2017 Sync in Review

Welcome to 2018 … Sync’s 7th anniversary. Yes, we’ve been securely storing selfies in the cloud long before selfies were even a thing!

2017 was the year of the hack, with Wannacry ransomware making the rounds, the Equifax data breach making life miserable for millions, and revelations that billions of Yahoo accounts had been compromised. Geeze, that escalated quickly.

When we set out to build a privacy-first cloud storage platform way back in 2011, we couldn’t have imagined the sheer magnitude of today’s online threats. The need for strong encryption and apps designed to protect your data in the cloud has never been greater.

And with that we’re happy to announce that 2017 was the year Sync saved the day. Sync’s file version history and deleted file recovery tools helped thousands of you quickly recover from ransomware attacks. Further, Sync’s end-to-end encryption continues to protect your data in the cloud from the purview of hackers and other esoteric threats.

We’d like to give a quick shoutout and thanks to ProPublica and National Public Radio for recognizing our efforts in 2017. Sync really is a great way to keep your documents and files (and selfies) safe, secure and 100% private.

Now, let’s look back at what made 2017 our best year ever.

Growth

We’d like to welcome the hundreds of thousands of new users that joined Sync in 2017 – we’re now a global community of over 440,000 secure cloud visionaries strong!

Infrastructure

We continue to invest heavily in server-side infrastructure to meet demand, and adding Seagate Enterprise 10 TB helium SAS drives to the mix has certainly been a game changer. With over a trillion files securely stored, and redundant RAID storage arrays replicated across multiple datacenter locations, adding storage capacity has kept our engineering team really, really busy.

Mobile apps

2017 was clearly the year of mobile for us, as we launched brand new mobile apps for both iOS and Android. These were not iterative updates, but rather complete rewrites from the ground up designed to improve performance, reliability, and add a ton of missing features. Your feedback has been amazing, and work on even more new mobile features continues at a rapid pace. Much more in store for 2018.

Desktop apps

We optimized our desktop apps throughout 2017, with updates that introduced a much needed auto-update feature, and fixes for a myriad of bugs and performance issues, as reported by you.

Web panel and more

Drag and drop folder uploads for the web had been a perennial most requested feature, however, we were stuck waiting for web browsers to fully adopt a new set technologies to bring this feature to life. Fortunately, the folks at Firefox and Microsoft got on board in 2017, and along with Google Chrome you can now drag and drop folders with Sync easily. We’re still waiting on Apple to add support for Safari. Fingers crossed.

Other notable updates for 2017 include download all files as zip on shared links, improved two-factor authentication on device attach and optional email-based password reset.

What’s even more exciting is that 2018 may well be the year of the web panel, as our developers are already busy working on significant new features, including (warning spoilers), document previews, improved support for large folders, a new UI and more.

New plans

We launched a number of exciting new plans in 2017, with a focus on making it easier for businesses to setup and manage Sync with multiple employees. Our new Business Pro and Business Pro Advanced plans include up to 10 TB of storage per user and a new administration panel which makes multi-user management easy. We also launched a new Business Solo plan which includes a 4 TB upgrade option. You can upgrade to any of these plans right now.

Most importantly we’ve been able to lock in our every day low pricing, even as the competition raises prices. With Sync you’ve got room to grow, without the fear of surprise sticker shock down the road.

Support

Your feedback is really important to us. It’s how we prioritize new features and work towards making Sync the best it can be. We’re proud to have delivered happiness to over 80% of you, and by all means, please contact us any time if you have questions or just want to chat – we’re here to help!

Just in case you missed it, here’s the top stories from 2017:

We managed to sneak in some awesome new features to wrap up the year:
A very merry Sync holiday update

Looking forward to the new EU General Data Protection Regulation in 2018:
The GDPR: What it is and what it means for your business

Announcing shiny new mobile apps:
The mobile app update you’ve been waiting for is here!

A sneak peak inside boxes of drives:
Unboxing petabytes of storage

Ransomware be gone!
Don’t let the next WannaCrypt ransomware wannabe hold you hostage

Recommend Sync to your friends:
Spread the love, earn rewards

Thanks!

We’d like to extend a sincere thanks, to each and every one of you for choosing Sync. We’re committed to building a file storage and sharing platform that provides better security and privacy in the cloud, and we’re thrilled that so many of you are now keeping your data safe with Sync.

Happy New Year, and here’s to an incredible 2018!