Is Insync still in development? It feels like it should be in beta

#1

Hi there. I really like the features that Insync offers, but I constantly run into bugs and issues. It really feels like I’m beta testing Insync, but I don’t see any updates or fixes for any of the several bugs I’ve reported. And I now see that there hasn’t been an update since October.

What’s going on with Insync development? I greatly appreciate that you guys such a dedicated support staff (Thanks, Mia and Mara!) but I haven’t ever seen any communication from the developers. It feels like whenever I report a bug, Mia says she will bring it up with the team — and then I hear nothing.

Do you have a bug tracker? Are they being tracked? Are the devs working on bugfixes and features? Will you tell us when they’re fixed, or give us updates on it? Better yet, can you make some of the bug tracker public, so we can see updates as they’re worked on, and plans are made?

Maybe I’m spoiled, but I’ve spent a long time on the MediaMonkey forum (it’s a music library management software) and the developers have a much closer relationship with users over there. https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=30 (this is for the open beta of their upcoming new version, which is very active with bug reports and feature requests.) Their bug tracker is public, so when a user presents a suggestion or bug, they add it to Mantis and they give a link to the tracked bug. I think that’s a much better approach, because we can see if they interpreted the issue/request correctly. If they get something wrong, we can send a reply to clarify what we mean. If all we get is “Thanks, I’ll bring this up with the team”, how can we know that the team will interpret what we’re saying the right way?

Don’t get me wrong. You guys have set up some great customer service, and I’m very pleased with how you are able to follow up with my support requests so quickly. And your support team is very nice. But I see a huge hole when it comes to communication with the developers. From my perspective, for all I know, all the things that Mia said she’d bring up to the dev team were just put on a post-it note and ignored. To be clear, I’m not saying that that’s the case. But I’m saying that I have not a single hint or sign that they actually saw my request/bug and that they’re working on it. With all the bugs and issues I encounter on a daily basis with Insync, you’d have a difficult time convincing me that it’s not in an open beta. It’s strange that you guys don’t seem to act like it is. I see so much potential, and I love supporting small teams. I’d much rather give my money to a small indie company than to Microsoft or Google. But with the apparent lack of clarity from the development side that I’m bringing up, it doesn’t seem like you’re acting like a small team. And that makes it seem like things aren’t getting done. Hell, look at this thread. They pointed out how bad a state Insync was in, and it didn’t even get a reply: Insync3 current state of art ... terrible!

I’m sorry if my words are harsh. But the reason I’m bringing this up is because I believe in Insync, and I want it to thrive. But it doesn’t seem to me like I’m being listened to, as a customer and a beta tester. Things need to change if you want things to get done.

Thanks for listening.

P.S., if you look at the MediaMonkey link I sent, you may see that my signature says I’m a part-time developer. This is true. That’s why I said I’m biased. But the reason I joined the team was because of their close relationship to users on the forum. They listened to my suggestions and helped me feel included, leading me to continue contributing, and I eventually was hired part-time. I still believe it’s worth mentioning, because it’s something that’s proven to work. Small teams should act like small teams, and interact closely with their community.

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#2

Hi @Drakinite,

A huge thank you for taking your time to express your sentiments on your Insync experience. We greatly appreciate users who provide us with valuable feedback as this has been something that helps us stay in the direction that involves our users’ best interests.

Regarding the progress/development of bug reports-- I would understand how the lack of updates (maybe also publicly?) would make you and other users feel left out. I was reviewing the emails you have sent, and I wanted to clarify: aside from the Ignore Rules and the false positive on the Conflicts tab, what other issues are you facing on a daily basis that you need help with? Also, what did you mean by the lack of updates since October?

Let me share this post with our team; I think that this provides a lot of insight as to how we can improve with the way our team communicates with our users. :slight_smile:

#3

Hi again Mia, thank you again for taking my comments seriously and taking the time to reply.

