With the current corporate focus on remote work, file-sharing and syncing services have become an essential part of the modern office. While some companies have custom-designed solutions that meet their needs, these can be complicated and clunky to implement, requiring cybersecurity and IT administration input.
Luckily, there are several free or easily accessible options available that small businesses can tap into to cope with a remote office’s demands. For some guidance on which to choose, we asked eight entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following:
“What would you recommend as your favorite low-cost file-sharing service that can be used easily by an entire team? How does this help increase efficiency?”
Here’s what YEC community members had to say:
1. Amazon Drive
“Amazon Drive is a solid low-cost file-sharing service. Prime customers can store 5GB worth of files for free, but if you need more space, they have multiple options available up to 1TB. For many businesses, 1TB is more than enough space to share company memos, training materials and resources.” ~ John Turner, SeedProd LLC
2. Amazon Web Services
“For businesses creating products where users’ data need to be stored and protected, it’s important to use reliable protocols. Amazon Web Services is a good option for any business as they have in-built security that you can support with steps on your end. I would not consider this an expensive option if you have a large number of clients. To protect your data and share content, AWS is a solid tool.” ~ Blair Williams, MemberPress
3. Asana
“We use Asana for collaboration and file sharing with our team. It’s an easy way to update and share files that integrate with Google Drive and Dropbox. There are free and paid versions of the program. The free version is sufficient for what our team needs.” ~ Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
4. Dropbox
“Dropbox has worked great for our team. It’s affordable, and with Dropbox Paper you can create templates that can be used by any team member, anywhere and at any time to create new docs.” ~ Brian David Crane, Caller Smart Inc.
5. Droplr
“We use screenshotting tools frequently as part of our work. Our go-to tool is Droplr because it seamlessly allows us to take screenshots and share them with the team. It’s also important that we have cloud storage so that we can access screenshots from anywhere and work on it even on mobile. We’re happy with Droplr and can recommend it easily.” ~ Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
6. Google Drive
“My team and I swear by Google Drive. We have a huge team writing and editing content to publish on several different sites, so this file-sharing service offers multiple benefits. Not only does it have a full office software suite built in that can be accessed on any device, but it can also track revisions and allow for multiple people to work on the same files at the same time.” ~ Bryce Welker, Beat The CPA
7. Slack
“While Slack is mainly used for chat communication across departments, it’s also great for storing and sharing files. For remote companies especially, it’s important to have a secure way to share content. It increases efficiency because our team is already using Slack to communicate, so sharing files is more convenient than ever.” ~ Jared Atchison, WPForms
8. WeTransfer
“There are a lot of free online resources you can use to exchange files efficiently and that can be used by the whole team. One of the most appropriate is WeTransfer. It is a useful tool that facilitates the transfer of various files, which brings more productivity to the process of sharing information among employees.” ~ Kevin Leyes, Leyes Media & Team Leyes, by Leyes Enterprises
Image: google.com
This article, “8 Low-Cost File Sharing Services for More Efficient Teams” was first published on Small Business Trends