Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
4 days ago (locker.dev)
Last week SWYX nerd-sniped me into building an Open-source Dropbox.
Here is Locker: the ultimate open-source Google Drive/box/Dropbox alternative - Provider agnostic (S3, R2, vercel blob, local) - BYOB (Bring your own bucket) - Virtual file system - QMD Search plugin
The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced.
So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.
On the other hand when a Dropbox user shares a file with you these days, the nudges have so gotten out of hand that it's a pain to use.
That’s only an issue if you use Dropbox for sharing with non-Dropbox users, rather than for syncing files across devices and accounts, and having an extra versioned copy in the cloud.
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There are other less annoying alternatives such as WeTransfer.
https://syncthing.net/ <- like this :)
Free, opensource, works on computers and phones, can in most cases puncture nat, supports local discovery (lan, multicast).
No googles, no dropboxes, no clouds, no AI training, no "my kid likes the wrong video on youtube, now our whole family lost access to every google account we had, so we lost everything, including family photos", just sync!
(not affiliated, just really love the software)
The only issue I have, with this amazing piece of software that I heavily use across multiple devices, is management of sync failures and exclusions via the UI. I have been using it for long enough to know the tips and tricks but it would be great for the web UI to allow easy management of conflict issues and the ability to mark files/folders as exclusions in a friendly manner.
This is my go to solution for code sync across macOS laptop, Windows VMs, and Linux VMs to build and run/debug across environments. Unless something has changed, exclusions of build artifacts was always an issue with cloud sync providers. I have been doing more cross compilation on macOS, copy and run on those other machines lately for prototypes, but for IDE based debugging it’s great to edit local or remote and get it all synced to the machine to run it in seconds.
Sadly it doesn't have a great official solution for mobile devices.
The problem with syncthing is that you need to download the whole folder to your device. Google drive is "streaming"
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Right - you pay for the GUI and the well-balanced user experience. It's less about, strictly speaking, the storage.
Which is, in the end, true of a lot of tools where the underlying 'things' aren't particularly spectacular but rather it's the user experience that sells it
We can just all use rsync, no need for an app.
Yep, I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android). Also an external drive.
I ended up creating https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu which calls rsync under the hood but helps you build up a valid rsync command with no surprises. It also codifies each of your backup / restore strategies so you're not having to run massively long rsync commands each time. It's 1 shell script with no dependencies except rsync.
Nothing leaves my local network since it's all local file transfers.
Until I want to share with say… anyone that isn’t on HN :)
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Except that for macOS it uses the FileProvider Framework. So files that are rarely accessed get deleted from your local storage and synced back automagically when you access them. Saving space on your disk because on mac you can’t upgrade your ssd without a soldering iron.
> but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced
Which mobile OS would that be?
The big reason I stopped being excited about cloud storage is that on mobile, from what I can tell, none of the major providers care about "folder that syncs" experience. You only get an app that lets you view remote storage. The only proper "folder that syncs" I had working on my phone so far was provided via Syncthing, but maintaining that turned out to be more effort than my tiny attention span can afford these days.
On iOS, Dropbox integrates with the Files app. Since that was added a couple of years ago, I rarely have to open the Dropbox app itself. About the only time is when I want to restore an earlier version of a file.
You can also mark complete folders as “Make Available Offline”, which will keep their contents updated, though I don’t really use that personally.
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Wow, I’m surprised. Of all my self-hosting solutions, this needs least maintenance, for me. Recently had to move to a fork of SyncTrazor, because a new project picked up support, but that’s the first time I had to think about it in years. Wish NextCloud and Immich were that easy!
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Obsidian is exactly this, it just totally doesn't act like it. in fact, it is a bit fiddly to make it do this. but THIS is why Obsidian is so useful
I'm using iOS and macOS. On macOS I have the folder that syncs experience (I'm using Synology Drive, but Dropbox works the same way), on iOS I have the "browse remote files" experience but I can pin files I always want to keep available which is what I want.
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Seafile seems to have that feature, but upload only.
And I haven't tried it ... unfortunately, the Android app is also ...... buggy.
Yes, notably, the File Provider extension is where the value is for me. Are there any open source options other than Seafile's SeaDrive?
NextCloud has a version with FP support
To me, integration with the Apple files app on iOS is critical for any Dropbox replacement (among other things).
Yep. Open source Dropbox is really Nextcloud - https://nextcloud.com
Given how many fuckups sync had over lifetime of it (at one point it basically asked for re-log every day, at other it just corrupted data/didn't finish sync), no
I use OpenCloud nowadays https://opencloud.eu and can really recommend it. It was easy to install on a VM and uses S3 for storage. No database needed.
