DriveHQ vs. Egnyte

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Summary

3. Detailed Reviews and Comparisons

4. What Other People Are Saying About Egnyte

5. Appendix

6. Disclaimer


1. Introduction


The document below is a comparison of Egnyte and DriveHQ by top experts in the cloud service industry. Their expertise, insights and hands-on business experience open up a very different perspective. Whether you use Egnyte, DriveHQ, or you are an independent tech editor, reading the document below will help you better understand the strengths and weaknesses of Egnyte and DriveHQ, as well as the business cloud service requirements and solutions.


2. Summary


Egnyte claims to be a business-class online solution that eliminates the costs and complexity of purchasing and maintaining traditional file servers, tape backups, FTP and VPN systems. In this review we will compare Egnyte’s solution with DriveHQ’s solution, including features, prices, infrastructure requirements and more.

2.1 Cost comparison.

When you consider the type of service being provided to the end user, Egnyte’s price is undoubtedly one of the most expensive in the industry. For 30 users with 2TB of storage space and 5GB max file size, the price ranges from a minimum $5400/year to $9179.88. If you decide to add more integrations or features with Egnyte's service, the cost will continue to increase.

For enterprise services, Egnyte charges $180/user/year for the base service. That price only includes 2TB of storage space for all users and does not include certain advanced features. The total cost can go as high as $350/user/year, which is many times higher than DriveHQ’s and significantly higher than Google Drive or Dropbox.

For its price, any claim of “eliminating the costs of traditional file server, FTP and VPN systems” is misleading, as Egnyte’s cost is more expensive than a traditional solution. Egnyte claims to eliminate traditional IT systems, however one of their main selling points is its “hybrid” system, which requires local IT infrastructure. Thus Egnyte will simply increase cost and complexity as opposed to making life easier.

2.2 Egnyte’s main selling points.

Egnyte has marketed its service with some interesting terms such as “local cloud” and “hybrid cloud.” For less tech-savvy people, it might appear as some unique or advanced technology.

In reality, Egnyte’s “Local Cloud” is merely a synchronized folder, exactly the same as Dropbox, which is great for consuumer use. However, when it comes to large enterprises, synchronizations are not scalable and they pose potential security issues.

So what is Egnyte’s “Hybrid Cloud?” Egnyte’s own explanation is that it “combines the speed and security of local storage with the accessibility of the cloud.”

In fact, it is a simple synchronization solution, where a cloud folder is synchronized with a local storage on a server or storage appliance. Based on Egnyte’s definition, any synchronization solution is hybrid because you can access the files on the local storage device, or in the cloud (so any provider offering synchronization is “hybrid”).

2.3 What makes Egnyte different.

Egnyte has repositioned itself as offering “Enterprise File Sharing” service that includes file access, sharing, collaboration and large file transfers:

More specifically, Egnyte claims to solve the following problems: “cloud file sharing, private file sharing, local file access and cross-office collaboration,” which is a step up from services such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

Although Egnyte differentiates itself from other industry competitors by offering cloud and private file sharing, their service still lacks advanced enterprise features. Such features include file hosting, file publishing, web hosting, online backup services, IP restrictions, and client side encryption, to name a few. DriveHQ's service has proven to be an all-in-one, comprehensive cloud IT solution that can completely replace in-house IT structures. With advanced security features and HIPAA compliancy, DriveHQ's service is a secure solution for your enterprise needs.

2.4 Enterprise file sharing.

Egnyte does not offer free service, therefore you cannot share files with an external client who is not an Egnyte member. Assuming most of your clients are non-Egnyte members, the lack of this feature means you cannot share files with your external clients. This is a huge issue for documents that cannot be sent via email or documents that need to be monitored to ensure they are released to the public. On top of this, you only have the ability to share documents with your group members, making it extremely difficult to share files between departments if sub-groups are created for each.

With DriveHQ's service, you can share files with non-DriveHQ users or create guest accounts for them, therefore they will only have to enter in the temporary username and password to access the files. This is an extremely important feature for sales professionals and consultants, as they deal with many clients on a daily basis. On top of this, DriveHQ allows you to share with members outside of your sub-group, ensuring that teams can cross collaborate.

2.5 Egnyte for enterprise.

2.5.1 Folder sync and storage.

While Egnyte positions its service as being different from other cloud storage services, Egnyte’s core service is still a Folder Synchronization service. The differences are very minor: Instead of synchronizing a folder on all computers, Egnyte uses a local file server or storage system to synchronize with the files on the cloud. Users in the same office will access the local file server / storage system directly without having to access the cloud. This can achieve much faster performance as most users will access local files only. However, such solution is not unique to Egnyte. Any synchronization service can be configured this way and it does not solve the problem of working from home, hotel or any other remote locations. Employees are restricted to accessing documents from the work environment only.

