Up until recently, I recommended BitTorrent Sync (aka BTSync) to anyone who needed a simple way to share files between remote computers. I won’t be doing that any more.

BTSync is now out of its beta period, and the news is bad. It comes in two distinct versions: the paid version, which does what we’ve come to expect but now costs $50 per year per seat, and the free version, which is limited to ten shared folders.

This, despite earlier promises that functionality would not be removed from the free version. Some may argue that no actual features have been removed from the free version, but if I was running more than ten shares and suddenly some of them stopped working, it would sure seem like something was missing.

Of particular interest in the expiry message (above) is this: “Folder additions and removals will not be propagated to other devices.” I interpret this to mean that in the free version of BTSync, adding or deleting a folder in an existing share will not result in those changes being propagated to peers. If true, this makes the free version of BTSync almost entirely useless. But in my tests, it appears that folder additions and deletions are in fact still being propagated between peers. Possibly BitTorrent intended to make this change but changed their minds and didn’t update the expiry message.

In any case, while I understand that BitTorrent has the right to try to make money from their software, tricking beta users into using (and testing) your software only to break it – and ask for what is effectively ransom money to keep using it – is not going to win many customers.

I expect BTSync usage numbers to plummet sharply soon. I’ll be looking at alternatives, and if I find something good, I’ll add it here. For now, all I can do is warn everyone: don’t use BitTorrent Sync.