Is there any web based file exchange for NAS?

Question

I see lot of small companies having a NAS willing to exchange large files with their customers. They spend an incredible amount of time dealing with big email or websites like wetransfer.

Idealy, there would be a mini website on the NAS. Company employees will give a user account for each customer. Then they just have to copy files in the corresponding folder to make them available to customer. Customer could download and upload files using web. The employees of the company directly found the uploaded files in a folder named after customer name.

Is there any NAS with such feature ? is there any easy to install solution ?

I'm looking for that on Synology.

Note : I know FTP can be used for that but lot of users don't know how to use it and/or don't want to install a FTP client.

Answer 1

Synology does pretty much what you described.

From your side (as the NAS owner/admin):

1. Create user accounts
2. Allow user to have Read/Write access to "Homes" (which is their home folder)
3. Allow user to access "File Station" which is the web-based upload/download. You can also enable other protocol (FTP for example) which would be easier if the user need to upload multiple files rather than via the web (1 by 1).
4. Enabled "User Home" service

From the user point of view:

1. They have username/password (and your NAS website address)
2. Login, access the File Station, and click Upload.

And after the user uploaded things, you as the NAS Admin can go under /Home/username and pick up the files you need.

Do also consider OwnCloud first as it is just a software to re-use your existing hardware. Synology means you have to purchase additional hardware which may/may not in your scope.

Synology Live Demo if you want to see what it looks like: http://www.synology.com/en-global/products/dsm_livedemo

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

If the only problem of the customers is installing the FTP clients, then they can use their web browsers or a web client like www.net2ftp.com

All required login info can be also predefined

ftp://username:[e-mail]

or for the web client as GET parameters (doesn't support passwords):

http://www.net2ftp.com/?ftpserver=ftp.mozilla.org&ftpserverport=21&username=anonymous&directory=&language=en&skin=shinra&ftpmode=binary

But if you insist on not having FTP at all then you could checkout a native Synology web interface to their file sharing service (as described here on page 61) or if the companies have their own web server with the PHP installed then http://owncloud.org/ could be worth checking out.

Answer 3

Try the OwnCloud - that is fully functional web-based filestore/share service with quotas, groups and lot of features.