Today’s releases include a lot of bug fixes and improvements. There are also product purchase plan changes which affect NEW users (current users get grandfathered in!). See below.
IMPORTANT Changes:
Unsync and Autodownload Limit features are part of a $39/yr plan.
Existing users before this release will still be able to use these features without purchasing the new plan as a thankyou for being one of our early users.
New users can start a trial of this new Unsync package for 7 days without entering any credit card info.
New desktop builds now have the autodownload limit set to Always Download now to provide a better, more familiar experience for new users not accustomed to placeholder files.
Desktop Release (Win v5049 / Mac v5091):
Improvements to reduce resource consumption and churn under heavy usage conditions.
Added Adobe Lightroom .lrprev files to be excluded from sync (Odrive and Lightroom)
Conflict handling simplification to reduce conflict file generation. We recommend that if you are working in a shared, multi-user environment, use underlying storage which has document versioning.
Fixes and improvements to sync, file/folder badging, move operation handling, and error handling.
Fixes and improvements to various Link integrations (Slack, OneDrive, Oxygen Cloud, WebDAV, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, Hipchat, and Facebook)
Web Release:
Website changes to support the Unsync paid plan rollout.
I have the odrive pro plan which I currently pay $10 a month for. The new odrive pro plan is $69 a year which works out to $5.75 a month. Can I get on the $69 plan but still pay monthly? If I do get on the $69 pro plan will it affect the other plans I am grandfathered in like the unsync capability?
Why start charging for unsync. Surely this kills the point of placeholders and forcing a cost on users to really make full use of placeholders thus removing a great USP for odrive otherwise there are other options.
-if I reinstall my PC or install on a new computer with the current or future desktop release, will the unsync feature be unlocked?
Do I have to install the sync and the unsync addons and unsync will check my “grandfather status” after login automatically?
Or do I have to keep one of the older sync addon downloads with unsync included and later let the client update itself? (actually I am pretty sure I already deleted the former installation package of the sync addon before this change)
Does this work for all current and future cloud links or just for the ones active in the past?
Grandfathering works at the account level. You can reinstall the same machine or install on another machine and you will still have the ability to right-click unsync. This applies to all links.
The Unsync paid plan is basically geared towards users who really need to save disk space. It will include Unsync, the ability to set your autodownload limit, and (coming soon) Autounsync. The type of user interested in this is a user with a lot of content in cloud storage (heavy cloud storage users) and with small local storage space (e.g. SSDs).
The general populace doesn’t really appreciate these features (yet), especially people who are used to Dropbox and other “sync everything” systems. For the most part, “sync everything” works for them.
(Side note: of course, using free odrive is NOT a “sync everything” solution–our Progressive Sync feature lets you get up and running ASAP while only syncing what you try to access first.)
While an advanced user could still continue to use free odrive with Progressive Sync, we feel that the features we are offering come at a relatively small cost for the benefits we confer. It’s MUCH cheaper, easier, and better than upgrading hardware or attempting to use features like Dropbox’s selective sync (which is not inline–you don’t see placeholders at all so you can’t see what’s available, and the configuration is buried in a submenu). It’s not expensive at all, and we are solving a major pain point for users who need it in the very best way currently available.
Thanks for your feedback–we do factor these things in (as well as other data we have) when making our pricing and product packaging decisions.
It will be a bad experience to start as a free user, gradually Sync more and more folders as you use them, and then run out of disk space with no way to Unsync anything except paying. People may feel trapped or coerced into upgrading.
It would feel better to turn off progressive sync completely for free users to avoid this trap (so there are never placeholder files at all).
(FWIW, Unsync is the only reason I use Odrive. If I couldn’t experiment with it before paying to make sure it was reliable and met my needs, I wouldn’t buy it.)
You can definitely experiment with it before paying. There is a free 7-day trial of the Unsync package available.
There’s also no coercion or trap. Try it out and don’t buy if you don’t want to. There are always ways that all users can keep using the free product, though it may not meet all of your particular use cases (but nothing else out there will, either). The unsync package is affordable and reasonable for the value that it provides to people with advanced needs. It is not a general tax on general users.
I’m glad that you and other users are finding Unsync so useful… please help support us if you find value in it and want to see us keep providing innovative solutions to today’s (and tomorrow’s) cloud storage access problems. =)
Thank you so much for using odrive… There’s a ton available for free, and even more available for people with advanced needs who want to save time, effort, money, and grief through the paid options we offer.
Making UNSYNC a cost feature is not OK - i feel it’s the basis of ODRIVE and one of the main reason i use it.
I am lucky to be an “early adopter” but i feel sorry for others.
I requested an “automatic unsync” feature when your file/folder finished upload and you could eventually charge for it but NOT for the basic unsync - sorry guys.
Perhaps the basic issue is changing a freely available, basic feature to a paid one. If Unsync had not been available from the start, adding it as a premium option might not have created such an uproar.
Created an account just to say how disappointed I am with this. I heard about this service a few days ago, as I was just looking for a way to have a placeholder feature with an amazon drive and to find out this basic feature is now behind a paywall is very disappointing
You are charging very close to what I pay for my unlimited cloud storage effectively doubling my costs simply because I heard about the product 5 days too late?
Also, I would update your FAQ if I were you because it definitely made it seem like that was an included feature in the O-Drive and now I’ve already given access to it. I understand you guys need to monetize, but I really don’t think this is the solution.
Hopefully you guys reverse this decision, I will check back later, but at this point I cannot justify buying this.
We certainly appreciate the feedback from everyone here.
We would love to be able to give everything to our users for free if we could figure out a way to build a viable business model around that, but that is not realistic (if anyone has a map to buried treasure or a winning lottery ticket they want to give us, let us know!). Because of this harsh reality, we are forced to charge for some things.
Even though some features are paid, odrive’s free offering still gives users more than any other comparable product out there, and we will continue to add to that. If you don’t feel that the value of unsync is worth a smidge over $3.00 a month then it may not be something you really need, and that is perfectly fine. You can certainly create very powerful solutions using only what we give away for free, especially if you apply a little creativity. In addition, we will continue to try our hardest to give you the best experience and support possible, whether you are a paid user or not.
I’ll run down what you already get for free, just as a reminder:
