Insync plagued with bugs for too long. Alternatives?

Bugs and issues
#1

As many posts here show, Insync has been bug-ridden for too long now. I was hoping the long-delayed update to 64-bit, v3+ Mac app would have sorted some of the major issues around sync errors, DB corruption would have been resolved. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any real improvement. It’s just gotten worse. I have been building sophisticated SaaS applications for a long time now. This seems to be an endemic issue that may have to do with a seriously compromised codebase, refactoring, misguided priorities on pushing new features over resolving serious bugs, or perhaps just a subpar product team. I think I have been patient long enough. Ove the last year or so, I’ve experienced too many issues and my confidence in Insync’s reliability has severely eroded.

As a long-time Insync customer (5 years+), I am now looking for alternatives. For me, important features include selective sync, multi-device sync, reliability Google Drive sync, and esp keeping my very large Lightroom pic and video libraries synced in the cloud.

I would like to hear from other customers on what they think about this and what alternatives they have come up with.

9 Likes
#2

Hello.
Yes, you are right about issues and glitches on v3 after a good v1.5. I didn’t find good alternatives yet so I’m sticking with Insync for now, helping squashing bugs.

4 Likes
#3

Am in a similar situation and also on the search for an alternative. On Linux, Grive2 is acceptable but takes very long (even partially) syncing large GDrive databases. Many other good apps — like overGrive — have problems right now because of a recent change in the Google API requiring apps to be authenticated by Google.

What blows my mind is that the Insync team has let 1.5.7 go without development while they scramble around version 3. Insync 1.5.7 was best on market, with features such as CLI share file link retrieval.

Big fancy Insync3, by comparison, deleted my entire database, leaving me to weeks of recovery and refiling. After something like that, I’m skeptical about ever using an Insync product again.

4 Likes
#4

It makes me sad, but I have to add my voice to support this. I’ve been using Insync for about 10 years now, and upgrading to 3 has been a very disappointing experience. Suddenly all my selective sync rules from 1.5 are lost (so now I’m trying to stop it uploading hundreds of thousands of node_modules), the UI is almost unusably unresponsive on Windows, and it was painful to get myself logged in. I just don’t really trust it with my files any more. The sad thing is I can’t “vote with my money” because I paid right at the start, so I either have to deal with it or find a new product to shell out on.

5 Likes
#5

I was planning to buy several Insync licenses for use on Fedora on the next big sale which is… now. But from all the threads about bugs and the subpar support (lot’s of threats without any reaction or problem which get fixed and later resurface again and again) I’m not so sure if that is a wise decision.

I’ve installed Insync on FC31 with a Google Apps Testuser and one (!) .doc file and have a constant CPU utilization of 20-30% for insync and QtWebEngineProcess :frowning:

One of the accounts I wanted to use with Insync has several TB of files in it and I don’t feel like playing Russian Roulette with them. So, for now, I guess I can and sadly will “vote with my money” like @jbr put it.

1 Like
#6

Hi there,

I’ve had the same bad experience with version 3.x. On Linux, I don’t know a good alternative unfortunately. On Mac, the best bet is the official Google Drive client. My personal alternative was to revert to 1.5.7. Lots of resyncing of my 100GB account but everything works fine with it. Sync is reliable, ignore rules are respected, I can right click and get a share link (which the Google client does not do), etc. The Finder extension is a bit fiddly but overall, my experience is good.

Just waiting for 3 to get there… I am afraid that the business model of Insync is a bit flawed however: trying to re-develop it from ~scratch (which is what 3.x seems to be) without a new cash flow because Prime memberships are for life seems to be difficult…

3 Likes
#7

Odrive.com offers a free (and a premier paid) service.

Good news is that by installing insync 1.5.7 from the package, rather than from the AUR, I’m able to get it working again on Arch Linux. This could be a viable option (at least for now) for those thrown to the side by Insync3.

#8

Hey @AniG and to the others in this topic,

We appreciate the honest feedback and it’s unfortunate that Insync affected you negatively. We deeply apologize and we’ll provide a full refund with a free license for you to use.

Reports like this push the team to work even harder because improving Insync’s overall quality (i.e. syncing performance and reliability) is our top priority.

Again, we’re deeply sorry about the experience and thank you for the honesty.

#9

Hi Gregory. Thank you for acknowledging the the customer pain points. I don’t think Insync’s team has done enough to address this. For instances, my support ticket from weeks ago, with Mia, is still open. I am glad these comments help your team to work harder to make Insync, at the very least, usable again.