Isn't that the scenario for Nextcloud?
Yeah but it seems like that can also be replicated with modest effort.
That's a very typical HN/developer response that often underestimates the effort and the interest people have into a self-rolled solution outside of tech / self-hosting circles. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674176)
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Yes Syncthing does those things
Why wouldn't I trust a vibe coded app that has existed for 1 week with all my important data?
In fairness, you can also have that experience with Microsoft OneDrive.
In absolute terms, as far as we know, as of today that vibe-coded app is still more reliable than OneDrive.
What experience?
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SpaceDrive might offer a more comprehensive and better-maintained version of this, though it is not primarily advertised for this kind of use.
https://v2.spacedrive.com/
Why wouldn't I trust a SaaS app that is charging me and selling my important data?
...most of the software industry is one rung above back alley smack dealer when it comes to the kind of business they run.
Most software developers are bartering for food and shelter. They're not curing cancer or building an essential new bridge for a community.
Because you can self-host it all and validate the source yourself!
How can I practically verify 2TB of a life's worth of files while guaranteeing I won't have data loss due to some edge cases and race conditions that delete my data.
Every time I've created my own backup script I realized knowing what to delete and when is not easy. IMO the practical solution to this is to just pay for more storage (within reason).
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Stop paying for banks, AI built this cardboard box that you can store in your toolshed instead!
Can I have a link to the cardboard box .pdf template please?
There, designed especially for you. Don't thank me, I'm a cardboard security expert, can do that all day long.
https://fev.al/assets/2026/Carboard-bank-secure-box-template...
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Take your pick :) https://www.templatemaker.nl/en/
Neat! Pricing wise it might not always make sense though to use the commercial blob storages, especially for solo usage.
1 TB is roughly 20-30 USD per month at AWS/GCP only in storage, plus traffic and operations. R2 is slightly cheaper and includes traffic.
Compared to e.g a Google AI plan where you get 5 TB storage for the same price (25 USD/month) + Gemini Pro thrown in.
Backblaze is a lot more affordable
Yes, and they have features like default soft delete with hard delete after x days that makes it a very compelling backup choice (guard against malware and mistakes). I'm a satisfied customer.
If only they had data centres in Asia so latency would be better for me.
A family member has uploaded a backup of all of the family photos to Amazon Glacial Storage, on the order of a few hundred GB, and gleefully sends me screenshots of the <$1/mo charges.
AWS Glacier is cold storage, for things like legally mandated retention that you never need to access, or for humans, say digitizing your grandma's 35mm slides. It's not the same use-case as typical file backup, with performance that's probably not acceptable if you want a file (or even a listing) <now>. Good rule of thumb: Glacier is for things that you might need but ideally will never access again.
And then has to pay hundreds to get the data back
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Stop paying for Google, give it to Bezos instead!
We've officially come full circle
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Hah, wow. A post with an ID under 10k. Meanwhile this one is over 47M.
I didn't realize I've been reading HN nearly its whole existence. For all my complaining about what's happened to the internet since those days, HN has managed to stay high quality without compromising.
I think a big reason is you are not notified when someone replies to your comment. It reduces heated back and forth arguments.
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At least, here the biases are well known. I have been here since the beginning as well. :)
Every so often someone is like, Dropbox isn’t that hard. Look at this amazing ZFS/whatever! So simple. Yeah, I keep paying Dropbox every year so I don’t have to think about it. I shoot a sync off to backblaze every once in a while.
I dislike Dropbox for reasons that aren't technical, but the big thing for me is that I want either E2EE, or control/ownership of where my data is stored. These are my personal files (no, not that kind of personal), I'm not just going to scatter them on the internet.
My solution so far has been NextCloud, but I'm getting pretty fed up with it. But not enough to actually do anything about it... yet.
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I love Dropbox, I pay annually. I use the open source client https://maestral.app/ on the Mac for workstation use, but also integrate other systems with my Dropbox account using their API. If someone built an open source Dropbox server that sat on top of S3 compatible storage, I would not only use it, but pay to have that optionality to get out of Dropbox if they ever enshittify. I can recognize form and function worth paying for ("value"), but still want an exit plan. It's not about the spend, it is about data sovereignty. This is colloquially referred to as “vendor and third party risk management.”