Re. daily issues: I think that the false positive conflicts is the main issue I face on a daily basis. Perhaps it’s all the same underlying issue, I don’t know. But I get stuff like this every day:

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This is a screenshot of my Insync screen as I’m writing this reply. Not even cherry-picked. If it’s the same underlying issue, then maybe I’m getting an internal bias because it happens to me every day. So it appears like a million different issues.

I’ve sent a few bug reports over the past few months (since around October). Maybe I’m being a little bit impatient, but I would have hoped that at least some of my suggestions would have been implemented at this point. It still really seems to me like Insync is in a beta phase, since it doesn’t seem like it’s in a state that’s ready for release due to all the issues that pop up.

As for no updates since October, I got that from the changelog. https://www.insynchq.com/downloads
I see now that the current version doesn’t match the changelog; so I was wrong about that. Sorry. I would have expected there to be an item in the changelog for each update.

#4

Hi @Drakinite,

I’ve sent the false positives to our engineers for investigation.

Re: suggestions-- Support takes note of these but we include it in development depending on our resources. I will revisit them accordingly. We have been working on a new set of processes that would improve the way we handle user feedback/requests/suggestions so thank you for bringing this to my attention!

Re: updates-- no worries about that. :slight_smile:

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#5

I am surprised by Drakinite’s comments.
I’m ruining Insync on six machines with three google account and a one drive account (3 x Linux and 3 x windows 10) and it works faultlessly.
The few “warnings” are always correct and usually my fault.
It’s not a simple setup ether, I have three Google accounts sinking to one Linux machine, a Onedrive and a Google to the other Linux box and one or two of the google accounts to all. I’m also syncing folders on removable drives and folders not in the Google base folder, etc, etc. I think I use pretty much every feature it has.
If it was going to break I think this would do it. This is definitely not a beta program!
I did manage to screw things up royally about a year or two ago but with one email from Mia, I knew how to fix it.
Working as a Linux and database programmer myself for almost two decades I’m not easy impressed with software of this type. But Insync is undoubtedly the best, and most user friendly, sync program I have found to date.
edit: and I have it running on Windows VM hosted on Linux Oracle Virtualbox with the same google accounts.

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#6

@Spike hi! I appreciate that you took your time to share your experience! :slight_smile:

I’m glad to hear that Insync works flawlessly for your setup!

We do have some users who have gotten stuck in less than ideal situations, @Drakinite included. As per our engineers, the conflicts he’s facing is unexpected so we are asking more details via email. This would help us investigate what’s causing these false positives and therefore provide a solution to remove those errors accordingly :slight_smile:

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#7

I would say that for me it’s been mostly reliable, altho when it breaks it breaks hard. Recently noticed that I have about 2000+ files duplicated, couldn’t reported because I didn’t noticed when it originally happened, and not many days ago I did a clean install of insync after accidentally deleting my .config folder.

But for the most part aside from some sync errors ala “try again later” it’s been working just fine syncing my work files, I’m very thankful that the ignore rules feature exist because not only it allows me to save some disk space, but also i feel safer knowing that more critical files to my work aren’t being touched by insync (as with the duplicate and other bugs, I worry about them getting corrupted).

But even after said bugs and errors, I don’t really feel frustrated with insync only because my experiences with their support have been extremely positive which for me lessens the blow of finding some major bugs significantly, also while most of my bugs haven’t been addressed, I’ve noticed some improvements with the latest versions, so I’m hopeful that with some luck in some month’s it will be more reliable.

I’ve purchased software from other companies, and in my experience support usually isn’t as polite as the staff at insync, so that’s huge plus for me.

Just my grain of sand on the issue, while yes, I do agree that the software does in fact feel like an open beta, at last I am content with the development, plus there is a pandemic so I understand that it ought to slow down development significantly.

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#8

I am running Insync on two Linux machines (Fedora 33 to be precise), syncing to OneDrive which also syncs to Windows and Android phones using the native clients. Generally it has worked fine without any significant issues that I haven’t been able to resolve. In terms of conflicts - any conflicts I have seen have been on an encrypted file, that is synced between phones and 3 computers - and that has generally been because one device updated it at the same time another device did.

