SugarSync Review

SugarSync is a cloud storage service from the U.S. that was launched in 2009. We would expect it to be a polished service given the years it has behind it, but SugarSync is near the bottom of our review rankings.

It has an attractive desktop app, strong privacy policy and decent versioning capabilities, but they’re overshadowed by the lack of features, clunky web client, expensive pricing plans and lack of zero-knowledge.

If you want to learn how SugarSync stacks up against the best cloud storage services, stick with us for this SugarSync review.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for SugarSync

Features

Like many cloud storage services, SugarSync lets you sync and share your files and folders across devices, including smartphones. It supports network-attached storage devices, too. To use it, though, you have to subscribe to one of SugarSync’s business plans, run Windows and map a network drive.

If you want a solution that offers a proprietary network drive client, consult our guides on how to set up a cloud network drive and the best online backup for NAS.

SugarSync integrates with many third-party apps, including Zapier, Xendo, Genius Scan and more. That said, it’s not a viable choice for collaboration because it doesn’t work with Office Online or Google Docs. For services that do, read our best cloud storage for collaboration article. Google Drive is our pick for personal users. Read our Google Drive review to see why.

SugarSync can’t play audio or video files, though. For that, you need one of the services from our best cloud storage for music or best cloud storage for videos articles.

Versioning lets you keep and restore previous versions of files. It’s useful when you make an unwanted file change and want to revert it or undo the damage done by ransomware. Hackers use ransomware to encrypt your files and demand payment to unlock them, but you can avoid having to pay by reverting files to their previous state with versioning.

SugarSync’s versioning lets you keep and restore five previous versions of files. If that isn’t enough for you, it lets you create a protected folder that keeps the last 12 versions of files in it. You can choose to save versions on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Note that protected folders will consume storage space for each saved copy.

For a service that doesn’t take up storage space for previous versions, consult our best cloud storage services with versioning or go to our Sync.com review.

SugarSync Features Overview

Pricing

SugarSync is expensive, so it didn’t make our best deals in cloud storage list. In fact, it offers worse prices than Dropbox, making it one of the lowest value services on the market.

100GB 100 GB Storage	1-month plan $ 7.49/ month 1-year plan $ 6.25/ month $74.99 billed every year Save 17 %
250GB Save 17 % Details 250 GB Storage	1-month plan $ 9.99/ month 1-year plan $ 8.33/ month $99.99 billed every year Save 17 %
500GB Save 17 % Details 500 GB Storage	1-month plan $ 18.95/ month 1-year plan $ 15.79/ month $189.50 billed every year Save 17 %
Business 1TB 1 - 9 users Details 1000 GB Storage	$ 55.00/ month
Business Custom Contact SugarSync for a quote Details Unlimited GB Storage	FREE

The individual plans have the same features, but differ in the amount of storage they offer.

The first plan is $7.49 a month, but it only offers a meager 100GB of cloud storage. You can get a better deal if you pay for the year, in which case the price drops to $6.25 per month.

The next plan provides 250GB of storage for $9.99 a month. It can’t beat pCloud or Sync.com, though. For example, you can subscribe to pCloud’s 2TB plan for the same price, and it’s even cheaper when you take the yearly discount into account. Check out the pricing table in our pCloud review to learn more about it.

The 500GB plan doesn’t offer better value, but the Business 1TB plan is a decent deal. For one to three users you need to pay $55 per month. The price rises as you add users until you get to 10, which costs $133 a month. The plan comes with admin control, live phone support and the option to remotely wipe data from devices.

The Business Custom plan has the same features, but lets you have more than 10 users and custom storage space.

You can test the service using its free 30-day trial on any personal plan or use the free 90-day 5GB plan, which doesn’t require you to input your credit card information.

Ease of Use

Services sometimes have a complex user experience that turns users away. That’s not the case with SugarSync overall, but its web client needs work.

The web client is functional, but it feels outdated because its design is drab and the app makes you go through more steps to complete simple file operations than many services do. For example, if you’re in the root folder and want to upload a file, you have to toggle the drag-and-drop area instead of it just appearing when you drag a file over.

Drag-and-drop works in a strange manner for other folders, as well, because you need to drag the file over the name of the current folder to upload it instead of just dropping it anywhere in it.

You can navigate the app using the menu at the top, but the pages load slowly. The menu on the right lets you access and tweak your account settings. Next to it is a search bar that lets you search by file name.

The desktop app is more attractive and easier to use. It works on Windows and macOS. For services that support Linux, consult or best cloud storage for Linux guide. The desktop app consists of a system tray icon and sync folder. After you install it, the “my SugarSync” folder, which is your default sync folder, is placed in the “documents” folder.

The interface is clear and simple to navigate using the menu on the left. Different colors make good contrasts, so it’s easy to spot what you’re looking for. Once you go into folders, you can use the breadcrumb navigation similar to your operating system’s file explorers to go back. The top right corner lets you access your account while the top-left one holds the app menu.

The mobile app doesn’t disappoint either. It’s easy to use and gives you the option to automatically backup your photos and videos. It also lets you share your files and save them for offline access.

File Sharing & Syncing

Once you transfer your files online, you’re going to want to share them. Sharing should be fast and easy. Plus, you should be able to share directly to the big social networks, individuals and groups. You should also be able to protect your shares using content controls, such as password protection, expiry dates and permissions.