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at the risk of a comment that doesn't age well, for most people on HN I would definitely look into just using rclone. I also has a GUI for people who want that. rclone is mind-blowingly good. You can set up client-side encryption (so object storage never sees the data or even the filename) to be seamless. I'm a huge fan
To be fair, I can't remember the last time I needed Dropbox or Google Drive, but I do use iCloud, since it comes with plenty of storage for my family plan. I don't send anyone files like back in the day where people would send me a Dropbox link and I'd send them one back.
this is cloud to different cloud thing not physical to cloud thing tho
The critical part of Dropbox is not just the storage layer but a combination of their client and server. Even small things like how do you handle conflicting writes to the same file from multiple threads, matter a great deal for data consistency and durability.
A lot of the backend bucket providers can handle file versioning.
I too would like the answer to this concern because the features page doesn’t mention it. I want to be able to handle file version history.
I’m currently using Filen which I find very reasonable and, critically, it has a Linux client. But I wish it was faster and I wish the local file explorer integration was more like Dropbox where it is seamless to the OS rather than the current setup where you mount a network share.
Absolutely not. The value isn't in the cloud storage. The value is in the client (DropBox in my case) seamlessly working across all my devices.
This sounds like a problem already solved without the need for proprietary clients.
Features I'm guessing this is missing (in no particular order): Recycle bin, Sharing with permissions, Editor, Versioning, Search, Partial sync, zone redundancy/backup, Windows, Android, Mac, and iOS clients
Why would I want to replace my reliance on them with reliance on Amazon or another cloud provider?
I'd rather control the whole stack, even if it means deploying my own hardware to one or more redundant, off-site locations.
Edit: Are there robust, open source, self-hosted, S3-compliant engines out there reliable and performant enough to be the backend for this?
There’s local file system as an option for storage provider.
But then you still need a bazillion dependencies and a db just to manage files already on your filesystem.
take a look at https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/
and https://rustfs.com/
The old open source version of Minio still works
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I pay Dropbox $120 per year for 2TB. No transfer fees, solid Apps, macOS integration, free APIs.
How much on S3? A LOT more.
I think the idea is any s3 compatible api endpoint can be used. The code also clearly supports both backblaze, and more importantly, local blob storage
Just saying, but this is not really fair. It's not like you use that 2TB. So you shouldn't compare it to a 2TB bucket. Most of these plans have limits to prevent abuse but they're well beyond the 'I need to care' level.
Maybe you use 1TB, maybe just 10GB. As a user on this site I expect you know that a 10GB plan and a 1TB plan won't be that much different.
I don't know what you're talking about. I always reserve right up to the knife's edge of what I actually use.
You're right, I'm currently only using 1.1 TB out of 2.0. But saying a 10GB plan and 1TB aren't much different is crazy talk.
Fwiw, 2TB on R2 is $30/month, Wasabi is $14/month, both support S3, neither have egress fees. Backblaze is $10/month for 2TB but has an egress quota after which there are fees, so Backblaze is same cost as Dropbox, minus the egress quota. If Dropbox works for you there's no reason to switch.
Is linode supported?
Why does getting started have me sign up for an account vs take me to the docs to self host?
May I recommend the excellent https://s3drive.app/ which is compatible with S3 and also providers like Proton Drive
I bought 35$/mo 16TB server from OVH. I am running 2 replicas of Garage, one on this server. I am using this for backup for now but probably I will also move my Nextcloud files there and websites. This is fine for now and less pricey than any S3 provider I was able to find.
Mind sharing the reference of the server?
I would have considered it when rebuilding my media infra but haven't seen anything close to this
I was fishing for nice price for server like that for few months. To be true I saw something similar but even cheaper last year and I should buy then for 20$, but thought that I do not need it. Now those servers are more like 60$/mo.
It was something like that. https://www.kimsufi.com/pl/?range=kimsufi&storage=12000%7C11...
As you can see price is 180% of that now for bit more storage.
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Honest question, what do you need/use 16TB for? 4K video?
I already am using almost 4tb just for backup. 2TB for all of my files in NAS. As I wrote above I will most probably move my Nextcloud instance storage there so I will be already using 6TB of storage. With built-in instant replication between nodes in garage I should have instant backup of my files.
Right now I do not have time, but it would be nice to move storage all of my services there so in case of trouble with one server I could instantly spin them up on other machine by mounting S3 storage. Performance probably wont be great but if main machine will go down I will be still able to use my home automation for example on some secondary without much of a hassle.
Anyway having dedicated server and backup storage for 30$/mo does not seem unreasonable.
Lots of files with 2160p.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.Atmos.DV.HDR.H.265-FLUX[TGx] in the name.
