Many of us use multiple cloud storage and file-sharing services and have other files hiding in apps such as Slack and Lightroom. FileShadow promises to combine your files from all those places—and whatever folders on your computer you’d also like to back up—into one place. It covers Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom, Slack, and Facebook for photos. It’s a compelling idea, especially because FileShadow lets you search across all your connected accounts, and it’s marketed at people who have a disorganized photo collection in particular. While the core idea may be sound, this service only partially delivers on its promise and charges a lot for it. For cloud storage, we recommend Editors’ Choice winners Microsoft OneDrive, which is the best overall, IDrive for the lowest price, and Google Drive for Google users.How Much Does FileShadow Cost?FileShadow has a free version, but it is limited to a total of 100 files or 3GB, whichever comes first. Considering the purpose of FileShadow is to upload many files from multiple services, this tight limitation on the free version isn’t useful for much outside of getting a feel for the application. That’s somewhat typical for backup software—such services rarely offer generous free versions—but a little odd for a cloud storage service. Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive both give you 15GB of free storage with no limit on the number of files.
Paid plans start at $9 per month or $90 per year for storing up to 10,000 files or 30GB, which is very expensive compared with other services. Microsoft 365, for example, charges $69.99 per year for 1TB of storage. That’s a lower price for around 33 times the storage—and that’s taking into account only the storage because, with Microsoft, you also get email hosting and access to Office apps. With Google Drive, you can get 2TB of storage for $99.99 per year. Dropbox sells 2TB of storage for $120 per year. You get the idea. If bang for your buck is a priority, FileShadow is not a good deal. The low value is especially concerning when you realize that FileShadow is supposed to combine files from multiple such storage options—and if you have a lot of files, that will get expensive quickly. The highest listed plan FileShadow offers is 600GB, or 200,000 files, starting at $90 per month or $900 per year, a significantly higher price than the other services.
Yet, some storage services like OneDrive don’t duplicate FileShadow’s core feature: Backing up your files from other services. IDrive does, however. IDrive plans start at $99.50 per year with 5TB of storage—that’s $10 more than FileShadow’s starting plan for 160 times more storage. To back up other cloud services to IDrive, you pay an additional fee—to back up Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, IDrive charges an extra $20 per year. That’s not free, but it’s almost certainly going to add up to less than what you would pay FileShadow for the amount of storage needed to back up all files from those two services. There’s just no way around it: FileShadow is expensive.Which Platforms Does FileShadow Run On?FileShadow primarily runs in a web browser. You can use the web version to upload files directly and to connect your cloud accounts to back up those files: Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom, and Slack. You can also install dedicated Windows and macOS applications to sync files from your devices.
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Applications for Android and iOS exist but they can’t automatically sync files—you can only upload files to the app manually. It’s a real disappointment, especially because FileShadow appears to be heavily focused on backing up photos. Most cloud services, including Dropbox and OneDrive, have an automated option to back up photos and videos from mobile devices.Getting Started With FileShadowTo create a FileShadow account, you must give your name, email address, and phone number in addition to creating a password. You do not need to provide payment details to create an account. Sign in for the first time and you go to the web version of FileShadow, which starts with only one file.A well-designed file-syncing service shouldn’t require much learning, but with FileShadow, a pop-up tutorial was my first clue that this application might not be so simple after all. To that end, I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to use FileShadow. It feels opaque at times.
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In the left panel are four main sections: Home, which shows all currently uploaded files; Collections, which shows any collections of files you’ve made and lets you make new ones; Connected Accounts, where you can add and manage accounts; and Settings.You can drag files to the web interface to upload them, though most users want to connect some combination of accounts and devices. The idea is that you add all your cloud accounts so that you can find all the files they contain in one place. The only major option missing is iCloud, one of the more popular places where people keep photos. Given FileShadow’s overall focus on photos, the omission is notable.
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Keep in mind that storage gets expensive quickly. You should also know that FileShadow doesn’t do a true sync because files you delete from your cloud accounts are not automatically deleted from FileShadow. This allows FileShadow to work as an archive, which has its uses, but it also means your storage space will fill up even faster. Plus, if you really want to wipe out a file from existence, you have to remember to delete it from FileShadow in addition to wherever else it lives.You can sync folders from Windows and Mac computers using the desktop application. Setting it up is fairly straightforward. You download the application, sign into your account, and choose which folders you want to sync. Again, however, if you delete files from your computer, they don’t automatically delete from FileShadow.I tested on a Windows computer. The user interface, which is essentially the web version in a dedicated window, is a touch disorienting. Browse a little, and you can figure out how to add files, though and any file added automatically uploads once, and new files added to the folder upload going forward. As mentioned, files you delete from your PC are not deleted from FileShadow—you have to do that manually.Automatic Photo Tagging
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If FileShadow’s marketing and features list are anything to go by, photos are a huge focus for this app. Every photo you upload is automatically scanned and tagged to make searching easier. For example, every single photo of my cat Mira was tagged “Cat,” “Black cat,” and even “Carnivore.” The result: I can search for “cat” and find photos of her.
