Normal synchronization of files is nearly instantaneous.  There are a few things which can cause synchronization to take longer than expected:

The speed of your internet connection

The single biggest factor that affects sync and backup performance is your internet connection. To test your bandwidth, visit a speed test site such as www.speedtest.net and test your bandwidth. For common file types, the chart below indicates how much time it will take to download a typical photo from a digital camera. The chart assumes that your internet connection is 100% dedicated to Syncplicity and not being used for other things such as web browsing. Depending upon the other activities using the internet connection, actual transfer speeds will be slower.

Typical Transfer Times for a Typical Photo (2MB file)

The faster your connection, the faster your files will sync. If you have a slower connection, you can contract your internet service provider to inquire what faster plans they may have to increase your performance. You can also verify that your client is set to use all of the available bandwidth on your connection. This is done automatically by default, but if you are on Windows, you can verify that the bandwidth slider is set to use all available bandwidth by reading How do I control how much bandwidth Syncplicity uses.

For our advanced users: Some internet service providers advertise features with names such as PowerBoost that temporarily increase your download and upload speeds for only the first few megabytes transferred. The performance afterwards is lowered to a much lower speed. Speed tests may display the boosted speed rather than the actual extended transfer performance. You may have to contact your service provider to inquire as to the actual extended transfer speeds provided.

The speed of your computer

If the computer is slow or there are many applications running such that the Syncplicity client is competing for resources, syncing may be slower than usual. To diagnose this issue, we recommend you try closing as many applications as possible on your computer to reduce the load on your computer and see if performance increases.

The size of files

Many small files take longer to sync than a single large file of the same size. Small files are synchronized first before larger files. If you have many small files, this can cause time estimates to over-estimate how long a transfer will take for all files. Once small files are complete, larger files will transfer more quickly and the time remaining estimates will more accurately reflect the actual time required.

Whether a file has been uploaded before

If a file has been uploaded before, it will upload much more quickly due to the service being able to better optimize situations in which a file which it has already encountered.