Your Votes: Best Online Document Storage Solution?

I recently had a DocumentSnap reader send this question in, but since I am travelling at the moment I thought I’d open it up for the rest of you to chime in. Here is the question:

I’m trying to find a solution for a paperless office….for customer contracts
and other documents…

We need to scan but we need to find a storage based application that is online
with some of the same abilities that you would want to see in the doc manager
that comes with a ScanSnap. I was thinking Evernote was an option, but how
easy it that to use, and secure data across different user groups.

As we all know, I am a big Evernote fan, but I just thought I’d open it up for your input. What sort of online document management solutions do you recommend for businesses that have good user controls?

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About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 12 comments

Brooks Duncan - March 31, 2013 Reply

Thanks. I've been diving more into Box lately and I agree with everything you say.

@cryptochrome - March 31, 2013 Reply

Dropbox and Evernote are all nice and may be enough for a single person. But if you are looking for a serious product with business/enterprise features that is tailored to mutiple users, you want to look into box.com.

Besides simple storage (like Evernote/Dropbox), it offers true document management features, like leave comments for files (others can reply and get notified), assign tasks to other users for a file, track version history, sign documents, create workflows and much more.

It also recognizes text in documents so you can search based on actual content, not just on filenames and tags. Plus it integrates with many other apps like Google Apps for example. And you can edit many filetypes directly from within Box.

The sharing features go beyond that what dropbox is offering. You can send links, you can set expiration dates for shares, you can track who downloaded and when, you can invite other Box users as collaborators for a folder and set permissions on what they are allowed to do.

So my vote definitely goes to box.com.

@kirkalexander - March 30, 2013 Reply

hands down best…. dropbox

Jerscan - April 28, 2010 Reply

Monitoring for any OneNote comments?

Amy - April 22, 2010 Reply

Microsoft Live Mesh
https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx

5GB FREE online storage, monitors any folder you want, automatically backed up to “the cloud.” (Most free services top out at 2GB.) Accessible from any browser.

Ann - April 7, 2010 Reply

I use Dropbox and love it. Very easy to use.

pendolino - April 10, 2010 Reply

i like dropbox as well and use it quite regularly along with evernote. also dropbox are always iterating an improving.

stringacademy - April 6, 2010 Reply

Microsoft Live Mesh
https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx

5GB FREE online storage, monitors any folder you want, automatically backed up to "the cloud." (Most free services top out at 2GB.) Accessible from any browser.

Brooks Duncan - April 6, 2010 Reply

Thanks! Didn't even think of Live Mesh somehow.

nitinbadjatia - April 6, 2010 Reply

Pogoplug with a usb hard drive works well, and keeps the data on a drive that you control. What I found really useful with pogoplug was the ability to grant varying degrees of access at the folder level, so you can restrict who can see what. Plus, there is a nice web interface, in addition to the ability to mount a pogoplug drive as a network drive from anywhere on the internet.

The initial cost is high, but you don't pay anything after buying the device and attaching a usb drive.

Brooks Duncan - April 6, 2010 Reply

Nice thanks! I hadn't heard of that one.

nitinbadjatia - April 6, 2010 Reply

What makes this even cooler is that you can access those files on your iPhone. Beyond the PDFs that my ScanSnap creates, I can actually run stored videos on my iPhone, etc. Pretty powerful little addition to my arsenal of data.