Box Reviews

We had a specific department for information security and the person who handled that is no longer at the company, however, the head of that department was very adamant that at that time Box was the most secure option. He's the one that implemented Box for his department and we continue to use it to stay secure.

I've recently started using it in conjunction with another product that I use, which is Smartsheet. It incorporates very well with that. It's just made it easier to share documents in a secure fashion.

It is a very user-friendly product.

The solution is stable.

Technical support and their sales reps are helpful.

For me, it's very easy to navigate whether I'm in my email, whether I'm in my Smartsheet or SLAM. It's just straightforward to navigate throughout so that I can get my documents, make changes and load them back without any complexity.

What I get from some of the feedback is they're not sure about the versioning and the downloading, how you download it, and make sure the changes are reflected back in Box. That's more of a training issue rather than a product issue. You have to deal with a bit of a learning curve.

They could integrate better with other platforms. 

It was mainly used by one department and then spread out over time. Maybe we've had it for five to six years.

The solution is stable. 

I myself have not noticed any problems, and I haven't heard any problems reported to IT.

There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

I'm not sure, however, it is my understanding that the solution can scale. 

We are kind of odd in the fact that we have several different file shares. It's hard to gauge how widely used this particular product is used. Whoever wants to use it, it uses it. It's probably strange for most companies. I would imagine most companies don't do it that way.

It is my understanding that support is good. I haven't had a huge use for the technical support.

Positive

We do have Citrix ShareFile. I use Box more than I use ShareFile, however, overall in the company, I'm not sure of what percentage of the company uses ShareFile, and which percentage uses Box. We also have network shares, and that's really where most of the people have done their work.

I'm not sure how it originally was implemented. I'm not sure if it was difficult or easy to implement. 

I'm not sure how many people, if any, are needed to maintain the product.

My understanding is the solution was done in-house. 

I don't have any information in regards to licensing. 

We are a customer and end-user.

We're using the latest version of the solution at this point.

My own preference is to have one system for sharing files so that everybody's on the same page. They do have governance, which we didn't implement. However, it would be important to keep retention consistent. 

I did work at one point with the sales rep, and they were very informative. They helped us understand what all the different options we had for different Box products. The governance would also be a really good thing to implement along with just the enterprise version of Box.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten. 

Box is a secure location for non-structured content including documents and PowerPoints. Box comes with its own e-signature capability. It has a very simple workflow capability that allows you to build out certain workflows that you are going to repeat on a regular basis. 

Box is very simple, it was designed for anyone who sits in front of a computer to be able to do advanced actions without having to go through any training or any classes. You can put together total workflows for managing inventories or doing marketing campaigns. Anywhere where content is involved, Box can do it.

Box has a number one feature, it is very easy to use. Millions of people have free accounts. They are already aware of the user interface, the electronic signature, the metadata and the tagging. The entire experience is not lacking in any way that you would need in a corporate environment.

I have been using Box for five years.

Box is extremely stable, they have not been hacked or lost any data in the past seventeen years. I am very impressed with it.

Whether you have one terabyte or two terabytes of data, your performance is going to remain the same. Box has tens of thousands of servers. Their speed for uploads and downloads and performance is standard for everyone. You are not going to get better than the next guy, no matter how big your company grows or how many people you have in your company. It is not going to be slow for any of your customers.

Technical support is better than their competition because I have had experience with both. If you are in a critical situation, and you have the right support contract with them, you will get immediate results. But if you try to go on the cheap side, you might have to wait physically for someone to respond by calling you. So that all depends on what kind of package you buy. 

The cost averages around thirty five dollars a month. There are no additional costs on top of that. They house all your data and they use all of their hardware and their equipment, and that is why it is thirty five dollars a month per person. You do not have to buy any of the hardware and you do not have to do anything on the back end.

The initial setup for an organization is under two minutes. And that is even if they go with an unlimited amount of storage. The implementation as far as your governance of the site itself and who's going to have access depends on the size of the organization and how detailed they are. That could take from two to six weeks to iron out the details and then activate it to enterprise. The setup environment with all the securities and encryption, takes about two minutes.

Box does have a considerable return on the investment, but not without getting into proprietary.

The setup for Box is very simple it is like opening up any account. 
You need to know what the organization wants to do with Box. Someone has to sketch out, who is going to have what permissions, and who is going to be able to access a particular file structure. One thing that Box would benefit from is a records management component. 

I think the vision of the leadership in the company is amazing. More importantly it's not hackable and it's a secure, easy-to-use platform. And that's what people really want.

I would rate Box a ten out of ten.

We use this solution for file storage.

It is really easy to load files to and from this solution. 

The search features and role permissions are not very user friendly. It only searches the first few pages of a document, which is quite a problem. In a future release, we'd like to have better permissions for folder level permissions at low levels. 

We have been using this solution for six months. 

This is a stable solution. 

We have not had any challenges with scalability. 

This solution is good for file storage but there are better options out there.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten. 

I use Box to deploy virtual machines. My computer is Windows-based, and whenever I need to use Linux, I can download it there and do all my development work within it.

I like that Box makes it easy to deploy virtual machines.

It could be cheaper. 

I have been using Box for about three or four years.

Box is a stable solution. I have never had any issues. I was never disconnected for any reason, and it kept the connection even though I put my laptop in sleep mode.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give stability a ten.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment process depends on your computer resources.

I implemented this solution. 

I have to pay for Box. It could be a little cheaper.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give the pricing a five.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Box a ten.

We use the solution primarily for storage and very occasionally for collaboration.

I haven't found any valuable features.

I don't like the low level of role-based security it provides – it's very cumbersome, and the support is ordinary at times.

We've been using the product for 12 months.

I would say the solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

In my experience, support manages metrics instead of managing the solution. It seems they want to meet the SLAs without providing a solution.

Neutral

Box is relatively easy to set up.

On pricing, I would point out that the more you dig, or the deeper the level of tools, the more expensive it becomes. 

For basic file storage and a little collaboration, the product is fine. But for anything more integrated from a security point of view, it is not.

Besides Box, we also run SharePoint, and in terms of a holistic approach, I would say that SharePoint is probably the better option.

I would rate this product a six out of ten.

We are using the latest Box Enterprise. We use it to collaborate securely with customers in controlled conditions. The general use cases are really just customer collaborations. It might be in a financial institution working with loans or selling loans. With low interest and COVID, most banks are really pushing the refinance functionality, and it is very important for banks and credit unions and even just loan brokerage companies to be able to securely, easily, and safely get information to and from their customers.

Most of the time, email is not the way to do it because either people don't know how to use email securely or the files are too large to be sent via email. That's why these file-sharing collaboration things are really popular and should be really popular with the financial industry. This is a huge use case right now.

Governance and ease of use are why I think a lot of people like Box, including ourselves. Basically, we're concerned about what information is being sent to Box, so we use a lot of the Box governance features to make sure that what is being sent to Box is appropriate. If it is not appropriate, it is not allowed to be sent. It is also pretty easy to use. It is the easiest to use for customers and for technologists.

I haven't really come across a case where we're not able to use it for what it is, so I don't really have anything holding us up or any customers holding us up at this point that I know of. There are always some limitations, but as a technologist, I just live with them, and there is always room for improvement, but I don't have anything quantifiable.

I have been using this solution for a couple of years.

I have seen cases where the number of people using it in an organization goes as high as 1,000.

Their support was very good. We very rarely need support, but when we did engage them, they were quick to respond and very accurate and complete.

In addition to Box and ShareFile, we also use a product called Egnyte. It is very similar to Box. I would say it is on an equal level with Box. Both Box and Egnyte are better than ShareFile.

We are in a reseller and consulting role for some companies, and some of our customers wanted to go with Box because they're a larger company. It was basically just a perception of financial stability. It was not that there was a concern that Egnyte wasn't stable. It was just a concern that they were a much smaller company. They perceive a large company as a lower risk.

They are very price competitive when pushed. Initially, they come out with a standard list price, but they are willing to be very competitive. The Box price was pretty much equal to or lower than the Citrix price, and Box has more features.

We like this solution, and we prefer to work with the Box consulting team. Basically, for a large company, we would recommend that people work with their professional services just to get things set up quickly and completely. It is possible to do this on your own, but it is faster if you have help from Box. Their pro services are very good.

I would rate Box an eight out of ten. Eight is about as good as somebody is going to get. There is always room for improvement, but I don't have anything quantifiable to make it a ten. 

Our clients' primary use cases are for business, mostly enterprise.

One of the coolest features in the enterprise is nominal file requests. Let's say you're getting a tune-up to your state plan, and the law has changed. There is a questionnaire with some documents and the paralegal sends them to you in just a normal email with the custom URL. You don't have to have a Google account for Google Drive or a Microsoft account for OneDrive. The fact that you are within the time window and within the credentialed determination, Box is aware of who does everything. They're the most compliant company we've ever encountered. We never run into a FIPSE or HIPAA or Sox issue with Box because they check every one of the boxes every time. So you never have to worry about that. To finish the story, you get that email, click on that link, fill in some answers on a TLS secure webpage, they give you a place to upload, and you're done.

From our user side or client side, when you hit that submit, you get deposited right in their client file, in your folder. And every one of your answers becomes metadata that will accompany all of your documents, all the way through your journey. This eliminates errors. It eliminates redundancy. It eliminates retyping. It's searchable. It's taggable. Really, really exquisite. 

The other thing about Box is that it has a really, really simple installation of the desktop component. And their new one, Box Drive, the users love. It creates a thumbnail, a meta, in your Explorer, whether it's Windows or Mac so everything you have access to in the cloud version you also have in the browser version. It's so easy, especially for older users. We find if they're over 40, then they have a much easier time with Box.

We've never had a penetration. We've never had a security issue that their support didn't solve. We love their audit trail. We can know exactly when a collaborator opens. We love how you can define a collaborator.

Let me spend a little time on that because that's really important - Box versus other cloud storage. Instead of being one dimensional, it's three dimensional. You can visualize a little matrix. Do you want them to be able to download this thing or just look at it? Do you want them to be able to upload and not download? Do you want them to be able to edit? Do you want them to be able to print? You can inhibit or enable any of those. So you can be dealing with opposing counsel and you don't want them to download, you just want them to see it, because your only responsibility to the court is that they can see it. But you don't want them stealing your work product. Box protects our client's intellectual property while allowing them to do business. So it's really exquisite.

The user interface is straightforward and simple. We also do a bunch of pro bono. One of our clients is sobrietyhouse.org, the largest, oldest, lowest recidivist rate, lowest cost rehab in Colorado. We regularly deploy Box there. We've tried to help this year with Save the Stages, with helping various musicians and other creators. This is a good example of how flexible Box is. 

In our corporate account, we will have extremely confidential information. We can create a folder set, share it to a band in Boulder and let them use that to collaborate vids, MP3s, tracks. Everything that they're trying to get ready for their Facebook Watch. And we can jump on and help. Box Note is like notepad, but 100 people can be on at the same time, tuning and perfecting, which works beautifully for lyric development.

That's completely isolated, works fine, costs them nothing. It's subsumed under our umbrella Box enterprise account. Because we have an unlimited number of external users we can add it's got a good genome. Yet, it wasn't designed by marketing people. It was designed by engineers and people who actually did work for a living.

I have been using Box for about nine years.

I recommend doing the trial first, because it's not cheap ware. It's not overly expensive, but it's not cheap ware, and enterprise has a minimum number of users. Of course, it's nothing for us because we were well in excess to that minimum. But check your pricing. Don't think that just because Google Drive is cheaper that doesn't make it better.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd rank Box a 10. And I rank their customer service a 9.5. Because they're not as good as GravityZone, but they're better than anybody else out there.

We primarily use Box for sharing files within our group.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the set of security options that can be set when sharing files with a group. There is a lot of flexibility in that you can assign specific people read-only permissions. It can be done at the object level, or the folder level.

The application is very light in terms of uploading and downloading files.

With respect to the end-user experience, this is a very simple solution.

Better integration with other solutions is needed. Some use cases require the user to integrate with a document management system, or they may want to do some sort of workflow management. For example, if they want to maintain an integrational ERP system then different departments may have different requirements. The legal team will require a different set of controls than the HR department, and they want to have some sort of workflow as a process. I do these things manually because they are lacking in this product. If an ERP needs a file stored in Box then it should be able to download it directly.

I would like to see an indexing system because without knowing the filename, it is difficult to find what I am looking for amongst thousands of files. It would be nice to have some sort of metadata.

I have been using Box for five or six years.

My team has had no issues in terms of stability. My use case is really simple and straightforward.

With perhaps 200,000 users, we have had no issues with scalability. 

I have not been in contact with technical support.

We use several other tools for content management such as Documentum, Alfresco, and SharePoint. The choice of tool depends on the use case.

We have our own in-house team that deploys this product.

My advice to anybody who is considering this type of solution is to first formulate the use case. Box has certain limitations, but it is very plain and easy to use. If you need collaboration in terms of document management then it provides a simple interface that offers differing levels of granularity in terms of access control.

This is a good solution but it does not address all of the use cases for a content management system.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.