Boxcryptor Customer Survey 2020 – Secure Use of the Cloud in Numbers
At the beginning of 2020, we conducted the second major customer survey among Boxcryptor users. The following topics were the focus of our attention.
- satisfaction with our Boxcryptor encryption software
- the most popular cloud storage
- the use and awareness of our support services
Those users who subscribed to our newsletter were invited to take part in the survey. More than 2,000 responded to the call and completed the online questionnaire in February 2020. We provided the questions in German, English and Russian. By far the most answers came from Germany (1,212), followed by the USA (383) and Great Britain (102).
In this article, we give you an insight into the habits and preferences of our active and safety-conscious users.
Encryption – Germany as a Location is the Match-Winner
Our customers are mostly very satisfied with Boxcryptor and reward our work with high recommendations. When it comes to the smooth application of Boxcryptor, the average of those questioned were very satisfied. Above all, users of the Boxcryptor Business license stand out with particularly positive values. This license is optimized for the needs of solo self-employed persons.
We already know that many of our customers consciously opt for data protection Made in Germany. The results of our customer survey now show once again very clearly that for almost 20 percent of those questioned, our company location was even the most important reason for choosing Boxcryptor. Many participants in the survey took the opportunity to emphasize this aspect once again in their own words.
The software is Made in Germany, easy to use (invisible in the background) and it supports the cloud services that are important to me.
In April 2019 Boxcryptor was recommended by the renowned consumer magazine Stiftung Warentest. This recommendation was also reflected in the results of our customer survey.
We benefit from the good reputation that German security products have earned all over the world and do our best to meet expectations even better with each new version of our software.
Cloud Storage – OneDrive Overtakes Dropbox
Typically, our customers have already selected (or are using) their chosen cloud storage and then add Boxcryptor’s encryption. In 2020, over 30 different cloud storage devices can be encrypted by Boxcryptor. The most important are the major providers Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. A new addition this spring is the German provider LeitzCloud. In addition to the automatically detected cloud providers, numerous others can be easily integrated via WebDAV.
New in 2020: OneDrive has displaced the previous leader Dropbox from first place since the last survey in spring 2019. The explanation is simple. In the months prior to our survey, Microsoft used great advertising pressure to push users into their own cloud, for example with offers such as Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Teams. As a result, it was already foreseeable in February what we can now observe worldwide in the summer: More and more companies are moving their data to the cloud because of the switch to Microsoft Teams. The spread of the corona virus and the associated increase of remote work has further intensified a development that could already be observed before.
The cloud storage Dropbox is of course still very popular. By the way, this was the first cloud storage for which Boxcryptor was available. The high share is therefore also due to the company history of Boxcryptor.
You can see the most popular cloud storages for our users in the following graphic.
Even though the encryption of files in the cloud is our core business, we are by no means committed only to the cloud. Almost 20 percent of those surveyed ticked off the use of Boxcryptor as encryption software for local storage such as NAS – which is roughly the same as last year.
This shows: The big advantage of Boxcryptor over competitors is our versatility. With Boxcryptor, files can be encrypted easily in the cloud, locally, on USB devices, or in data transfer via Whisply. We also cover the operating systems Windows, macOS, iOS and Android.
On average, our users have linked and secured 2.5 cloud storage or local storage locations for their files with Boxcryptor. There are differences among respondents who have a business license: 2.6 different cloud storage locations. Respondents who manage the Boxcryptor license for a company as an administrator use an average of 2.2 different cloud storage locations.
Please note: As a provider of zero-knowledge encryption software, we have no information about which cloud storage is used for files encrypted with Boxcryptor. All information in this article is based on the answers of the participants in our survey.
Support – Our Boxcryptor Community Needs to Become Better Known
Our users have various resources at their disposal to use Boxcryptor optimally and efficiently. Publicly available are Changelog, Help pages and the Boxcryptor-Community. Individual applications, such as the new Single Sign-on or the functionality of Google's Backup & Sync with Boxcryptor are presented in detail in our blog and newsletter. For customers of Boxcryptor Personal, Boxcryptor Business and Boxcryptor administrators, our email support is available during business hours.
Our survey shows that users prefer to help themselves. Nearly 55 percent said they had consulted our help pages. This figure has remained stable compared to 2019. Of those surveyed, 50 percent also said that they were able to solve application problems by performing a quick search on the Internet.
Our forum, where mainly users of the free Boxcryptor Free license can exchange information, was revised in 2019 and can now be found under the new name Boxcryptor Community. The latest survey shows: Compared to the forum, the community is much less well known to the respondents. Therefore, in the future, we want to present this new forum to the Boxcryptor users in detail.
Thanks a Lot
We were very enthusiastic about the response rate to our customer survey invitations sent out in 2020. We greatly appreciate how many people from many different countries took the time to answer our questions. This gives us a better understanding of how our software is used on a daily basis and helps us see where we can improve.
