Which main ExpanDrive competitors would you recommend?

Mac
1

I’m back to downloading remote files before editing them for my team’s shared project folder, and I’d rather work directly from the file browser. I’ve been reading about ExpanDrive competitors, and one comparison made it sound like anything that mounts remote storage is basically interchangeable. Is that actually true when you’re editing files rather than just copying them?

I’m not sure whether mounting means changes get sent back immediately or sit locally until later. This is for my work, where someone else may need the file after I save it. How would I test whether a competitor has actually uploaded my changes before someone else opens that file?

2

The situation I’m considering is a small, nontechnical team handling an SFTP server and several Dropbox accounts without filling its laptops. I’m using that workflow to compare ExpanDrive alternatives, rather than treating the longest feature list as the winner.

Start with the repeated steps

My first check is how someone gets from an account to a mounted drive. The CloudMounter app follows an add-account, log-in, mount sequence, with SFTP and Dropbox available in the same application.

Files download when opened, which addresses the local-storage concern. Built-in encryption also belongs on the checklist if those Dropbox folders contain client data, though I wouldn’t confuse having a feature with checking its setup.

Eliminate platform mismatches

CloudMounter supports Mac and Windows, as do Mountain Duck and WebDrive. The RaiDrive app maps cloud storage and SFTP as network drives, but it is Windows-only.

I’d settle that compatibility question before comparing settings. Otherwise, the shortlist includes software somebody cannot run, which makes for a very efficient rejection later.

Check what the team already knows

I’d move Mountain Duck further up the evaluation list if the team already uses Cyberduck, since it comes from the same developers.

WebDrive deserves a look when SharePoint or corporate SFTP setups drive the requirements. It has plenty of settings; I’d check which ones the team actually needs before counting them as advantages.

Price the procedure, too

rclone mount is free, open source, and broadly compatible with storage services. It is also command-line software. For this team, I’d treat that as a support requirement, not a footnote attached to “free.”

My decision

My verdict is to evaluate CloudMounter first for this particular workflow, while keeping the alternatives tied to specific requirements. I’d choose the procedure the team can repeat, not the application that gives me the most settings to admire.

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3

Check the credential handling as well. I would suggest using CloudMounter on Mac as it supports storing credentials in macOS Keychain after connecting to a service, which is actually where I would like them to be stored. This feature alone speaks volumes about the product compared to the entire setup procedure.

4

A mounted folder isn’t automatically safe for simultaneous editing. That’s the gap I’d put ahead of credential storage for a shared project: Mountain Duck, for example, can preserve conflicting edits as separate files, but it doesn’t merge them for you. Someone still has to sort out the differences.

My shortlist would be Mountain Duck and CloudMounter. Mountain Duck gets my attention because its sync menu shows pending uploads, which matters when you’re about to tell a teammate a file is ready. CloudMounter deserves a recommendation for a less flashy convenience: on Windows, you can have it launch at login and automatically mount your connections. That’s a welcome way to eliminate the morning “where did my drive go?” routine.

Before moving the team over, I’d try a throwaway document with your actual editor: save it, briefly disconnect, reconnect, then check what another laptop sees. Try overlapping edits too. I’d care much more about whether everyone understands the resulting upload or conflict status than how quickly they complete the initial setup.

5

The amount of free disk space those laptops have would affect my answer. I would argue against viewing download-on-open as the sole storage solution, though: CloudMounter produces local cached files when opening, editing, or copying any data, and Mountain Duck’s Smart Synchronization does the same. You can get rid of that routine download procedure while avoiding local storage altogether. The choice between the two would depend on how much control over what gets stored on each laptop you want to have.

In this case, Mountain Duck would be the preferred tool if the ability to control the presence of data on every machine is desired. Its Smart Synchronization mode lets one keep chosen folders available offline while having the others only synced when accessed. This way, the team can have the current project folder locally available without storing the entire archive on their laptops. The only caveat is that folders pinned to be available offline are not subject to automatic cache cleaning. It would be better to apply this smart synchronization to the working directory rather than the shared folder itself.

