So you have a Dropbox account (or several of them), Google Drive account(s), Box, SkyDrive, etc. wouldn’t it be great if you could manage and/or access all of your files across all of these services simultaneously from a single place? This is precisely what free online app MultCloud does.
This concept is not new, of course; we’ve actually reviewed a number of these ‘cloud aggregator‘ tools, so we know what to look for when we put them to the test. I will say, upfront, that MultCloud gets our thumbs up for several of it’s features. Specifically, the ability to simultaneously connect to several accounts from the same service, but more importantly the ability to copy files from one cloud storage account to another straight, without having to download it on your desktop first and reupload.
Important Note: this service used to be called ‘DropInOne’, but was changed to ‘MultCloud’ due to trademark conflict issues with Dropbox. This is the reason why the screenshots displayed here show ‘DropInOne’ rather than MultCloud, but they are the exact same service.
But let’s start at the beginning, with some of the typical features/issues that this sort of service would have to have.
1. The interface/user experience
May not visually look as pretty as some of the other tools we reviewed, but it is functional and practical. The sidebar on the left allows for quick access to all connected accounts; however, it strangely does not support dragging and dropping of files (either to folders or to the sidebar), so there’s room for improvement there.
2. The range of services supported
The four ‘big’ services (Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive and Amazon S3), plus Box and SugarSync. Would be great if they supported some of our other favorites (CX, SpiderOak, and Wuala), but an adequate selection all the same.
3. Whether you could connect to multiple accounts from the same service
You can, which is great, because some of the other services we reviewed strangely would not support this, as simple as it might sound.
4. Whether you could (a) transfer files from one account to another, and (b) transfer without downloading and uploading locally
You can, on both counts . I know that (b) above is the case because I copied hundred of megs worth of stuff from one account to another while running a bandwidth monitoring program on Windows to watch for downloading/uploading activity. The transfers happened rather quickly, without any spikes in my bandwidth activity.
Note that copying is done via copy and pasting rather than drag and drop
5. Search (can you search across all connected accounts)
You can, which is great.
6. Availability of mobile apps and/or a desktop client
No, or at least not yet. But I would guess that Mobile apps will eventually come.
Wish list (a few ideas to improve this service)
- Dragging and dropping to move/copy files (rather than copying/pasting).
- An indicator or gauge of size and usage for each account added to the interface (i.e. x megs/gigs used of y available).
- Multiple panes for file management (dual/triple?), with a different account visible on each.
The verdict:
A very nice service that takes care of issues that other services like it sometimes miss. I like primarily because lets you connect to multiple accounts and to transfer files without downloading them first, but there’s a lot more to recommend it. Kudos to the developers for a job well done.
Click here to get started with MultCloud.
