Mac Client Withdrawal
Today, we’ve made the decision to withdraw our Mac Beta Client. As of today, the Mac Beta Client is no longer available for new users to download. Existing users of the Mac Beta Client can continue to use it until July 31st at which time service will be discontinued.
Syncplicity was founded to provide a rich and reliable synchronization, sharing, collaboration, and backup service. One of the key cornerstones we aim for is an exceptional client experience.
One of the main purposes for a Beta is to help perform full testing and validation in real world scenarios. What has become clear to us is while the Mac Beta Client can run well in many scenarios and computer configurations, there are also many for which it doesn’t work well. Over the past few months we’ve been taking a close look at the unexpected issues that some of you have experienced. Unfortunately what we found is that the fixes entail almost a rewrite in many cases — a process that would take many months to a year.
We want everything we release to be outstanding and something we’re extremely proud to offer our users. It’s clear now the Mac Beta Client isn’t there yet, so we will be withdrawing it for reengineering. We will reassess our schedule for redevelopment next year.
For those of you who have signed up for a yearly account, you will be able to cancel and receive a full refund of your $99 subscription fee. For those who have signed up for a monthly account, you will be able to cancel and receive a refund for the most recent month. Details on how to do so will be e-mailed directly to you in the coming days, but you must request a refund no later than December 31st, 2009.
If you have any questions, we’ve set up a dedicated e-mail for you: macbeta@syncplicity.com.
Obviously like all companies, our intention is for Beta software to always become Final Release software. But it’s just as important to recognize and admit when software doesn’t meet our high quality bar. Our decision to withdraw the Mac Beta Client will allow us to step back to do things much better in the future. While it isn’t an easy decision for us, it is the right decision. We do want to express our apologies for any and all inconveniences this may have caused each of you. We do hope that you give us another chance to deliver future products that meet the level of excellence reflective our existing ones.
Sincerely,
Leonard
–
Leonard Chung, CEO
Access your files from your iPhone
2/9/10 edit: Looking to use Syncplicity on the iPhone? Check out MKSync, a third-party application, on the iTunes store!
Today, we’re excited to announce that all the files you’re backing up & sync’ing with Syncplicity are available from your iPhone! We made an optimized version of our website just for our iPhone (and iPod Touch) users. The website currently lets you view documents, photos, and hear your mp3s.
If you have an iPhone, here’s what you’ll see when you login and try to open the San Francisco Muni Map PDF:
To view the site, navigate to https://m.syncplicity.com on your iPhone. The https://my.syncplicity.com site redirects if it detects you’re on an iPhone. And, be sure to add it to your home screen for easier access by clicking the plus icon and clicking “Add to Home Screen”.
Let us know if you’re using it and how you’d like to see it extended.
Cheers,
Isaac
Syncplicity Pricing
The Short Story (for those of you in a hurry)
Update: We haven’t forgotten about those of you in our beta! If you had a Syncplicity beta account as of June 30th and you choose to convert to a free account, it will have twice the normal space (4 GB). If you choose to convert to an Individual Subscription, it will have ten additional gigabytes of space for 50 GB total. New beta accounts without an invite code will have 2 GB for free accounts and 45 GB for Individual Subscriptions.
Many of you have been asking for final pricing and giving tons of great feedback on our initial pricing plans. We’ve been working hard to understand and incorporate your feedback. I’m happy to announce that we’ve finished crunching all of the numbers. Below is Syncplicity’s pricing and account types:
Free: Free forever. Allows up to two computers, 5 revisions per file or 30 days of previous revisions (whichever is less), up to 10,000 files, and 2 GB of storage. The free account expires after 60 days of inactivity.
Individual Subscription: $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Includes unlimited computers, unlimited file versions, unlimited number of files, and 40 GB of storage.
Additional Storage: $9.99 per month or $99 per year for 50 GB of storage. You can add this to your account as many times as you’d like to have even more storage.
An important part of Syncplicity’s growth has been through word of mouth and friends inviting friends. I’m happy to say Syncplicity now has a referral program as well where you can get additional storage bonuses added to your account for every new person that you refer to Syncplicity.
Full details are available here.
What Happened to Unlimited Storage?
Initially, we started with a plan to charge around $20 per month for unlimited storage. The value of Syncplicity is the experience it provides and the fact that it makes your files “active”, not the “passive” storage you can get by using a USB hard drive or an FTP site. Our aim with unlimited storage was to move the worry and cost away from storage in order to focus on the experience being delivered.
With your help, we’ve come up with pricing that allows for a free account and a monthly price as low as $8.25 while still providing enough storage that the basic plan covers the majority of users.
We got lots of feedback from across the Syncplicity community that really boiled down to three themes:
- A trial isn’t enough. There needs to be a free version.
- Many of you felt you don’t have enough data to take advantage of an unlimited plan.
- There should be a lower initial price than $20 per month.
With these three pieces of feedback in mind, we went back to the drawing board to address it. While this new pricing may mean Syncplicity is more expensive for a few of you, for the vast majority of users, the price of Syncplicity is lower than before and we’re now able to offer free accounts.
We hope you like the new pricing. We worked hard to incorporate your feedback and we hope this new pricing addresses much of the comments you’ve given us!
