What cloud storage/syncing tools will meet our needs?

Question

I am a partner in a small business.

Currently we have one office with a shared computer, and we both work from home on our personal computers. We use a single account with iDrive Sync to store all our business files. It gives us both full access to all folders & files, keeps them all in a familiar & organized hierarchy, syncs them between all 3 machines, and makes backup very simple.

We are in the process of hiring an assistant, who we want to have limited access only to certain folders & files. We still want synced files so we can collaborate & review their work/updates.

While we would like to continue using iDrive, creating multiple users would require a much more expensive plan. We've looked at Basecamp, but are unsure if we really need project management software. We've also looked at Dropbox, Google Drive, etc but are unsure if these are really the most practical way to work closely with our assistant. Rather than share individual files, we'd prefer to just limit their access to specific folders/files and keep our current folder/file hierarchy in place.

Is there a software solution that would meet our needs? Or should we look at a NAS-type solution?

Answer 1

Reading your requirements, you could use GoogleDrive although managing folder permissions is painful, and you'd need to operate out of a browser. I am not going to bother with Cloud Software (as in, traditional storage solutions) but more online collaborative solutions.

My suggestion is Confluence for the following reasons:

• You can have multiple "spaces", such as Draft, Public and Personal - each having their own permissions
• Version control is inbuilt into the application, allowing you to role back if needed
• You can edit the permissions on spaces and documents
• Cloud based and can be accessed from mobile devices and computers through a browser
• Inbuilt editor for styling documents
• Inbuilt spell-checking
• Export functionality.
• Other features listed here.

As for pricing (not that it was requested), your base fee will be $10.00 (USD) per month.

This tool, being "on the cloud" means you do not need to worry about backups, and version control is maintained.

Later down the track, you can add a plethora of powerful tools via the Marketplace (at a cost sometimes) to add to your instance.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Jira.