| (Original blog post author here) I had similar experiences with the earlier alpha/beta releases using a ton of CPU/RAM and having a ton of other issues, but lately it's been working quite well. I sync a lot of files, over 30GB, and Dropbox and Google Drive did a spectacularly poor job with that kind of load as well. The iOS app for BTSync absolutely lets you browse your shares and download individual files. Otherwise I would not be able to use it. My cloud server is a g1.small on GCE, and I run Sync inside Docker on that instance. The same server also runs a bunch of other crap, and it's far from resource constrained. About once a year I went through the exercise of "let's try replacing Dropbox with something" and this time, with BTSync, I have been able to finally get rid of it, with the exception of a few mobile apps that rely on it. I agree it could be more open, and I'm always on the lookout for a better solution, particularly one with similar encryption capabilities. If you haven't tried BTSync in a while, perhaps it's worth another look. Sync still has room for improvement, but it does seem to be constantly improving. |
Also I find the web/app interfaces to BTSync to be extremely laggy or contain stale data. On my MBPr (late 2013) it took a little over a minute to launch (well it "launched" right away but the web interface showed a loading screen for a minute, I have ONE folder synced) and the UX is terrible. I'll click something and a few seconds later it will open, I'm constantly wondering if the click registered or if BTSync is just being slow. In my experience the web/app does not seem to save my settings on which columns to show which is quite irritating. Lastly as I mentioned above trying to have BTSync sync 300+ folders brought it to it's knees and I can't even load the web interface to remove folders so that it's usable again (On my Ubuntu media center).
As for the API key there is NO VALID REASON why I should need an API key to access something I host myself, none. Period. Exclamation point. I had to apply for an API key before I could start scripting BTSync and the first thing I did with scripting was to add all my media folders for shows to BTSync and it fell over and died. If you just want to sync a handful of folders it might work fine for you but when it brings my beefy media center to it's knees something is really wrong. Another gripe I have is the documentation for BTSync is woefully out of date and flat out incorrect in some cases. Once you manage to get an API key there are no instruction on what you do with said API key. Do you add it to each request to the BTSync API? No, you actually put it in a config file for BTSync itself which I only found out after scouring the internet and BTSync forums for help.
BTSync has failed me multiple times and I'm done wasting my time with it. I'm glad it works for your but trying to use it for ~10TB of data is pipedream. To be fair Syncthing (Pulse) may be no better but I already like them more because they are more open whereas BTSync feels like a bait and switch waiting to happen IMHO.