SugarSync doesn’t have those sharing protection features, though. If you need to keep your shares safe, your best bet is to use a service from our best cloud storage for sharing article.

That said, SugarSync lets you share files using the web, desktop and mobile clients. The web client lets you share links directly to social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. You can share folders the same way or invite people via email to collaborate on them. When you share folders by invitation, you can choose to give permission to “edit” or “view.”

The “shared by me” and “shared with me” pages help you keep track of shared files.

If you’re using the desktop client, you can share from it by right-clicking the file or folder and choosing “copy public link.” There’s also a “shared by me” page that shows what you’ve shared. That’s useful, and it’s not something all services offer.

The mobile app lets you share content by copying a link, sending it via email or using other methods depending on the apps you have on your smartphone.

Speed

SugarSync took around 42 minutes and 15 seconds on average to upload a 1GB zipped folder, which is much slower than the 23 minutes it should theoretically take. The download took twice the time it should, averaging two minutes and five seconds. If SugarSync takes too much out of your bandwidth, you can throttle it from the preferences menu of the desktop app.

We were using an ethernet connection in Belgrade, Serbia, with an upload speed of 6 megabits per second and a download speed of 100 Mbps. We weren’t close to SugarSync’s servers in the U.S., but that didn’t have as much of an affect on other services that have servers there, such as Dropbox. Block-level sync would speed transfers up, but SugarSync doesn’t use it.

Security

Having good security for the files you store online is no joke. Hackers won’t hesitate to target your data with ransomware or man-in-the-middle attacks.

They might try to steal your login credentials, too.

Cloud services use many methods to secure your data against potential threats. For example, the TLS protocol prevents man-in-the-middle attacks from succeeding, while encryption secures your data in transit and at rest. Private, end-to-end encryption prevents anyone other than you from reading your files.

Two-factor authentication will stop hackers who’ve stolen your password from accessing your account. Still, you should make sure you have a strong password from the start. You should make use of our strong password guide because SugarSync doesn’t offer two-factor authentication.

The service uses AES 256-bit to encrypt your files at rest and the TLS protocol to protect them in transit. Unfortunately, it’s not a zero-knowledge provider. That means company employees could read your files. To avoid that, you can try any of the services on our best zero-knowledge cloud services list.

You can use Boxcryptor to scramble files and protect your privacy further. Read our Boxcryptor review to learn more about the useful add-on.

Privacy

Even though SugarSync isn’t a zero-knowledge service, it won’t sell your information to advertisers and doesn’t go out of its way to monitor your data like some providers do. Plus, its privacy policy says it doesn’t seek to collect or process your sensitive personal data. If it needs to do so, it will be in accordance with applicable law.

Sensitive personal data includes race or ethnicity, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health and more.

Processing your personal data is required for: providing services to you, financial management, conducting surveys, investigations, compliance with applicable laws and other reasons.

SugarSync doesn’t disclose your personal data to third parties unless they’re legal and regulatory authorities, external advisors or in connection with legal proceedings.

If you decide to terminate your account, SugarSync promises not to retain your personal data for longer than necessary.

As a user, you have the following rights:

• To request access to, or copies of, your relevant personal data.
• To request correction of inaccuracies in your relevant personal data.
• To request, on legitimate grounds:
  1. Erasure of your relevant personal data.
  2. Restriction of processing of your relevant personal data.
• To object, on legitimate grounds, to the processing of your relevant personal data by SugarSync or on its behalf.
• To have certain relevant personal data transferred to another entity, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, to the extent applicable.
• To lodge complaints with a data protection authority regarding the processing of your relevant personal data by SugarSync or on its behalf.

The policy is easy to read and has a useful summary text at the top for those who don’t like legalese. It also complies with the General Data Protection Regulation, EU’s privacy law. You can learn more about it in our GDPR guide. That’s good to know because SugarSync keeps its servers in the U.S., a country not known for having the best privacy laws in the world.

Customer Service

Good technical support is paramount when the app doesn’t behave like you want it to. You first stop if that happens with SugarSync is the help center. It’s split into categories that hold answers to many issues. If that doesn’t help, you can go to the user forums, but they aren’t that active and many questions go unanswered.

Many of the questions in the general section of the forums deal with account cancellation because it can be difficult to end a subscription.

That said, you can get assistance directly from SugarSync by creating a help request or making a phone call if you’re using a Business plan. If you’re an individual SugarSync customer you can subscribe to SugarSync Live. The cost is $99.99 per year and it entitles you to phone support from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST on weekdays. Email support works during those hours, too.

We asked a couple of questions via the request form and got an answer in 13 hours. That’s slower than most services. If you need faster responses and top-notch technical support, you should try Google Drive.

The Verdict

SugarSync is on the best cloud storage comparison list, but it’s far from the top. It has a solid set of features, but lacks good collaboration capabilities. It can’t protect your shares as well as it should, either. Its expensive pricing plans add to the list of drawbacks.

ITs security is strong, and its lack of private encryption is mitigated by the integration with Boxcryptor. Even if you don’t get the add-on, SugarSync’s privacy policy doesn’t have suspicious clauses and it adheres to the GDPR.

The desktop and mobile apps are attractive and easy to use, which is good considering the lackluster web app. We can’t praise the transfer speeds, though. That said, they should get better the closer you are to SugarSync’s servers in the U.S.

What do you think about SugarSync? Does it have too many drawbacks for you to consider it or have you found your match? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.