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If you are not ready to trust a vibe-coded app with all your digital life, I recommend Filestash[1], easy to install self-hosted frontend for virtually any type of storage. Written in Go, it can be enhanced with plugins. Uses local SQLite database.
I am using it with Hetzner Storage Box[2], which is insane value for money at 11 euro per 5 terabytes per month.
[1]: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash [2]: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/
The actual best open source Dropbox replacement already exists: SeaFile. Too bad their website is terrible.
https://www.seafile.com/en/home/
It's pretty magical. It nails the "online" vs "cloud only" paradigm via the SeaDrive client. I have it running on my file server, and now all my machines have access to terabytes of storage with local performance, since it can cache a subset of your content locally.
And since I can run the server on my LAN, the throughput is way better than Dropbox would be too.
Why would I use S3 when S3 is super expensive compared to all other cloud storages?
That is a bit like saying “Don’t use a medical analysis app, just interpret your lab results yourself.”
Sure, ChatGPT can help, but to use it reliably, you still need enough medical knowledge to ask good questions and evaluate the answers.
funny enough the guy behind the project also has an app like that https://github.com/zmeyer44/OpenVitals
(and regarding contributors for all of his projects, it's mostly vibe-coded)
Think of OpenVitals more as "Don't pay $300/yr for a chatGPT wrapper medical app, just use this with your existing test results for free"
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Looks like a good light weight solution to front object storage with a front end and auth. One suggestion is to add the license to the repo. The readme says License: MIT, but there’s no license file.
You can do a lot with cloudflare tunnels and a home mac mini. Dropbox, blogs, homebox (home inventory), hosted git.
I'm a kid in a candy store playing around with this stuff.
I used to be excited by these kind of tools, I love to self-host stuff. When I clicked on the link, I had this hesitation, suspecting "maybe it's LLM generated". And sure enough, coming back to HN, description says it is.
File sync can't be that hard! Enters the first 3 way conflict and everything explodes.
Dont misunderstand me, this is a cool idea. But if your rotation time between ideating a project and pushing it to HN is a week, you don't understand the problem space. You didn't go through the pain of realizing its complexity. You didn't test things properly with your own data, lost a bunch of it and fixed the issues, or realized it was a bad idea and abandoned it. I have no guarantee you'll still be there in a month to patch any vulnerabilities.
Not that any open-source project had these kind of guarantees until now, but the effort invested in them to get to that point was at least a secondary indicator about who built it, their dedication, and their understanding of the space.
The irony of this SHOW HN is that "just roll your own" was the classic OG critique of Dropbox before they took the space rocket to unicorn land.
I use archive storage class on google cloud, to store old movies and wedding videos, pictures of old vacations.
For everything else I use paid onedrive subscription. The biggest problem is user interface with s3 like storage and predictable pricing because remember you also pay for data retrieval and other storage apis, with dropbox etc you pay a fixed amount. Every year or so I roll over data into the bucket.
But for infrequently accessed data its fine.
"Stop paying for"?
But you have to pay for your own S3 bucket as well... and it's generally several times more expensive per terabyte, though this depends on different factors. (Not to mention you might still have to pay for Google if your e.g. Gmail doesn't fit into the free tier anymore.)
If this is supposed to be financially motivated, the creator seems to have it somewhat backwards.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47676174
Dropbox is a lot more than file storage. The syncing itself has been through serious tests to characterise its behaviour. Sure, some may not like the decisions taken to direct its sync behaviour one way or another but at least all these are known through formal testing.
There was a similar program I used when I was working at a smaller company and built an automated backup system for their call center recordings. It basically mapped the S3 bucket to a Windows drive letter, since the PBX call recording software was running on a Windows server. It was a while ago so I can't recall the name of the program
For all the people pooh-poohing this, I'm very interested in this business model (bring your own provider token) and this looks to be nicely done. I'm going to try it out. In particular I want to see if it supports payload encryption for the data in S3. I'd need that to be comfortable stashing all my personal data in AWS or Wasabi.
I wonder if it would be possible to do something like this that had transparent end-to-end encryption.
Funny I kept getting this "you are using 98% of your storage space" message with my 15GB so I'd be finding/deleting old attachments then eventually I was like fine I'll pay, it's like 48 cents a month or something
> Languages JavaScript 55.2%, TypeScript 44.4%, Other 0.4%
Isn't that compromises the whole purpose of the project immediatly?
