📦 What’s in the Box? A Smarter Way to Store and Share Files

Frank Bravo 0:08
Hi. Welcome to your Tech Makeover, the podcast that gives you tips and tricks to help you simplify and get more out of the technology in your life. I'm your host, Frank Bravo. This episode is part of a mini series all about sharing and syncing data, where I'm explaining what the tools are, how they work, and why you might want to use them. Aside from an introduction episode that gave you an overview of all the tools that we'll be talking about and how they work generically, each of these episodes will dive deep into a particular one. Today, we're digging into a tool that sometimes gets overlooked in the cloud storage conversation, but it really probably shouldn't. It's called box. No, not Dropbox, just box. Short. Simple, but surprisingly powerful. And especially if you're managing a business or handling files that need a little extra care. Box may be the answer for you. So what exactly is box y? Maybe you haven't heard about it because it's really been out there for a really long time, and it's better for your needs than you might suspect from something like Dropbox or Drive if you're running a business. So let's take the lid off box. At its core boxes, just like all the other items that I've been talking about in this series. It's a cloud storage and filing sharing platform, but it's built with business users in mind. Think collaboration, compliance and control. And it's designed for teams that need to share documents securely and work together from anywhere. If Google Drive is your casual carpool to work. Box is more like the high security company shuttle with Wi-Fi ID scanners and someone who makes sure that everyone is buckled up. Box offers cloud storage, but it also offers a level of work workflow automation, its detailed user permissions, and enterprise level security is like when cloud storage has grown up. So what makes it different? First, it's that security and compliance box is known for its strong security features. We're talking HIPAA, GDPR, Finra, you know, all those scary acronyms that make business and compliance teams not be able to sleep at night. And if you're talking about collaboration tools, you can actually comment on files, assign tasks, integrate with tools like slack, Microsoft Teams, zoom, and even more. It even has its own Microsoft Office and Google Workspace integrations so you can co-edited Documents live. In addition to that, there's granular control of who can access your files. You need to share your file with an accountant, but not the whole finance folder. Or if you want to prevent someone from downloading sensitive information, maybe box gives you the exact controls you need in order to see who gets to see what and what they are doing with it. And like I mentioned, box offers focus on business. Unlike drive, Dropbox, or other sharing tools, box doesn't allow you to double your personal photo album or family grocery list, but it's really built for teams, workflows and secured data scaling at a large, very large scale. A quick shout out to listeners like you who helped make your tech make over possible. Your support helps keep this podcast going and I truly appreciate it. Want to contribute? Just click the link in the show notes or visit your Tech makeover.com. Plus as a thank you to supporters who give $25 or more, you'll get $25 off a one time consultation with me to help you simplify your tech. Thanks for being part of the Your Tech Makeover community. Now back to what I was saying. You might be thinking, okay, Frank, that sounds cool for companies, but I'm just one person or a small team. Is box really for me? Well, this is where box does make sense. If you run a business and need to share sensitive documents such as contracts or employee records or tax files, but you also need control of what, who can see what and who so that you know who's seeing what. This is a good tool for you if you collaborate across teams or with other clients, and you need a central place for project folders or comments or version histories. This could work. Or if you need serious security like password protection, expiration of data, that where the links expire so that you don't have to remember who you saved them or you share them with. This is a great tool for that. It also includes a full audit log of who access what. And sure, it's not free like drive to a point. But if there's also trade offs of control and peace of mind. So let's talk a little bit about pricing. Box offers a free level for individual users, but it's extremely limited. It comes with some basic file storage of about ten gigabytes of space, but there's a 250 megabyte upload cap, so that's fine for limited personal use or testing the waters. But if you're really going to use box for storing lots of data or working with others, you'll definitely want to look at their paid plans. The business plan starts about $15 per user us as of now, which gives you things like unlimited storage, advanced sharing controls, integrations with Microsoft 360, Google Workspace, zoom, and other tools like that. Larger organizations can set up a business Plus or an enterprise plan where the features give you data loss protection. It also gives you some workflow automation and it gives you those tools for governance. It's way more expensive from things like Google Drive and iCloud drive. But for teams, if security and control and collaboration are something that you value, then it's absolutely worth the investment. So how do you get started? Just go to box.com. Sign up for a free personal account or a trial business account. Upload your first file by dragging and dropping like other cloud tools. You can organize your content using folders, or you can use client or project folders to keep things extremely organized. You can share things securely, you can invite collaborators, viewers, editors, so on and so forth. And password protect those links and set those expiration dates like I had mentioned. And then you can try those integrations like with Google Workspace or Zoom or even your signature tool, which is really kind of a cool, powerful piece of it. Box also offers applications on your computer so you can interact the files locally, not just in the browser. To me, that is by far the best way to interact with box or any of these cloud storage providers. So here's a quick some quick use cases and how I used it when I was using box. As I mentioned before, you may want to send tax documents to your accountant without emailing them as an attachment. Box allows you to securely send a link that will give them access control. Maybe you're managing a production team so you could use box to source scripts, or audio or episode outlines, or even get comments back all in one place. If you're a freelancer juggling multiple clients, you can set up one folder per client and give them limited access for a long time. That's how I interacted with my clients. It was great to be able to send them a link, and then they could see their different pieces of work that I was working on them with them on, I should say. Or maybe you just want a place that you can share family documents. It is fine to use box for that. It's a great way to securely and organize your files and be able to share them with the people you want. So have you tried box or are you considering it for your business or secure file sharing? Let me know. And as always, if you have ideas for topics you'd like me to cover on this podcast, please feel free to contact me via email at Frank at your Tech makeover.com. That's it for now. Thanks for listening to your tech makeover, if you haven't already. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss an episode. And I'd appreciate a five star review or a thumbs up for this episode and any of my episodes. You can also check out your Tech makeover.com, where you'll see more information about this episode and other episodes in this series. And if you want to find out more about me, please visit Bravo. It's com. Until next time, I'm Frank Bravo, and this has been your tech makeover.