Review of OmniDrive : Online storage with web 2.0 frills!

  23 Jan 2007 by ReviewSaurus

logo.jpgOmniDrive is an online file storage solution. However, it is still difficult for us to find out if it is the perfect online file storage or not. Omnidrive has setup enough expectation as Michael Arrington (Techcrunch founder) showed enough interest in this service and has recently invested in the company and now is among the board of directors of Omnidrive.

There are various online drives these days and the competition is really tough. Lets see if Omnidrive has something different to offer than others, so as to attract the enormous user group. With the looks of it the service is good but how good is it, lets find out in the review…

PROS of Omnidrive :

1. Free storage of 1 GB : Omnidrive is giving away free storage of 1 GB. This is useful for those users who want to deal with some really important documents and are not in need of enough webspace. There are paid options available too and prices vary from $ 40/year for 10 GB storage to $ 199/year for 50 GB storage (that’s under January special, prices will be more after removing the discount.)

2. Multiple ways of accessing the files : Omnidrive gives out two ways of accessing the files, web based and through a virtual drive on the computer. Web interface is really good and gives the feel of windows and thus any user will not find it difficult as they’ll have a familiar interface. The other way, i.e., the virtual omnidrive is also good as it gives easy access to the files and keeps them synchronized too. The virtual drive lives in My Computer (atleast in Windows, not sure about MAC) and so batch file uploading can be done through this and that too in a convenient way.

3. Integrated Media player, picture viewer & document writer : It also allows users to play media files (Mp3 for sure and if you find any other format while using this service, please let me know), it displays picture files in a slideshow and also lets users to edit word documents.

4. Live Folder : Well, I just loved this feature. This feature allows users to put a feed URL and Omnidrive will automatically look for files on that and will put those files in the Live folder and thus users will have to take less pains in keeping the files in one place. Consider that you can put the Flickr Photo stream in this and thus you’ll be able to access your photos in one single place with other files.

5. Various small but useful features : It has many small features, which make it different from an FTP server and thus will be able to attract many users on that basis. Resume supported Virtual Omnidrive and that will help lot of slow speed connection users, Access controls of files and folders, Online sharing and making the files public. API’s And few others…

CONS of Omnidrive :


1. Pricing of Omnidrive : Well, I don’t know about anyone else but for me this price is way too much. Web drive is required these days but it is still not that hot that it will be able to replace the normal hard drive. As far as backup option is concerned then also, it is nowhere near to a decent price.

Overall Views & Ratings :

Omnidrive is a good service but pricing is one factor where they will have to improve. Many good and trusted competitors are giving very cheap options as well and thus it will be hard time for omnidrive to find a very good user base. Only their features will be able to keep them ahead of their competitors and I think they have scored good on features.


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12 Responses so far

  1. Nik Cubrilovic January 23, 2007 4:36 pm

    Hi, I am the CEO of Omnidrive, thanks for the great review. Just one thing about our pricing - paying $40 a year for 10GB of storage is the lowest price we know of - even lower than Amazon S3 (by around 20%). Or are you instead comparing the price to what you would pay for an offline drive? If that is the case, then the reason why the price is higher is because the big cost to suppliers of online storage is bandwidth, and we provide a decent amount of bandwidth per month on each plan rate.

    Thanks again for the good review, we have many more updates and releases coming up (we launch a new version almost every week). Future releases include video sharing, new picture viewer (with fullscreen slideshows), browser plugins and much much more.

    Nik

  2. reviewsaurus January 24, 2007 1:21 am

    Hey Nik,

    Thanks for the reply and appreciating the review. Well, as far as pricing is concerned, I’ll say that Omnidrive has wider options as compared to others but if we look at the higher packages (50 GB one) then it is almost $ 100 than Xdrive (which is owned by AOL). So, that’s why I said that pricing seems a bit more.

    Apart from that I think my post says it that the service rocks and as i said that more features will also negate the pricing problem :)

  3. Zoho powers Omnidrive’s word processing abilities! » ReviewSaurus - The Techie Dino! January 24, 2007 2:15 am

    [...] Fair Use « Previous article Review of OmniDrive : Online storage with web 2.0 frills! Next article » [...]

  4. Nik Cubrilovic January 24, 2007 6:23 am

    Ahhh yes it does cost more because of sharing and publishing. We might do a plan with no sharing and publishing and we could probably do 100GB for $99 :)

  5. reviewsaurus January 24, 2007 3:20 pm

    AHA! that will be fantastic. I’m sure you’ll be able to score many more users with that pricing :) Hoping to see that plan as soon as possible.

  6. Larry Mekus January 25, 2007 11:54 am

    Reference #4 - when you have 100GB for $99, with no sharing or publishing, let me know - I will be the first to sign up immediately - tracyinfo@gmail.com

  7. Zoho powers Omnidrive’s word processing abilities! | ReviewSaurus - The Techie Dino! February 4, 2007 5:30 pm

    [...] has first time ever collaborated with any other web service. With the help of Zoho’s API, Omnidrive has integrated the power of word processing and thus any user will be able to view and edit [...]

  8. FTPReview October 16, 2007 8:00 am

    Hi Nik, Omnidrive is good. However, as we have tested many different services, I can tell you there are other companies that have better services, features and more reliable client software than you guys. It’s fun for us to see some good competition. We have followed up this industry for a long time. I maintain an online storage, online backup review website, please take a look:
    http://backupreview.googlepages.com/default.html

    http://ftpreview.googlepages.com/index.html

  9. Kate December 16, 2007 2:47 pm

    I signed up for an Omnidrive account so I could access my files while my computer was temporarily in storage. When I tried to upload everything, it was painfully slow and would have taken about 2 weeks to do my modest amount, and the online help was completely inadequate. I emailed the support and got no reply, and after my third email, it started bouncing my emails back! I emailed the CEO personally, and wrote to the head office in the States, and have never received any acknowledgement. I think this service is outrageous.

  10. ReviewSaurus December 17, 2007 8:06 am

    @ Kate : I guess a humble request will do the trick. Just ask them nicely once again and I’m sure they’ll look into the matter.
    Just go to Nik’s blog (the first commenter) and he’ll be able to help you.

  11. Veeren January 10, 2008 5:04 pm

    While I am uploading files to Omnidrive through Webdav. files are showing Zero memory. and i cant able to view from other system.

  12. ReviewSaurus January 11, 2008 8:12 am

    @ Veeren : Yes, after I read the comment of Kate, I noticed the complaints across the web from many people. OmniDrive is getting a bad remark from everyone. It’s an old post and so all the comments were when they were doing well. Unfortunately, they seem to be going down and eventually may close down too (at least, that’s what everyone is speculating now).

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