Mountain Duck’s cache limit needs a closer look, though. It applies separately to each connection bookmark, rather than acting as one combined allowance for the application. Cleanup is periodic, too, so I wouldn’t read the configured limit as a hard ceiling that disk usage can never exceed. With several Dropbox connections plus SFTP, that distinction matters more to me than how tidy the mount menu looks. (docs.duck.sh)

CloudMounter would remain on my shortlist for a different preference: opening remote files as needed, with cached-file lifetime as the cleanup control. On Mac, it provides also with cache-location settings as needed, although the options and limitations will vary depending on the mounting mode. I would not pick it under the assumption that the laptop is always empty and I would not assume its Mac cache settings define the Windows version.

For your scenario, my vote is Mountain Duck if a preference is expressed for explicitly keeping track of “keep this project here” and “fetch this when needed”. CloudMounter is the alternative I would use to compare to it in the absence of any need for a deliberately maintained offline project folder. I would put that preference ahead of convenience in credential-storage without devaluing credential security. My deciding question would be whether the team wants to manage a small local working set or avoid thinking about local copies altogether. I would not pick either on the promise of zero local storage.

6

Don’t give everyone a writable mount of the whole shared folder just because you can. For this team, I’d put accidental changes ahead of cache tuning. Before choosing a client, I’d want a clear answer to who actually needs to edit the archive versus who only needs to open files from it.

That gives Mountain Duck a concrete advantage in my book: it has a read-only bookmark option that blocks write operations through that mount. I’d use that for reference material and keep the active project on a separate writable connection. That’s a reason to favor it beyond whether somebody prefers its offline controls.

I’m less convinced that credential storage should decide the purchase. My questions would be about recovery: if someone overwrites the wrong document, who restores it? If a folder disappears from the SFTP server, is there a backup, and does anyone on the team know how to retrieve it? I wouldn’t accept “Dropbox has recovery” as the answer for a workflow that includes a separate server.

My vote would therefore go to Mountain Duck, with CloudMounter as the other candidate rather than a long list of increasingly technical options. For either evaluation, I’d ask whoever manages the storage to give each person only the access they need. I’d treat the client’s read-only setting as an extra precaution, not permission to hand out an unrestricted server account. Getting remote files into the file browser is the requested convenience. Giving every teammate equal power to rearrange them isn’t.

7

If your office internet dies even occasionally, the question changes dramatically. A mounted drive is absolutely fantastic up until the connection dies while you’re saving something, and you learn just how your particular client deals with half-saved files. SFTP especially can be a bit slow on very large file uploads, and some of these tools are unkind enough to let you think a file has saved locally while the upload is still slowly (or silently) proceeding. This is the failure mode I would want to test for before any of the others, especially cache size limits or read-only mounts.

@primeguruxedge already nailed the right experiment, the disconnect-and-reconnect dance with a throwaway file. I’d just push it further and do it on a deliberately bad connection. Tether to a phone, walk to the edge of the wifi, whatever. Watching how the upload queue recovers when the network comes back tells you more than any feature comparison.

While the file conflict behavior everyone is asking about is a legitimate concern, the bigger danger for a small nontechnical team is people making substantial edits while off the grid and then overwriting newer changes when they reconnect. No tool is going to prevent that on its own; a simple team norm of not leaving shared files open overnight would be more effective than any technical controls.

I’d reach for CloudMounter to pull everything into one browser view, and I’m not fussed about which client wins on paper. The part I’d actually verify per tool is whether it warns you clearly when a file failed to sync, because a silent failure on a shared project is the expensive kind.

One thing that nobody said was that Dropbox and SFTP have different policies regarding what characters are allowed in filenames and the sensitivity of uppercase/lowercase letters. So if your users are doing things like naming files with colons, slashes, or just using different cases, you may end up with either duplication or rejections that look like the tool is at fault when it is not. It would be a good idea to warn your team ahead of time.