Insync has had an interesting history. The Philippines and Singapore based startup, which started off as a Dropbox-like service for Google Docs, found itself needing to pivot after the Internet giant launched Google Drive, which effectively did the same thing.
Not wanting to put itself at the mercy of Google, the startup retooled its product and came back as something else: a more full-featured, business-oriented alternative to the Google Drive desktop client.
Now, more than 10 months after that announcement, Insync has launched version 1.0 of its client for Windows and Mac users. The Linux version is still in beta.
The app has a number of features that sets it apart from Google Drive. It is introducing support for multiple Google accounts, desktop notifications, built-in sharing, selective sync, and support for external and network drives.
Selectively sync folders and files from cloud to desktop.
With built-in sharing, users can right-click on folders or files to start the sharing process. Then there are other pro features like permissioning, better onboarding, as well as symlink, junction, and alias support.
As a start, Insync is offering its Pro plan at a one-time payment of USD 9.99 which comes after a 14-day trial. A business edition, which will have an admin edition and centralized billing, will arrive in a few weeks. Finally, there will be an enterprise version which will support document audits, advanced search queries, and allow admin to check usage of individual employees.
The company says it has hundreds of thousands of beta users, out of which 60 percent are Gmail users and the other 40 percent are Google Apps users. It is seeing 500 sign ups a day, and already has paying customers.
Building a Google Drive client is just the first step for co-founder and CEO Terence Pua and his team. The company, which has a engineering-biased headcount of 9, hopes to do more with cloud storage and help users solve the problem of managing their data.
Insync raised USD 800,000 in angel funding in January 2011, and had also received USD 300,000 in seed funding back in 2009. Investors include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Skype co-founder Tovio Annus, Neoteny Labs founder Joi Ito, and Santosh Jayaram, former VP, Business Operations at Twitter.
Setting certain files as read-only.
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