2023 Year in Review

As a new year begins, we reflect on the past year—a journey marked by growth, learning, success, challenge, and inspiring customer stories. A lot happened, and we want to take a moment to celebrate all that shaped yet another incredible year in Sync.

Growth

To get started, over 2.5 million people are now getting their best work done with Sync. Billions of files securely stored and millions of files shared daily really does reflect our mission: to provide a safe space for the world to collaborate. And speaking of growth, our own team continues to scale up in a big way.

Want to help get the world in Sync? We’re hiring!

Celebrating 10 years of Sync.com

The summer of 2023 marked the 10th birthday of the Sync.com brand. Sync started in 2011 with the goal of creating a private cloud storage space—something unheard of at the time. Co-founders Thomas Savundra, Suhan Shan, and Darius Antia then built our company with the free and Pro versions of the Sync we know and love today, launching in 2013 under the name Sync.com. Thanks to all of you in Sync. And here’s to another 10 years of building a better cloud.

Customers in Sync

2023 was a year of awe-inspiring people making a difference with Sync.

We were delighted to speak with visionaries like Shawn Kanungo inspiring change through disruption. It’s been amazing to watch content creators like Mueo and Fujiabra Films evoke neuro-aesthetic responses with Sync. Learning how Louis Rossi from BMS Karate helps students improve their body, mind, and spirit was inspiring. And knowing that organizations like Litowitch Law and Solasta Psychological Services keep their client data safe and secure with Sync helps us sleep easier at night.

Read every 2023 Sync customer story here, and if you’d like to be featured, let us know.

New Admin features on Pro Teams+ Unlimited

Our vision for Sync has always been to provide a truly collaborative workspace. But work was needed to enable company-wide document collaboration for larger organizations. And so, 2023 was the year we put the plus in Pro Teams, delivering the very best in scalability, compliance, and control. Team leaders, IT administrators, and enterprise rejoice!

Highlights include:

• Scalable user provisioning with automatic CSV upload of thousands of users, account consolidation, and a real-time user dashboard.
• More visibility, oversight, and control with role-based access controls (Sync RBAC). Restrict features at a user or group level, create multiple admins, and enforce company-wide 2FA.
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance with SOC, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance built-in.
• Unbeatable price: $15 per user, including unlimited storage. Reduce your cloud storage TCO and realize critical IT cost savings simply by switching to Sync.

Read all about Pro Teams+ here.

Starred files

If there’s one thing we can tell you: there is no shortage of files. In fact, each Sync Pro user has, on average, 100,000+ files securely stored in the cloud. Which begs the question, with so many files, how do you keep everything perfectly organized? Staying on top of it all can be a challenge, and that’s why we were thrilled to give our new Starred files feature a starring role in 2023.

Starred files is a brand new way to manage your files, giving you instant access to everything you need, whenever you need it.

Save time by starring your files today.

New desktop app

Launched in May, our 2.2.x series desktop app is stronger, better, and faster. Files upload faster, large file-sets sync with less overhead, and CPU and memory usage has been reduced.

With such a significant update we also moved to a rapid release schedule, getting bugs reported by you fixed faster. Looking back, with so much feedback, and so many improvements throughout the year, we can confidently say version 2.2.29 (the latest version as of this writing) is the best Sync desktop app ever. Thanks to all of you who provided feedback, and by all means, keep the feedback coming.

Get the ultimate desktop syncing experience and give your CPU a break by updating now.

CloudFiles 5.x Windows beta

2023 ushered in significant updates to our CloudFiles app, as we continue to work towards removing the beta label with fully native file provider support for both Windows and macOS.

Highlights include:

• Download-on-demand. No more setting-local to manually open a file and no more errors when opening a cloud-only file directly on your computer.
• Streamlined installation. No need for a reboot to get things working.
• All of the 2.2.x series desktop app performance improvements have been merged into 5.x.
• Many bug fixes as reported by you.

CloudFiles 5.x beta is available for Windows right now. Expect a Mac version coming soon in 2024.

The need for speed

Your feedback is what drives us to make Sync the best it can be. And in 2023 your most requested feature was faster speeds. We couldn’t agree more. So we set out to identify and eliminate bottlenecks to make Sync go from fast to blazing fast. This became an epic project that will continue into 2024.

Here’s what we’ve accomplished so far:

• Desktop app upload speed improved courtesy of our new 2.2.x series app. Up to 3x faster!
• Web panel download speed is much faster.
• Web panel upload speed is significantly faster, with a 2x reduction in overhead, when uploading a 500MB+ file.
• Web panel user interface feels faster and more responsive.

The need for platform stability

2023 wasn’t without its challenges. We welcomed with open arms a massive influx of ex-Dropbox customers looking for unlimited storage after Dropbox limited their storage offerings and raised prices. Initially, this put a heavy load on our systems. We responded by increasing storage capacity in a big way, with over 230 petabytes now online. Sync Pro Teams+ Unlimited is simply the best unlimited storage option on the market today.

Speaking of Pro Teams+, our new admin transfer features also hit a few bumps early on, when far more large-scale organizations hopped on board than we anticipated. We responded by scaling out the infrastructure powering Pro Teams+ and scaling up our Dev and DevOps teams to meet demand.

We are committed to delivering enterprise-grade performance, reliability, and uptime. And we’re doing so through significant investments to our infrastructure, data centers, and people. We’re also listening and responding to feedback from you. Let us know how we can improve Sync by participating in our annual customer survey here.

Even more fabulous features from 2023

• Thumbnails are now generated instantly for images uploaded via the web panel (previously you needed a desktop app for this to work).
• Transferring share folder ownership is now point-and-click (previously you needed to stop the old share and create a new one).
• Share folder management is now picture-perfect with full support for Sync profile pictures.
• Our new duplicate file feature will help you get new projects started faster.
• Share safer with view-only permissions on video links. With this feature enabled, the people you share with can watch your video, with no option to download.
• HEIF files now have thumbnail support, and you can now rotate images easily on mobile too.

Customer service = customer success

Our super-hero, in-house customer service team is ready to help answer pretty much any question you have. In fact, over 61,000 questions were answered in 2023 by real people ready to help you.

In terms of delivering best-in-class customer service, we know our response time is critical to your success. Over the course of the year, we set a goal to improve response times significantly.

Highlights include:

• Improved tiered processes.
• Expanded weekend and evening coverage.
• More team members ready to help.
• An ongoing effort to ensure your feedback (aka bug reports) result in more immediate product improvements.

The result? Expect a reply within 22 hours on average, and expect us to continue to improve.

Sync en français

A 2023 gift for our French-speaking customers: we now have a French website. Jetez un oeil ici.

Accolades

It’s no secret that people love Sync. From glowing reviews to terrific testimonials, 2023 was yet another year of seriously kind words.

Highlights include:

• RBC’s Ownr program recommends Sync.
• Tech Radar loves our unlimited storage.
• PC World gave us their Editors’ Choice award and called us “Superb!”
• Sara Loretta thinks Sync is the perfect Dropbox replacement.
• Tom’s Guide listed us as the best cloud storage.
• Pete Matheson loves our unlimited storage.
• Tasia Custode gave our new Pro Teams+ plan a glowing review.
• John Rettinger also loves our unlimited storage.
• Angel Zheng showcased how Sync enhances remote work.

Onwards and upwards

2023 was a journey of growth, learning, and success. We thank you for your patience, passion, and commitment to helping us make Sync truly the best secure cloud storage on the planet.