If you were a DocStoc customer on Twitter or paying attention to their feed in June of 2015, you might have guessed at what happened after the company’s Twitter activity took a complete hard stop. DocStoc announced in September that it was no longer taking any new user registrations. A visit to their website now reveals that as of December 1, 2015, users would have to download all of their files before the servers are shut down for good. This is a terrible inconvenience for current customers with many documents already uploaded, who are now forced to look for alternative means to store and share documents. However, all is not lost. In this article, we will give an overview of how eFileCabinet can be a great alternative to DocStoc and the many ways in which eFileCabinet is superior.
What Was DocStoc?
DocStoc was officially launched in 2007 by co-founders Jason Nazar (CEO) and Alon Shwartz (CFO) in Santa Monica, California one month after it’s highlight at a TechCrunch conference.,This was a positive step for Nazar and Shwartz since TechCrunch conferences are known to feature the new and promising startup companies.
DocStoc was created as an electronic repository and online store aimed at providing professional, financial, and legal documents for the small business community. Users were able to upload, share, and sell or purchase documents from the website’s online database. Only one month after the company launched, DocStoc received a handful of funding by investors, including Crosscut Ventures. A year after that, they received over 3 million in funding and continued slowly to profitability.
While they were still the small Santa Monica, California startup, DocStoc originally was a service for the sharing of uploaded documents and was initially compared to similar content databases such as Scribd. However in 2009, as the company emerged from beta, the focus shifted primarily to business owners. In 2010 DocStoc targeted small businesses, including lawyers, accountants, and real estate brokers by encouraging them to earn revenue from selling their own business documents (academic papers, technical journals, business templates, contracts, etc.) uploaded on the site. In 2011, the same year it was bought by Intuit, emphasis was placed on the creation of original, high-quality business content by partnering with other companies such as LegalZoom and ProQuest.
Using eFileCabinet as an Effective Substitute
As mentioned previously, DocStoc was simply a document repository, which means that its primary purpose was to provide a database for the storage of documents and to view them. eFileCabinet differs from DocStoc in that it is a complete Document Management Software (DMS). As a DMS, eFileCabinet is used to actively control how documents are uploaded, stored, organized, shared, viewed, tracked, and managed. This means that in addition to having the features of a document repository, eFileCabinet offers a myriad of additional functions—features that are especially essential to the professional user-base of DocStoc. So, simply stated, eFileCabinet is much more than an appropriate substitute to DocStoc. Furthermore, in addition to using eFileCabinet for their document repository needs, current DocStoc users will also enjoy a multitude of additional benefits.
Using eFileCabinet as an Effective DocStoc Replacement
Though DocStoc was a somewhat satisfactory tool for storing and sharing documents in some people’s view, there were many shortcomings due to lack of functions, features, and support. As evident from online DocStoc reviews, users who demanded a more complete document management solution were sorely disappointed and left wanting more. This is a risk you have to deal with when using new startup businesses, eFileCabinet’s many years of experience prove it has reliable solutions and is much more than a simple repository. We have outlined just some of the ways in which eFileCabinet’s document management solution makes it, from our view, superior to DocStoc and other free document repository services:
- Compliance with the Standards of Regulatory Bodies such as HIPAA and FINRA: Professionals such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, and real estate brokers (DocStoc’s target user base) will know of the importance of storing documents in compliance with various regulatory bodies. They view compliance as a top priority. These standards normally require that:
- Systems are able to retrieve records on demand.
- All records are maintained in an unalterable format.
- Systems have reasonable controls to ensure integrity, accuracy, and reliability.
- Document systems possess reasonable controls to prevent and detect unauthorized creation,viewing, addition, alteration, or deletion of records.
- Document systems possess reasonable controls to prevent and detect records deterioration.
- Document systems provide a transparent audit trail that records all activity pertaining to sensitive data and particularly any activity that changes or captures information.
eFileCabinet’s automated environment already has these requirements built in, so regulatory compliance can be made as simple as possible. This was unfortunately not possible with DocStoc and remains one of its biggest shortcomings.
- Robust Document Security: DocStoc’s environment contained very little security, leaving sensitive files susceptible to unauthorized access (a huge HIPAA and FINRA non-compliance issue). eFileCabinet includes state-of-the-art and redundant security measures to ensure that files are properly secured during storage. eFileCabinet’s DMS environment includes security measures such as encrypted storage, automatic backups, and role-based security.
Extra security measures are also put in place for file sharing to ensure customers work free from worry. Our very own SecureDrawer makes sending and sharing files safer and more secure than ever. Our SecureDrawer files reside in secure SAS 70 Type II data centers with a variety of physical barriers and intrusion detection systems to prevent unauthorized access. In addition, data that resides in the system is protected using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to ensure maximum privacy and confidentiality.
- Ability to Create Workflows: The ability to create and view the progress of workflows is another one of eFileCabinet’s huge advantage over DocStoc. One of the major problems with document repositories is that there is very little preventing the duplication of files and folders, as well as limiting the users that can access files. In other words, there is very little document control, time is often wasted, and the filing process is not free of human error.. eFileCabinet’s Workflow Module provides a means of automating the workflow by routing documents or tasks to a particular user or group of users to perform the actions as per your current work processes. A properly defined workflow can eliminate mistakes including duplicate files, free up time, and documents are directed to the users that need to take the required action.
- Easy to Access Anywhere (Mobile Friendly): eFileCabinet includes a mobile app that allows users to access and share files with clients. With eFileCabinet’s mobile app, one can easily retrieve documents on the move without using precious mobile phone storage. Other benefits of the eFileCabinet’s mobile environment include:
- Access and view files stored in your eFileCabinet Online account.
- Print your files from your mobile device.
- Preview files before downloading.
- Download and open documents in other apps.
- Edit documents, photos, and videos on your mobile device and re-upload to sync
- Much more
- Powerful Integration with Intuit Software Like QuickBooks: One of the features lacking in the DocStoc startup was integration with third-party software. eFileCabinet provides a range of flexibility, allowing users to integrate with the powerful accounting software QuickBooks. This integration allows both software programs to work together for a synergistic experience that produces tremendous benefits.
QuickBooks allows users to easily link customers, vendors, invoices, bills, and much more with the click of a mouse. All profile/meta and supporting documents associated with a transaction in QuickBooks can be stored in eFileCabinet. In addition, eFileCabinet’s integration provides enhanced searching capabilities that allow customers to search for keywords to retrieve files quickly and efficiently.
In closing, it is not difficult to see that eFileCabinet is the best choice for customers who are searching for an alternative following DocStoc’s closure. In addition to having document repository features, eFileCabinet provides many other benefits that DocStoc’s professional client base will find useful. eFileCabinet’s reputable tools, services and solutions serve thousands of businesses and organizations worldwide, so you can be free from concern that we won’t be going anywhere.
We invite you to fill out our form for a 15-minute demo to discover how you can take advantage of eFileCabinet to enhance your business needs.