But isn’t Syncthing already open source Dropbox? Can easily use own hardware too which is very nice.
Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
101–110 of 219 posts
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#102The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.
Yes Syncthing does those things
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm using iOS and macOS. On macOS I have the folder that syncs experience (I'm using Synology Drive, but Dropbox works the same way), on iOS I have the "browse remote files" experience but I can pin files I always want to keep available which is what I want.
Right. It's similar to Windows and Android experience. Thing is, for the latter, I don't want to "pin files I always want to keep available" - I want them to actually exist as files in the shared storage, so other apps can operate on them as if on regular files. (Unfortunately, both mobile platforms themselves are actively fighting this approach, and instead encourage apps to keep data in private databases and never…
I get the pain point, but databases are a much better data model for multi-device, intermittently-connected sync. Filesystems just aren’t designed to be async and conflict-resolving.
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#104The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.
Right - you pay for the GUI and the well-balanced user experience.
It's less about, strictly speaking, the storage.
Which is, in the end, true of a lot of tools where the underlying 'things' aren't particularly spectacular but rather it's the user experience that sells it
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#105I pay Dropbox $120 per year for 2TB. No transfer fees, solid Apps, macOS integration, free APIs. How much on S3? A LOT more.
Just saying, but this is not really fair. It's not like you use that 2TB. So you shouldn't compare it to a 2TB bucket. Most of these plans have limits to prevent abuse but they're well beyond the 'I need to care' level. Maybe you use 1TB, maybe just 10GB. As a user on this site I expect you know that a 10GB plan and a 1TB plan won't be that much different.
You're right, I'm currently only using 1.1 TB out of 2.0. But saying a 10GB plan and 1TB aren't much different is crazy talk.
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#106We've officially come full circle https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Every so often someone is like, Dropbox isn’t that hard. Look at this amazing ZFS/whatever! So simple. Yeah, I keep paying Dropbox every year so I don’t have to think about it. I shoot a sync off to backblaze every once in a while.
I dislike Dropbox for reasons that aren't technical, but the big thing for me is that I want either E2EE, or control/ownership of where my data is stored. These are my personal files (no, not that kind of personal), I'm not just going to scatter them on the internet.
My solution so far has been NextCloud, but I'm getting pretty fed up with it. But not enough to actually do anything about it... yet.
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#107Why wouldn't I trust a vibe coded app that has existed for 1 week with all my important data?
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#108The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.
> but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced Which mobile OS would that be? The big reason I stopped being excited about cloud storage is that on mobile, from what I can tell, none of the major providers care about "folder that syncs" experience. You only get an app that lets you view remote storage. The o…
Obsidian is exactly this, it just totally doesn't act like it. in fact, it is a bit fiddly to make it do this. but THIS is why Obsidian is so useful
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#109Absolutely not. The value isn't in the cloud storage. The value is in the client (DropBox in my case) seamlessly working across all my devices.
This sounds like a problem already solved without the need for proprietary clients.
Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
#110Neat! Pricing wise it might not always make sense though to use the commercial blob storages, especially for solo usage. 1 TB is roughly 20-30 USD per month at AWS/GCP only in storage, plus traffic and operations. R2 is slightly cheaper and includes traffic. Compared to e.g a Google AI plan where you get 5 TB storage for the same price (25 USD/month) + Gemini Pro thrown in.
A family member has uploaded a backup of all of the family photos to Amazon Glacial Storage, on the order of a few hundred GB, and gleefully sends me screenshots of the <$1/mo charges.