Moreover, any reasonably adequate dev would work on expansion of syncthing ecosystem, not inventing a rasclet instead of a wheel
The thing I find interesting about apps made by Claude et. al. is that they always fallback to using dotenv for configuration. I thought dotenv was on its way out! Personally, I've been using sOPs for this purpose.
I'd love a local offline alternative, maybe I'll get AI to build it for me
Not trying to be snarky but what is offline dropbox more than a directory?
Syncthing? I'm taking 'offline' to mean 'not requiring the internet', which means you can have plenty of computers!
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I love it! How would you position yourself relative to existing OSS products in the space like Filestash or Seafile? I'm trying to pick a solution at the moment, and the mobile experience matters a lot to me.
Feels like this is missing some of the key points of using generic bucket storage for me: 1. Archive pricing for really large old documents. 2. Cross-provider backups; especially for critical documents.
Ok, I'll see it later but please use the 'Release' feature of GitHub. It is the easiest way to tell for your customers that a new release is out. Even GH can send notifications. Thanks.
What happens if the server disappears permanently and only the bucket is up?
What is the privacy architecture? I like the concept, but am curious what safeguards you have in place.
I use a cheap vps + dufs. Great for drag and dropping files and have my jellyfin server pointing to those directories.
Wouldn’t this be way more expensive?
Example 2TB:
Google $10/mo vs S3 ~&45/mo?
You could get cheaper that Google Drive with glacier tiers but that’s a different level of restrictions and still has retrieval fees.
If you use S3 Standard - Infrequent Access then it is $25/mo.
Very cool idea, but without background file syncing from/to my local machine, it can't replace my cloud storage provider.
S3 and B2 both have web UI, so if this is what your vibe app do, it's useless
Looks great!
Feature request: Google Drive for desktop.
That is the feature that gives your drive as a mounted file system that stream files as you need them.
It gives me the ease of having access to a giant amount of files stored in my gdrive without having to worry about the space they take up locally nor moving files up and down.
Actually, what solutions to that might already exist? I don't really use the web UI of gdrive as much as use it as a cloud disk drive.
The magic of Dropbox lies in its local app and sync, this is a nicer webinterface for s3 storage?
But isn’t Syncthing already open source Dropbox? Can easily use own hardware too which is very nice.
I already do this with next cloud and s3, I've never once had an issue in many years
Why not just use an FTP server?
coz FTP is garbage protocol that should die 2 decades ago
Google drive pricing is cheaper than S3/Google cloud storage for storage.
Isn't S3 charging money while dropbox and google drive have free plan?
The way how data is handled is more of a question than where it goes
Just don't spin up your machines in Bahrain or the UAE...
what am i missing?
Probaly this : https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/1rl8rxw/aws_datacenter...
It’s a reference to Iran attacking AWS data centres in those countries.
Iran made those AWS data centers... unhappy.
The comment is disingenuous, though, since Locker doesn't need AWS S3 to function.
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why would I need to sign up for something I self host?
Stop paying for clothes, make your own instead!
"Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, pay for an S3 bucket instead"
S3 is costly and carries significant political baggage.
For a better alternative, run MinIO on a cloud provider of your choice, or stick with a secure option like Proton Drive.
Suggesting MinIO as an alternative to something with "significant political baggage" seems weird given the recent rug pull?
I use a cheap alternative to the 3-2-1 rule[1].
I use a mini pc with small smb shares (less than 1 TB). This thing is on 24/7, but runs energy efficient.
When it's time to move data, i copy it to a Synology NAS that holds lots of TB's. Then it's also time to backup the really important stuff, which goes to a Hetzner Storage Box[2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup#3-2-1_Backup_Rule [2]: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/
> S3 is costly
> run MinIO
When people say "s3", they mean "any s3 compatible storage" in my experience, not "amazon s3 specifically" or just "s3 as a protocol".
Does the protocol have a published specification? Today I learned S3 isn't just the name of a product from AWS.
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Another option is https://github.com/drakkan/sftpgo
This is in Go, exposes both webdav and SFTP servers, with user and admin web interfaces. You can configure remotes, then compose user space from various locations for each user, some could be local, others remote.
See also: https://github.com/Barre/ZeroFS
Doesn’t require an external database (just a s3 bucket) and is a single binary. A webui is shipping in the next few days.
this doesn't seem like it allows multiple writers?
Spme things should not be vibecoded (yet)
this is rlly cool
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Same for Drive, which has the office suite included in people's minds.
I'm def looking for an alternative, taking proton for a test drive this week, because they have the office tools, which I didn't know and assume they are not as good, but hopefully good enough for my usage
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Cross compatibility and easy of use is as important as price and open source