I do think its slightly unfair to expect the internal bug tracker to be public - this isn’t https://github.com ! And different user’s will see different things. Working in software, I haven’t seen many smaller companies, (MediaMonkey being an exception) whom aren’t developing open-source software make public bug trackers. Perhaps making a voting system (akin to user-voice) for features might be something worth considering?

For syncing, I have noticed some small lag when scanning documents using OneDrive on a phone that they sometimes aren’t immediately picked up - opening/closing the folder through Insync normally triggers it. And I guess, depending on how the underlying API works, unless its using pub/sub, it wouldn’t always pick it up immediately so that is expected. However, and this is important, it has worked and therefore we have been able to scan my daughters school work during this lockdown in the UK. So thanks!

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#9

We are tremendously grateful for all your feedback! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Our team is currently brainstorming on ways we can improve on communication and it’s a matter of deciding which will work best (ie easiest to comprehend by users, cost-effective, etc) :slight_smile:

@rnc There’s been some issues with OneDrive on Insync in terms of cloud to local sync (and the need to navigate the folders via the app), but we’re working on this as well.

Again, huge thank you to all of you. We wouldn’t know where to begin if not for you guys!!

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#10

@mia It’s very heartwarming to hear that you’re taking my feedback to heart and discussing ways to improve communication. Thank you again. <3

Fair point, but it does make it easy to provide an in-depth changelog! All they have to do is post a link to the list of changes in the tracker. :wink:

That’s nice to hear that you’re having a better experience with it than I am. And I do agree that Insync is very good, and I absolutely wish for it to grow and become more popular.

This is pretty accurate to my experience - Insync has unfortunately given me more than a few major headaches :sweat_smile:

I couldn’t agree more.

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#11

I’m glad that it works for you - I have a less complicated set up (linux-only, different distros, one Drive account), and occasionally experience problems - for example, syncing hangs, App not opening or not responding, some file name conflicts, etc. I don’t agree that we should consider Insync “under development” like the OP said, but the only way I can agree with your statement “…Insync is undoubtedly the best, and most user friendly, sync program I have found to date.” is if you have never used Dropbox, which is flawless on all OS, all the time.

#12

In the interests of full disclosure :slight_smile: - I used to use Dropbox on various platforms. I would say it worked similarly - I had the odd conflict, although it was a bit better at picking up remote files. However, the mobile app was far worse so I used it less to add to remote files - which meant my usage statistics is therefore skewed! However I left Dropbox as it became utterly unsuitable for home users, targeting a subset of business users, adding unnecessary features. In contrast OneDrive is leagues ahead both in features and usability - the only thing lacking for me personally was native Linux integration - although MS is getting far better cooperating with Linux - e.g. their Edge browser and VSCode are both available on Linux for instance.

Actually thinking further along the GitHub eg https://github.com/rnc lines … there is nothing stopping a company using it just as a free issue tracker (i.e. without uploading any proprietary sources) - this I have seen done a few times. (cc @mia)

#13

In the interests of full disclosure :slight_smile: - I used to use Dropbox on various platforms. I would say it worked similarly - I had the odd conflict, although it was a bit better at picking up remote files. However, the mobile app was far worse so I used it less to add to remote files - which meant my usage statistics is therefore skewed!

For sure, I don’t use anything on mobile, so if that’s a deciding factor I don’t know anything about that.

However I left Dropbox as it became utterly unsuitable for home users, targeting a subset of business users, adding unnecessary features.

I don’t understand how this could be true - lots of space, easy syncing, works with all distros - isn’t that exactly what a “home user” (such as myself, although I also use it for work) wants? But this isn’t the Dropbox forums, so I guess that doesn’t really matter :slight_smile:

In contrast OneDrive is leagues ahead both in features and usability - the only thing lacking for me personally was native Linux integration - although MS is getting far better cooperating with Linux - e.g. their Edge browser and VSCode are both available on Linux for instance

I also really like where M$ is going in this area, but I’m talking Google Drive - and it’s from work, so the integration with our email makes other choices pretty pointless.

#14

There’s also other free bug tracking software that you can use on your own webserver like MantisBT.