the one hand, big companies like Amazon and Microsoft are more tempting targets for online crime. On the other hand, Amazon’s data centers are well-managed and considered extremely secure. After all, these are the same facilities that Amazon stores its own data in.

Jumpshare is not HIPAA compliant, so far as we can tell, meaning the company won’t sign a Business Associates Agreement (BAA) with you. Most SMBs in need of HIPAA compliance would be better off looking through our best EFSS guide.

Support

Jumpshare provides support 24-hours during weekdays. Multiple email address are available, including ones for general questions, technical help and business development.

We sent a test email to measure the Jumpshare response time, and were shocked to receive a reply back in just seven minutes, a CommQueR.com record. What made that even more impressive is that we included several questions in our inquiry, and each was not only answered, they were answered in paragraph form and complete sentences.

While Jumpshare doesn’t provide live support either through telephone or chat, the fast email response time and capable support technicians mostly makes up for that.

A support site is also available, where you’ll find pages for general support, Jumpshare Plus features, Mac, iOS and Windows. Each page contains FAQs rather than separate support articles. These pages are well-written enough, but we’d prefer more segmentation, along with an option to search for articles based on keywords.

A Jumpshare blog and Twitter and Facebook pages are also available to keep up on new developments.

While Jumpshare support is actually fairly thin, we still gave it an above-average score based on the how prompt and thorough email responses seem to be.

Verdict

This was our first time reviewing Jumpshare, which we decided to take on after several readers gave testimony to its excellence. While we went in with some skepticism given that Jumpshare can’t be used to sync files, the overall experience was much more refreshing than we’d expected.

Jumpshare isn’t a Dropbox clone. While several other cloud storage services have tried to do their own thing, not many pull it off as well as Jumpshare. That’s because Jumpshare seems to have real appeal for a certain niche, which is SMBs that want to share files and look good doing it.

Link passwords, scheduling, file self destruct and similar features all make Jumpshare ideal for controlling intellectual property. Custom logos and analytics, meanwhile, are great for  brand building. 

While we’d like to see Jumpshare improve its approach to security with two-factor authentication and private encryption, so long as you take steps to create strong passwords and make use of its content control features, the service should keep your files safe.

The bottom line is that our first Jumpshare review went well, outperforming some of the best cloud storage services available in several key areas. We definitely recommend giving it a try, though you’ll need to purchase the 1TB subscription to gain access to the features that set it apart.

What’s your take on Jumpshare? If you can think of a better cloud service to share files with, let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading.