Customer Satisfaction Survey
We recently surveyed our Syncplicity users to see how we are meeting their needs. Based on the survey outcomes, we want to share how we plan to address each of the below issues in our upcoming product development schedule.
How many people does your company employ?
Two thirds of respondents told us they worked in companies of 1-10 employees. Syncplicity is aiming to provide a solid, reliable syncing and collaboration tool for small and medium-sized companies. We’re happy to help small and medium sized team users work more closely together
What would you likely use as an alternative if Syncplicity was no longer available?
This survey result made it very clear who are competitors are. When you know who the competition is, it’s very easy to know where you need to do to be better than the other guys. As Syncplicity’s Support Guru, I’m here to promise you that while other companies have great products, my personal goal is to blow them out of the water with Syncplicity’s customer support. Customer support is just one of the areas we plan to amaze you in, and next week we’ll talk more about how we plan to compete with other companies.
How easy is it to set up and use the Syncplicity service?
Only a third of respondents told us that setting up Syncplicity was extremely easy. While an additional half of respondents told us it was still easy, our goal is to improve these responses – A new online user manual (look for it next week!) is one of our first steps towards better documentation and instructions.
Please indicate the importance you place on the following Syncplicity offerings:
Three items received a “High” ranking in response to this question, and we are happy to see that our user requests are in line with our product roadmap.
- Ability to add extra storage: If you’re using extra storage, we take this as a sign of success – you’re using our product a lot, and we should make it easy for you to continue doing that! We are currently investigating ways to make it unbelievable easy to expand your storage space with just a few clicks.
- Large file support (>2GB): Most files fall well under the 2GB size limitation, but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up on stretching those limits. We are investigating the synchronization of even larger files to make working with Syncplicity appropriate for all your files.
- Centralized user management and administration: I’m pleased to say that the last item is already something we are actively working on. If you are a business user, we’d love to have you join our beta team and give us feedback. You’ll get early access to the new tools, the chance to help us develop this new product, and free service in exchange for your feedback. To join in, email sales@syncplicity.com and tell us a bit about your business and how you might use this tool in your organization.
What would you like to receive from Syncplicity on a regular basis?
Our users let us know that announcements about the product – service messages, new features, and company updates – were important. We’ll improve our blogging and Twittering schedule to keep our users up to date.
Listening to our users is a critical and intentional act in everything we do at Syncplicity. Based on this survey, 75% of respondents would recommend Syncplicity to a friend, so hopefully that means you like what we’re doing. Thank you for everyone who completed the survey!
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
News from Syncplicity Support
At the end of June, I joined the support team as a Support Guru. This role is a unique challenge for me – no existing dedicated support team, low ticket volume, but technological needs that are detailed and complex. This blog series will follow me as I build the support team and services at Syncplicity to match the needs of our users.
What are your first steps?
One of the questions asked in my interview was “What will you change here in your first 30 days?” My answer? “Nothing.” I plan on spending my first 30 days with Syncplicity learning about our users, investigating the product, and learning about support patterns and current support tools. After that 30 days, I will be able to start moving support in a direction that is in line with the Syncplicity user base and company direction – but I know the learning doesn’t stop at 30 days. It is critical to have a constant presence with the support queue and user base to make sure that we continue to grow with our user base and their needs.
What is your hypothesis for how support will grow?
- Support Ticket Tracking
Support ticketing volume is fairly low at Syncplicity – about 20 tickets a day. However, we do have an active forum and Twitter account. Because the nature of our support interactions require more one-on-one communication, it’s time to move support into a standard tracking system rather than a public forum. To do this, we will use a highly customized version of Salesforce to handle support interactions. We will also have a dedicated support Twitter account to help troubleshoot and announce status updates to our user base. - Support Business Hours
The support team should remain relatively stable for the next few months and 8×5 support should cover our bases. However, after assessing the user base, we may want to offer first 8×7 support (covering international users and east coast users), and then finally offer 24×7 support as our product becomes mission critical in an organization. - Professional Services
Syncplicity’s current user base is very much an early adopter group – which means they like figuring things out themselves, or turning to a community-based support model for assistance. As we acquire more customers, we may offer training, customization, and engagement services to serve the entire breadth of technological knowledge and ability of our users. - Documentation
One of my first tasks at Syncplicity will be to centralize our FAQs and documentation into one user manual that is easy to search, update, and collaborate on with the Syncplicity team.
So, stay tuned as I start my new role at Syncplicity. Watch the company grow along with the support and services team!
How safe are the clouds?
In the last week, Carbonite, a large backup vendor, was reported to have lost data for a significant number of users. In articles like this and this, journalists and users have been asking, rightly so, “How safe is data in the cloud?” If companies providing Cloud Computing are charging money to manage others’ data, we should expect them to do a better job than the average user or company. But how much safety can we reasonably expect?
As someone who uses Cloud-based services each day, I follow these discussions with interest. How much safety do I expect from using the Cloud? I expect to have full access to every bit of data I have at all times. No not having access to some of my data and not the rest, requesting a restore and waiting for an email when it’s ready, no waiting for a DVD in the mail. In a nutshell, complete and instant access. But is this a reasonable expectation for all data managed through Cloud Computing?
In my view, no. “Cloud Computing” is a type of technology, just as a “car” is a type of vehicle. While a Volvo and a Pinto are both cars, few would argue that they can expect the same level of safety. Before I buy a car, I ask basic questions to find out how many airbags there are or whether there is traction control because I know each car is different.
Cloud Computing is exactly the same. Problems that affect one Cloud Computing solution may not affect another. I reasonably expected complete and instant access because I did my homework.
Below is a basic set of questions I use to determine how safe my data is. I’ve included answers for Syncplicity as well for those curious.
1. How is the data stored?
You want at least three geo-replicated copies. If you have three copies, if something fails, during the time it takes an automated system or a human person to fix the problem, you still have multiple copies elsewhere for safety. A secondary failure happening after a first is surprisingly likely. Geo-replication means the data is stored in multiple data centers. Natural disasters, power outages, and network failures can all disable a data center. These types of problems, while rare, also typically take days to resolve.
What Syncplicity does: For a higher level of data safety, Syncplicity keeps four geo-replicated copies of all data.
2. Are verifications being done on the data?
Storing data is easy. It’s making sure you can get it back, one month, one year, or one decade later that’s hard. If you’ve ever burned a CD and found you couldn’t read it back later, you’ve experienced bit rot. You want to find out how your provider verifies your data hasn’t suffered bit rot and is still accessible.
What Syncplicity does: Syncplicity works with active data so our systems are constantly writing and reading the data stored. On each read, a verification test is performed to ensure that the data is accessible and the same as what was stored so you can be assured that your data is always available to you when you need it.
3. How is the data managed?
You want to make sure that your data is encrypted, there is strong security and access controls, and a strong privacy policy. One thing to look out for is that the privacy and data disclosure policies of many companies cover contact information, but specifically exclude your actual data. Thus, while they aren’t allowed to give your home address to anyone, they could give them your tax return. This is just plain wrong, but something to watch for.
What Syncplicity does: Data stored in Syncplicity is transferred and stored fully encrypted with the same technologies used by banks and the military for classified information. Specifically, data is transferred over 128bit SSL and stored using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Syncplicity’s Privacy Policy is also one of the strongest in the industry. We make it a point to explicitly extend our privacy policy to cover all stored data. Viral Tarpara and I discussed what this all means in more detail in Understanding Privacy in Cloud Computing.
4. What happens if the company disappears tomorrow?You’ll want to make sure they have a good story as to how to get your data if they go out of business or the service fails in a prolonged manner.
What Syncplicity does: Syncplicity provides data management rather than pure data storage. In the case that Syncplicity disappears tomorrow, you still have full access to your data on each computer, device, or web application that you use. What you lose is the accessibility and management functions such as access to previous versions and revision history, access to your data from your cell phone, and simple sharing.
As luck would have it, my own laptop died a horrible death this week and my faith in the clouds and Syncplicity got put to the test. I’m happy to report that all of the cloud-based services I used, from hosted e-mail to online code repositories to Syncplicity, passed with flying colors.
More Storage – Same Price, Limited Time!
Times are tough and it’s no secret there’s pressure on all of us to be more efficient at work and at home. With that in mind, Syncplicity would like to help. That’s why we’re so thrilled to announce a limited time promotion: sign up for a yearly account with us and get 100GB of storage for only $99.00 for the first year! That’s right, this means you can get twice as much space for sharing, syncing, backup, and anything else you like to do with Syncplicity, and pay no more than you would for our regular 50GB account!
If you don’t already have a Syncplicity account, browse over to http://www.syncplicity.com/promo and create one now. If you already do, but you’d like to take advantage of this offer and upgrade to an annual plan, just visit https://my.syncplicity.com/promo. This promotion ends July 2009.
Did you know Syncplicity is on Twitter? If you’d like to be the first to hear about announcements like this in the future and stay up-to-date on what’s happening with the Syncplicity team, follow us @ http://twitter.com/syncplicity.
Thanks for your support!
The Syncplicity Team
Mac Beta is out!
Today we are excited to announce the publicly available Syncplicity Mac Beta Client! With this release, Syncplicity users can share files between their Windows and Mac computers with ease. Any file changes made on one computer will sync to the other computer.
For those of you coming from backup products, there is no schedule option for Syncplicity. The client watches your files for changes and uploads the new versions immediately, it doesn’t wait a minimum of 4 hours like you may be used to. And for those using other ‘one folder’ sync products, you do not have to move all your documents to a new folder. Syncplicity will sync them wherever they are now.
Just like with the Windows version, any Mac folder can become a Syncplicity folder by right clicking the folder and adding it to Syncplicity. Once it’s a Syncplicity folder, the Syncplicity client will watch the folder for changes and immediately synchronize the changes to your other computers. New and updated files will be securely backed up by Syncplicity, past revisions will be available on the Syncplicity website, and the latest versions will be sync’ed to your other computers.
Our Windows users will immediately recognize the Syncplicity icon sitting pretty in the menu bar. Syncplicity communicates its status through the menu icon and the grayed lines in the pop-down menu. For the geekier users, you can find out what Syncplicity is up to by watching the trace window.
If you have a Mac, give the new beta a whirl. As this is a beta, please send us feedback!
Happy Sync’ing!
Isaac
The Beta period is over!
It was a long night back on April 15th, the day we first unveiled Syncplicity to the world as a Beta service. We’ve been working on the product for about a year at that point and releasing its Beta version was a culmination of many sleepless nights, heated feature discussions, and personal bonds we forged in making our vision a reality. We weren’t sure how things were going to turn out – no one ever does – but that only added to our excitement and drive to make Syncplicity succeed.
Fast forward about six and a half months to today, November 3rd. There are twice as many of us now and we’re still hiring (apply on our Jobs page and look out for new openings soon!). We’re fortunate to be backed by a fantastic venture firm here in San Francisco and can’t wait to use the funds to deliver an even better service to you, our users. And we’re delighted to announce that we’re leaving the Beta label behind and launching a release version Syncplicity! We’ve dedicated the last few months to making sure the service was ready for prime time – expanded our infrastructure, sped up the service, and fixed the last few bugs still lurking around. We hope you like it!
Starting today, you can also subscribe to one of Syncplicity’s paid plans. If you’ve been keeping track of our plans around this, you’ll notice a few changes we’re making – changes we think you’re going to like. Our basic paid plan is now 25% larger (starts at 50GB) and if you tell your friends about Syncplicity, we’ll add an extra 2GB to your paid account for the first three that subscribe.
Our free plan isn’t going anywhere and is getting a bit of a makeover as well. All free users start off with 2GB, but we’ve made it easy to get that number up to 5GB, and even 7GB. How? Invite three friends and we’ll add 1GB to your account for each one who signs up.
Help us spread the word about Syncplicity and we’ll make sure you and your friends are getting one of the best deals out there. That’s right – unlike before, your friends will get 4GB free accounts and extra 5GB in their paid accounts if they decide to give Syncplicity a try based on your recommendation! This is a limited time offer though, so don’t delay!
Our special thanks go to all of our existing Beta users who have given us their invaluable feedback in the form of suggestions, bug reports, and even the occasional crash report. We appreciate it! As a small token of our gratitude, we’ll start your free accounts at 5GB and paid accounts at 60GB if you subscribe by the end of the year. Note that we’ll also keep your accounts unlimited until November 17th in order to give you plenty of time to make a decision as to which plan to choose.
As always, we’re looking forward to your feedback and working with you to make Syncplicity even better!
The Syncplicity Team
Infrastructure Upgrade
At 5 PM PDT on Tuesday, September 23rd, Syncplicity will be performing a major scheduled upgrade. Given the size and complexity of the change, we expect the transition to take about seven hours. During this time, your computer will be unable to synchronize with Syncplicity and my.syncplicity.com will be unavailable. www.syncplicity.com and blog.syncplicity.com will continue to be available.
You can leave your client running during this time — it will automatically reconnect and resume synchronizing when we are back up. And of course, your data and account information will be kept safe & secure throughout the process.
Our team will be working throughout the night until this migration is complete — we will be twittering updates (http://twitter.com/syncplicity) along the way. Feel free to say hi if you’re online too.
For those of you wondering what we’re up to, here’s the scoop:
Behind the scenes, Syncplicity runs on some pretty serious hardware. Part of my job is to keep it running smoothly and plan for future growth.
The Syncplicity servers handle millions of requests every day. During the past few months, Syncplicity has been growing quickly and our servers have been under an increasingly high load. Even with several hardware upgrades, we’ve still had some brownouts during which some of you were unable to get the instant synchronization we built into the service. Like you, we notice when our tray icon turns gray.
A month ago, we embarked on a plan to perform a major refresh of our infrastructure to eliminate these problems and ensure ample room to grow. We’ve invested heavily in new servers and a new architecture that we’re finally ready to unveil. Our server count is tripling. Individual servers will be more powerful.
For example, as part of the upgrade, all our database servers will be moving to quad-proc, quad-core servers. Watching 16 cores in action is intense. We’re also scaling out to increase redundancy and improve reliability and scalability. This translates into a better experience for all users and as a small bonus, I know I’ll be sleeping better at night. 
Thanks,
Isaac
VP of Technology
PC World Sync Shootout: Syncplicity’s #1!
PC World has just published the results of its synchronization, backup, and sharing product shootout (available at PC World and published in the September ‘08 issue).
“With its breadth of features, ease of use, and added bonuses such as version control, Syncplicity is my top pick among sync services.” – Scott Dunn, PC World
Needless to say, we’re ecstatic that PC World has chosen Syncplicity as the number one choice over others in the area, especially against such established competitors!
We’ve always been huge believers in listening closely to users and delivering the best experience we could that everyone, from our moms to the geekiest of geeks, could use. It’s great to hear such strong validation from such a respected source. Time for some champagne!
Cheers!
Leonard, Ondrej, and Isaac
Syncplicity in Lifehacker’s Top 5 File Syncing Tools
We’re honored! Lifehacker, “an award-winning, daily blog that features tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you get things done smarter and more efficiently”, is running its popular Hive Five feature series on File Synchronization tools this week and Syncplicity is in the Top 5!
Syncplicity made the list after a few days of “qualifiers” when Lifehacker readers had a chance to root for their favorite tool. Now anyone can vote for any of the five contenders in a real poll and we hope you vote for Syncplicity!
Read all about it and vote at http://lifehacker.com/398696/five-best-file-syncing-tools. If you end up voting for someone else, be sure to let us know why in the Forums – we care about your feedback more than anything else!
Thanks for voting!
The Syncplicity Team