Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Spanning Sync or Busy Sync

Tafkas

Tafkas

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 23, 2007
122
15
Princeton, NJ
Hi guys,

A year ago I tested Spanning Sync for syncing my iCal with Google calendar. It worked out very well and I subscribed for one year (25 USD). Now there is version 2 around the corner that will add contact sync support. I have tried the beta and that works very well too.

My subscription is to end soon and I am thinking about extending. That would be another 25 USD for a year or 65 USD for life long subscription. Meanwhile I encountered another product called Busy Sync. I does almost the same (except contact syncing). With a coupon a single license per computer is 20 USD aka 40 USD for both of my macs.

Does anybody have some experience with the tools and could share it?

PS: there is also gSync but I read about a lot of problems with duplicates.
 
I have test Busy Sync for a couple of days and it seems very nice. Unfortunately the coupon code I had does not work anymore.

Does anybody has a working coupon for Busy Sync?
 
First, I do not have a MobileMe formerly known as .Mac subscription. I do not think it is worth the 79EUR or 99 USD.

When I am at work I want to have a calendar to set up my appointments. Therefor Google Calendar does a very good job.

I made good experiences with Spanning Sync and Busy Sync but I do not want to pay for another year of subscription if I can have the same with a one time payment.
 
Cheaper ok, but why better? I did some research on the Internet and people where not so happy with the tool.

Busy Sync is, if I can find a coupon, just 13 USD more expensive.
 
Tafkas said:
Cheaper ok, but why better? I did some research on the Internet and people where not so happy with the tool.

Busy Sync is, if I can find a coupon, just 13 USD more expensive.
Click to expand...

Could you please post your results/findings? I too am looking for alternatives to SS.

el.
 
EvanLugh said:
Could you please post your results/findings? I too am looking for alternatives to SS.

el.
Click to expand...
Not sure if you'd be interested, but here it goes.

Sign up to an ical exchange (http://www.icalx.com/)
and the subscribe to it via google calendar.

Works fairly good for me *but i only use it one way, as a backup to see events if i dont have my computer... dont think it works if u post on the google calendar...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

Well i have been using gSync on Tiger and Leopard for over a year without any single problem. T'here is a free trial.
Contact syncing with Gmail is a joke... Unless you manually force the client to erase Googles data manually each time. Their address book is atrocious and keeps adding anyone for no reason. A sync will just mess up your local contact list.
Also gSync is not a simple pref pane, its a soft you can access very quicky from the menu bar.
Just try it out. If you buy it you get a double licence for 2 comps.
 
It's not exactly on the topic of spanning vs busy sync, both of which I used via their trials (I prefered busy sync)... but I read in a posting that someone said they were able to use plaxo to sync their iCal and gCal for free. Since I already had a (rarely used) plaxo account I checked it out. Other than a few hiccups from time to time, it has actually worked pretty well for me for the last month or so. Just thought I'd pass the option along.

Edited to add: As pointed out in another thread, there are several limits to this option including: no multiple Google calendars and it doesn't 2 way sync between Google and Plaxo. This probably makes it unworkable for most, but it may still offer an option for some (it does work for how I use these calendars at the moment). Thought I'd clarify.
 
Since my Spanning Sync subscription is about to expire, they offered me a 40% discount on the renewal.

Instead of the normal $25 price for a one year renewal, I would pay just $15.

That makes decision even harder.
 
I was in the same boat as you recently as my first year of Spanning Sync was running out. With all the mentions of BusySync on the various Podcasts I was wondering if BushSync was maybe a better option. It seems that all that busy sync offers extra is the ability to share and edit calendars over a network. Since that functionality wasn't really anything I needed and with the same discount coupon you mentioned and since I've been happy with Spanning Sync for the past year, I decided to renew for another year.
 
Spanning Sync wins for me, because their support rocks, they are pretty good about adding new features pretty regularly (see Contact sync), and it just works. I was doubtful at first, but now I am very thankful for SS.
 
BusySync nickles & dimes...

I bought a copy of BusySync ($25 US) and thought it was great. Sync'd up my MBP at home linking my iCal and Google cal. Next day at office, put BusySync on my Macpro, entered my license number and got ready to sync...program complains that I need another license. What? Now I'm annoyed and refuse to pony up a 2nd $25 just to get another machine to sync the same two freakin' calendars. To me, this is a ripoff. The whole reason I got into BusySync was so my ubuntu eeePC could see my calendar--mobileme complains about firefox 3.x on ubuntu on a eeePC...and even with user-agent spoofing, it still kinda craps out in places.

Anyway, point of my post is: if you have multiple macs, you should factor that in as a multiple on the price of busysync.
 
Yeah, when busysync came out I remember the pricing being a bit stiff. The terms are clear (don't know how you missed them), but you need at least two licenses to make it work.
 
Since moving to the Mac a few months ago I've been hunting around for a solution to fix the problems I was experiencing with MobileMe, namely its inability to synch Outlook based calendars hooked into Exchange.

I don't believe my set-up is unique with a PC at work (Outlook & Exchange), a Macbook at home (iCal) and an iphone as a mobile device. I was looking for a solution that would enable me to synchronise my calendars across all devices, automatically where possible, with updates made on one being reflected on the others. Web access would also be useful. Not a lot to ask :)

By adding Google Calendars and Spanning Sync into the equation I now have a solution that is working well and very robust.

I use Google Calendar synch to upload my Work calendar from my PC to Google every 15 minutes. I then use Spanning Sync to bring this calendar plus my personal Google calendars down and into iCal, finally using iTunes to sync this to my iphone. It sounds quite convoluted but with the exception of the iphone sync, the process is fully automatic and is working perfectly. Edits can be made on any device or on-line and will automatically appear on the other devices at the next sync.

BusySync was an option but as I wasn't sharing calendars with other people, this seemed a bit of an overkill. Another plus for Spanning Sync was the fact that they were also offering the ability to synchronise your Address Book with your Gmail contacts, which now gives me online backup of my phone contacts as part of the solution.

The downside of this solution to some people is that Spanning Sync is sold as a service at $25 per annum or $65 for a life long subscription. However if this service continues to work as well as it has done to date then I will have no hesitation in upgrading to the life long subscription at renewal.

When compared to the cost of MobileMe, this appears pretty good value. Plus using code QY979S you can also get $5 off both the annual and lifelong subscriptions which at $20 and $60 is even better value! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back