2.5.2 Handling large amounts of data.

Egnyte's Local Cloud (folder sync) cannot handle large amoutn of data, as folder synchronizations are not scalable for large enterprises and eat extreme amounts of RAM, CPU, and bandwidth. Can you really sync 100GB or 1TB of data to multiple computers and mobile devices? Such a task could not be achieved with Egnyte. Egnyte’s software will use more and more RAM and CPU as your number of files increase, and it will take a very long time to sync so much data on multiple computers. In the end, you will waste a lot of bandwidth and disk space on each computer.


3. Detailed Reviews and Comparisons


In the summary section, we have talked about “local cloud” and “hybrid cloud.” We know they are really simple folder synchronizations, and folder synchronization using a local file server / storage system. Egnyte’s service is very much like Dropbox or Google Drive, thus the comparison is very similar to Dropbox’s and Google Drive’s.

3.1 Web browser-based cloud storage.

While it is convenient to access a few cloud files from a web browser, web browsers are not optimized for uploading/downloading large files and folders. If a folder has over 5,000 files, it is very difficult to access files that are whithin. Enterprises often have folders with tens of thousands of files, making it virtually unusable with a web browser. Comparing with DriveHQ, DriveHQ has File Manager client which has been optimized to handle even the largest amounts of data. This desktop client also supports bandwidth throttling, upload / download resuming, and you can manage upload / download tasks to ensure you are accessing documents in order of importance.

3.2 Web-browser features.

Compared with DriveHQ.com website, Egnyte’s website seems to be cleaner. However, it is missing some basic features. E.g:

As you can see from the screenshot below:


Strangely, Egnyte does not display a folder’s create time, modify time or size. Please see the screenshot below. There is no property pages or detail pages to show the folder time and size.

Compared with Windows Explorer and Mac Finder, Egnyte’s website does not display column headers in the file / folder list, making sorting files and folders significantly more difficult.

3.3 Folder sharing.

3.3.1 Web-browser interface.

It is very difficult to find the folder owners with Egnyte's web interface (See the screenshot below). The folder list does not display the folder owner even though it supports sorting by owner and a folder may have multiple owners.

It is also very hard to locate who has access to which folder until you go into the folder permissions page for each folder. As subfolders can also be set with different permissions, it is difficult to check all folders permissions quickly and easily. Making user management nearly impossible with an enterprise with hundreds or thousands of users, each of which has the ability to share with others.

3.3.2 Folder sharing.

With Egnyte, subusers are unable to create new shared folders, only administrators have access to this feature. This will create a lot of extra work for administrators, especially in large organizations.

3.3.3 User permissions.

There is no concept of the group owner (business owner) with Egnyte. All administrative users can create and delete any users, or create and delete any files / folders. For small business owners, it means either the owner will be the only administrator, or if he creates another administrator, his administrator will be able to access all his files/folders. This can pose a major issue if the administrator for a specific department will have access to files stored on Egnyte.

With DriveHQ, the group owner will have complete control over all of it's users, even group administrators. Once the account has been created, the group owner has the ability to specify the type user a person will be (whether that is an administrator, regular user, guest user, etc) and that user will only have access to the files that have been shared with them. On top of this, the group owner can create access rights depending for individual filders and files. Therefore, the group owner has complete control over their documents and confidential information remains confidential.

3.3.4 Sub-group administrators.

With DriveHQ, you can create a sub-group administrator who can create / manage sub-users specifically within their own sub-group. With Egnyte, an administrator user will have control over all other users and all other documents. While you can also create groups, it is just a set of user accounts with no sub-group administrators. DriveHQ's solution allows sub-group administrators to take control over the users that have been assigned to them, ensuring that the account owner is not overwhelmed with sharing and user information requests.

3.3.5 Other capabilities.

Although Egnyte offers more advanced features than many other competitors such as Dropbox and Google Drive, they still lack many basic features that improves data and group management capabilities. Some of those limitations include:

On top of this, Egnyte displays all private folders and files from a user's account within the admninistrator's account. Therefore, if a user uploads a personal document to Egnyte, the administrator has full access to this documents. This may not be a concern to many, however when an administrator or another user is searching for a file, the personal document will be included within the folder tree, clogging up the service and making it more difficult to navigate through irrelevant documents.

3.4 Security features.

When surveyed, business owners and executives have a general agreement that security is one of the top features looked at when selecting a cloud service. Therefore, it is essential to provide a complete suite of security features and protocols in order to comply with tough industry standards. Here are a few features that Egnyte does not currently support: