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Box vs ownCloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Box
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (9th), Cloud Storage (13th), Digital Asset Management (4th), Document Management Software (5th)
ownCloud
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
20th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Box is 7.1%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ownCloud is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Box7.1%
ownCloud1.2%
Other91.7%
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Rashad - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Projects Manager at Tech-hub
Team collaboration has improved through shared access and real-time synchronization
I find the synchronization feature most valuable in Box. When I use multiple devices, it syncs them together and gives excellent results. I can assess the benefits of Box's file sharing. Box's integration with third-party apps is valuable, especially with Outlook. Box has helped my team's productivity by being very helpful with team collaboration when we are sharing certain shared documents between us. I mostly value Box's automation capabilities. They have helped optimize my business processes by saving time for sharing or sending files between the team. This gives us a shared workspace to work together on the same document or the same ideas. Box's security features have helped my organization meet compliance needs.
SC
Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Self-hosted file sync tool used to deploy custom web UIs.
I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market. It’s a full web application platform, an indispensable tool for a business of any size that needs to deploy any kind of custom web UI. If you build an ownCloud app, you’ve got authentication, storage, security, caching, and database layers already fully baked for you. You just need to build your UI and custom logic. Your app doesn’t even need to interact with files, sync, or interact with other ownCloud features. Any web UI can be included without ownCloud. It can even be a portal to web interfaces of other applications within a business using the external app to display external sites within ownCloud. This is the case as long as that site allows itself to be displayed within a frame.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The interface is very good."
"Box is very user-friendly; more so than SharePoint."
"Simple file sharing and sync for internal and external customers."
"Office Integration. The full integration into the Microsoft Office products is just perfect."
"The sharing feature, with its various permission settings, such as viewing or uploading, is convenient and helpful."
"Box had a very easy-to-use search feature and a good user interface on its website, which was faster and better than SharePoint."
"The most valuable feature of Box is security."
"Box is extremely stable, they have not been hacked or lost any data in the past seventeen years. I am very impressed with it."
"I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market."
 

Cons

"The UI should be faster. Sometimes it lags when switching between documents."
"If there was a plugin that added some sort of toolbar in Office, that would be great."
"I find their API to be quite complex and it could be more straightforward."
"It could be cheaper."
"Collaborative editing was challenging if multiple people were in a document at once."
"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."
"Maturity of the enterprise security around user management."
"The integration with other products should be improved."
"Even with fast disks, it still takes a fair bit of time to write most schema changes to multi-GB tables."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version of the solution. There is a free version and monthly and yearly subscriptions available."
"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."
"There's a free version that allows you to use it with almost full-feature access. Even in the free version, it gives you all you need."
"I'm in Higher Ed, so we purchase through Internet2-Net+. I absolutely recommend going that route for Higher Ed customers."
"Box's pricing is excellent."
"Better sign a full year's contract to get a discount."
"It is expensive per head, as you need the enterprise license to get full security and tools. So negotiate a discount!"
"The pricing may seem steep at first, but delve into the features and you'll soon realize it is incredible value for what you get."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
University
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise27
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Box?
The solution is used for data storage and any kind of visualization.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Box?
I found the pricing reasonable because when I was working for an IBM partner, Box was free for us. We did not go to payment and other matters like this.
What needs improvement with Box?
I believe Box has a lot of features that put it in a good rank among the file-sharing apps. I would like to see features for online collaboration between team members in the future, to open and see...
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GE, Toyota, P&G, Caterpillar, Flex, Schneider Electric, Sally Beauty, Eurostar, AstraZeneca, AirBnB, Whirlpool, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Nationwide, Aeropostale etc
CERN, Joy Global, Sciebo, Bauhaus, datto
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