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It’s not perfect, though. A few photos of Mira were tagged “Domestic dog breed.” But it’s pretty good, and it makes it a little bit easier to find photos. Need to find a photo with a tree, a lamp, or a fire? You can, instantly. Google Photos and Apple Photos, both Editors’ Choice winners for non-professional photo editing, also do a very good job of making your images searchable by keywords that it automatically adds. In my tests, they’re a lot faster and more accurate than FileShadow. I search for “cat” in either and I instantly see all my cat pictures. Both of those services also have face-tagging, meaning the ability to recognize particular faces. FileShadow says it has this feature—you can click a button to scan a face and tag it, which in theory would tag all photos of that person—but in practice, I never got it to work.The bigger problem is that FileShadow doesn’t do anything better than Google Photos or Apple Photos. FileShadow has both a map and a calendar view, which, in theory, could give you a handy way to explore photos taken on certain dates and in certain places. In testing, though, both tools were slow, buggy, and generally less usable than similar tools from Google and Apple. In FileShadow’s map view, for example, photos only showed up on the map as I scrolled past them, and every refresh re-centered the map somewhere in Africa. Compare that to Apple’s Photos app, which loads instantly and shows me a world map complete with all my pictures. The only real advantage FileShadow has here is that I can combine photos from a number of different applications. That advantage is undercut by both Apple and Google offering cheaper file storage than FileShadow does, though, and by the fact that both can automatically upload photos from my phone, which at this point is the tool I use to take most of my photos. It leaves me wondering who, exactly, FileShadow is for.Context CollapseBy default, FileShadow dumps all your files—regardless of any folder organization you may use—into one massive Home view. The premise is that you’ll use search to find what you’re looking for. If you find the setup confusing, there’s a workaround: Click the circle with the up arrow in the bottom right corner and then click the folder icon. You can now browse your files by folder, though the application resets back to the giant bucket the next time you open FileShadow.
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FileShadow is plagued by many more little annoyances. For example, there’s a button to select all files, but no way I could find to select multiple files outside of that. Connecting Google Drive resulted in zero files being uploaded—according to the product’s FAQ page, it’s a known issue, and the only way to fix it is to download the files to my computer, delete them from Drive, and re-upload them. In Safari on my Mac, the application was downright glitchy. I switched to Chrome, which worked a lot better. Even in Chrome, though, I ran into crashes while trying to do simple things like clicking the File Actions button. I could go on. FileShadow doesn’t feel like a polished product. Uploading and backing up files seems to work, but browsing them isn’t always a great time.Sharing With FileShadowSharing files in FileShadow is a multi-step process. First, you need to create a Collection. Collections can be Private, Shared, or Website. Private Collections aren’t shared. Shared Collections can be shared only with other FileShadow users. Given that you probably don’t know any other FileShadow users, you’d most likely use a Website Collection to share files.
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Such Collections can be optionally password-protected. You can also allow others to upload their files to the Collection, but only if you’ve password-protected the Collection. It all worked well in my tests, but you can’t organize shared files in folders the way you can in Google Drive, Dropbox, and similar applications.SecurityFileShadow’s website doesn’t have a lot of information about security, but a company representative told me that all files are encrypted using AES 256 keys, which is standard. Communication between FileShadow’s own servers is also encrypted, as are files transferred between FileShadow, other cloud services, and your devices. FileShadow supports multi-factor authentication, which is an essential way to protect your files. For reference, FileShadow is based in Provo, Utah.PerformanceI uploaded 50GB of files to FileShadow using the Windows application. The app uploaded files at a rate of roughly 21GB per hour, which is very fast.In my tests, FileShadow was slightly faster than Dropbox, which uploaded at a speed of about 20.5GB per hour. Home internet speeds vary, however, but these two were the fastest I’ve seen. IDrive is also very fast, uploading at a rate of roughly 17.5GB per hour.Better in Theory Than in PracticeFileShadow is meant to simplify your life. If you’re looking for a photo or other file but don’t remember where you put it, you search using FileShadow because it has an indexed and searchable copy of everything. It’s a good idea in theory, but it isn’t as simple to use as it should be, and it’s expensive. For those reasons, you’re better off using one of our Editors’ Choice winners for online storage and syncing: Microsoft OneDrive for the best service overall, IDrive for the best value, or Google Drive if you’re a Google user—and in conjunction with Google Photos if you need help organizing your images specifically.
The Bottom Line
FileShadow aims to combine all your cloud storage apps but fumbles on the execution.
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