Leonard
Open and edit files in web apps right from your desktop
Updated: Click to read Picnik’s, Zoho’s, and Scribd’s blog entries about Syncplicity.
Announcing new products and features is always the most exciting time for all of us here at Syncplicity. That’s why today was especially fun. We got to launch something big! The big news? Syncplicity is now integrated with Zoho, Picnik, and Scribd in addition to Google Docs and Facebook.
From the very beginning, Syncplicity’s vision has always been to turn your data into something you never even have to think about. When you consider all the places you use it today, you’ll realize that getting it to where you need it, keeping it up-to-date in all the places you use it, and having constant access to it is no small feat. We live in a world that revolves around digital information; it was about time someone made dealing it with it as easy as it once used to be.
Why has dealing with data become so darn complicated anyway? The fact many of us now use multiple computers and devices on a daily basis certainly played a role in it. But that’s only one part of the picture. Even more significant is the rise of the web and its transition from a place where you primarily publish content to a place where you also create it. As the web becomes a serious companion to our desktops and we find ourselves creating and consuming content in both places, keeping it all in sync is a Herculean task.
That’s why we built Syncplicity and why today’s announcement is so exciting. With this release, Syncplicity lets you open and edit your files in any application you like – whether that application is installed on your desktop or lives in your web browser. There are no uploads and downloads to worry about, no additional places to keep your data in, and no out-of-date copies of your files lurking around the web. All your data is always in one place and always available on your computer, just as you’re used to.
While we designed the system to be open and extensible so any website can offer their services to you right on your desktop, we also picked and partnered with three industry leading web applications that you can start taking advantage of right away. They are:
Â
Scribd, the best place to store, share, publish, and view your documents.
Â
Â
Zoho, the leading web-based office suite with an unparalleled feature set.
Â
Â
Picnik, the simplest to use, yet most powerful photo editing site on the web.
Â
Here is how easy we made it: just right click on any supported document or photo, open the Syncplicity menu, and click Preview in Scribd iPaper, Edit in Zoho, or Edit in Picnik. Syncplicity will automatically open your chosen application in a web browser, load your document into it, and, when you’re done, sync any changes you make right back to your desktop. There are no accounts to create, no usernames and password to enter, and nothing to upload or download. Have I also mentioned it’s all free?
Both worlds – the offline world on your desktop and the online one in your web browser – have a lot to offer. With Syncplicity, there’s no need to move to one or the other exclusively. We’ll bridge them together for you so you can take the best from both.
Let us know what you think, what work and what doesn’t, and what other web applications you’d like to see integrated with Syncplicity. If you’re a company or a developer interested in becoming available to users on their desktops, get started at https://my.syncplicity.com/developers.
See you at the forums!
Ondrej
Press Coverage
Syncplicity has been getting a lot of great press coverage lately. You may have run across these articles, but I’ll be the first to admit that you’d be hard-pressed to find any of these reviews through our website. We’re working on updating our website, but in the meantime I’ll post new reviews here. While we’re still in the process of hunting down all Syncplicity reviews, here are a few from the past week that I’ve run across:
Hear it here first — literally. The Power of Information radio talk show recently covered Syncplicity. You can listen to the full show by clicking here. Fast-forward to 17:07 to hear just the Syncplicity specific bits. You can also listen to it on the radio. Times are available on their site.
VUNet’s blog, Download Junkies did a comparison of Syncplicity and SugarSync, concluding: “We have both a SugarSync and Syncplicity account and prefer the design of Syncplicity.”
MakeUseOf recently covered Syncplicity as in an article with a great title, “A Tryst with Syncplicity”. I didn’t entirely get their Cheer/Boo system though.
Austrailian magazine, PC Authority honored Syncplicity with their highest rating, 5 out of 5 stars.
I’m excited to see such great reviews, especially since we’re still in beta!
Leonard
Improved online file browser
We’re excited to announce an improved online file browser for files you’re synchronizing with Syncplicity. In this release we made the following improvements:
- Recycle a file/folder – Moves a file to the Recycle Bin online and on your local computers
- Permanently delete a file/folder – Completely remove a file from Syncplicity’s backup
- Empty Syncplicity Recycle Bin – Clears all deleted files from Syncplicity’s backup
- Add New Directory – Create a new directory from the online browser
- New navigation buttons: Back & Forward, and Up Directory
- Improved the tree navigation and fixed several bugs
Here’s a shot of the new file browser in action:
There’s a brand new pop-out menu on files. You can either right-click on a file/folder or click the little Syncplicity icon to bring it up. Right now, we have a few options in the menu and we’re planning several more. Here’s the menu in action:
And here’s the menu when you’re browsing deleted files in the Syncplicity Recycle Bin:
We’re excited to publish these updates as they’re based on a lot of user feedback. Keep sending us your suggestions!
- Isaac
The New Syncplicity Blog
We publicly launched on April 15th, 2008. Most Americans know this day as tax day but for us it was a great day. We finally got to reveal our site and service to everyone. We’ve been working hard since launch to incorporate all your feedback. Since then, we’ve worked to make the service easier to use and understand and work just like you’d expect. Continue sending us feedback and we’ll do our best to improve this service.
We’re starting this blog so we can share some of our ideas with you. We also want to let you in on a little inside information as we go along. Stay tuned.