I appreciate your offer of the free license. If your software becomes reliable again and can add real value to our cloud syncing needs, I am sure you could, perhaps, win customers back. At this time, I am going back to Google’s Backup and Sync app for my Google syncing needs.

3 Likes
#10

@AniG, I reviewed your support ticket and upon checking, it was Mara who replied to you last. Sorry for the delay but rest assured, our team’s working on the issue. I’ve relayed the info to them and marked it as urgent.

If you do decide to use Insync again, please reach out to us so we can make it up to you.

#11

Unfortunately, I have to agree. It’s sad to see how things went downhill with 3.x, specially when 1.5 was (is) very decent and usable. Thank God I never made the jump to 3.x, I am still relying on 1.5 on Fedora, and it has been working just fine. But judging by the several reports here on the forums, 3.x is still very far from being reliable and barely usable.

IMHO the decision to label 3.x stable and push users into upgrading was rushed and flawed, and led to the point where insync is today. And it saddens me to say that, because I do believe there is a hard working team behind insync, who really believed 3.x would be a worthy successor to 1.5. But, again, the software simply isn’t mature yet – far from it, apparently.

The right thing to do IMHO – others have already said it here – is to acknowledge it was a bad move, officially label 3.x beta, direct users back to 1.5, and keep working on 3.x until it offers compelling reasons to upgrade (and, please, beef up your QA process). I understand this might be painful, but insisting on the current course of action is doing much more damage to insync’s credibility.

6 Likes
#12

AniG, I also in same situation and searching alternative for sync Google Drive for Linux, and find https://www.expandrive.com/google-drive-for-linux/ - after my short test it works well, but miss headless version. I ask ExpanDrive support about headless versions, and they tell that it will be released in near 6 weeks. So will wait.

2 Likes
#13

Did you try https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse tool? As described in readme, it use online mount (without downloading all data) and client-side caching, so must work quicker, that Grive2.

1 Like
#14

This things bugs me also… I was willing to pay on a yearly basis, they decided to go down a dangerous rope (and was also very unclear in doing it, it was a pain to understand how to switch to the new pricing model) and now they decided to restart from scratch, providing a subpar product, a crappy migration path and an indecent amount of bugs on such a delicate thing as cloud files.

If I can go on paying yearly to have support to the old 1.5 branch I’d do it head-down!

2 Likes
#15

I have to agree unfortunately. I purchased a Personal and Team’s license over the years and have tried out Insync repeatedly, every time hoping it would work as advertised but it never has. v3 has pushed this to new extremes: the number of bugs and the constant hanging in the Windows interface is just too much. I don’t trust Insync anymore to get this right. Save your money.

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#16

Hi @Gregory. You had mentioned that you will provide a full refund and a free license for me. However, I was charged for the next year’s renewal. Could you possibly look into this for me?

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#17

Programmer friends have suggested to me that perhaps Insync brought on some new people who didn’t want to deal with the existing codebase, and proposed to build a new Insync in the form of the disastrous version 3. Or perhaps the existing programmers got seduced by a Big New Idea and jumped headfirst into version 3, forgetting and leaving behind all the stability and functionality in the existing Insync-headless. Perhaps someone said ‘we can make a lot of money if we include Ondrive support’ but forgot that breaking the whole program to add one functionality isn’t a good business idea. We don’t know the real story because the company refuses (through ignoring inconvenient forum posts) to dialogue with their customers.

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#18

Thanks for the help.

#19

we released a statement re: insync 3 – OFFICIAL: Insync 3 Formal Statement

1 Like
#20

Going back and forth with support over the years, I’d say wait it out. 1.5.7 has consistently ruined my day(s) as well (team drives -> .insync-trash, magically, randomly…for example), and this 1.5.7 to 3 migration is a genuine ain in my pass, but…

It was $30 I paid per licence, once, and these guys managed to stay ahead of the curve…so…

I’m pissed off as well, but all things considered, I’ll be patient and wait.

Honestly, if version 3 doesn’t upgrade to headless for Linux anytime soon, the developers using InSync may very well abandon this project and select one of the open-source packages to do the job themselves. Same level of effort at this point. I know I will, because I’ll have to - simply have to keep moving and don’t have time to hope and wait for 3-4 days that this time the sync will work on all computers for all users.

I speak only for me and mine, though. Again, all things considered, keep up the good work guys, I’ll try to be patient and wait.

2 Likes