This is interesting because having layoffs at a company that should be going off like a rocket during a pandemic is odd. What is going on at Dropbox that prevented them from taking advantage of the huge shift to remote work?
For individuals Dropbox is quite expensive compared to services like OneDrive. Microsoft 365 Personal is 70$/year and gives you 1TB on OneDrive and full access to the Office offering. Dropbox for individuals is 200$/year for 3TB. And nothing else.
Unless you're hoarding data or want to avoid Microsoft, the choice is simple. And I'm sure you have even cheaper services.
I actually switched to OneDrive when Dropbox changed their pricing a while ago. Microsoft's offering was way more competitive on both price (€100/yr for 5x1TB) and features (Office access and integration, etc.)
Yes, but I have 1 gbit uplink and upload speads are 3 megabytes per second at best. Actually, I tried via rclone from VPSs at various locations also and no change. Frankly, that's shit. I've been paying the 2€/month 100GB storage plan simply because the OneDrive Android app does its job of offloading photos quickly well but that's really it's good for. That, and uploading 100K-1M Office documents.
As soon as I noticed this issue, the deal of 1TB storage with a O365 subscription also went sour. 1TB I can't really use -- no deal.
This problem is well known; it's all over the internet -- OneDrive is a sloth. It doesn't affect downloads, btw.
> Unless you're hoarding data or want to avoid Microsoft
...or have access to a licensed copy of the "real" Microsoft Office, the desktop app, which doesn't lag (that much), where all keyboard shortcuts work, drag-and-drop isn't too surprising, and you can use over a slow/metered/non-existent connection (bus, train, airplane), so you don't really care about Office 365.
Or you use it for something other than Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I know plenty of people who do architecture, landscaping or design who use Dropbox precisely because most of the things they use it for don't involve Office (much).
For lots of people, Microsoft 365 Personal is 70 $/year for 1 TB and a bunch of things that might as well be Google Docs, which are free. 200$/year for three times more storage space isn't a terribly bad deal.
Edit: yes, I realize Microsoft 365 allows you to use the desktop apps. That doesn't add much if you already have the desktop apps. Or if you don't need either the web or the desktop version.
> ...or have access to a licensed copy of the "real" Microsoft Office, the desktop app, which doesn't lag (that much), where all keyboard shortcuts work, drag-and-drop isn't too surprising, and you can use over a slow/metered/non-existent connection (bus, train, airplane), so you don't really care about Office 365.
Microsoft 365 allows you to download the desktop app versions of Office. No need for an internet connection after that.
> 200$/year for three times more storage space isn't a terribly bad deal.
If you use the storage, then sure. But I would assume that you can then find better prices for 3TB.
You can see it this way:
- if you want an office license, it's 70$/year, and as a bonus you have a dropbox equivalent for free for 1TB.
- if you want some storage, up to 1TB, OneDrive is 70$/year, and as a bonus you have access to the complete office suite for free (yes, you can download all the office applications to run them locally and up to date, and also have access to the web versions)
I personally don't see how Dropbox can compete. The competition is cheaper, has more features, and offers almost the same user experience.
> If you want an office license, it's 70$/year, and as a bonus you have a dropbox equivalent for free for 1TB.
My point was that if you already have an Office license, it's 70$/year for something you already have + 1 TB (on what, until recently, used to be a pretty shoddy Dropbox clone, rather than a Dropbox equivalent -- but maybe it's improved in the meantime). In that case, there's no bonus.
Not entirely accurate. I didn’t even realize this was a thing, but on the Dropbox web interface you can now open docs, slideshows and spreadsheets in either Office365 or Google Office without accounts on either.
You're right, I didn't notice that by default they direct you to business tiers and you have to click on a small link to switch to the "basic" plans. Their website has become such a weird thing to navigate...
It's not bad, but these big companies can bundle it all together and drive the little companies out of business, for personal use at least. Apple is offering 2TB iCloud Drive, plus all their other online services for $30 per month.
At one time, Dropbox was the easiest and best solution if you were using Android, MacOS, and Windows. I used to pay for 1TB account although Apple offered 2TB for same monthly fee. But the Dropbox destroyed their simple UI to this ugliness clusterfuck. That was the motivation for me to cancel it and move 100% into Apple's ecosystem.
I'm still not sure what I could migrate to that would give me solid and trustworthy sync/access across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Linux.
I'm happy to pay whatever I pay for Dropbox -- I don't actually remember what it is -- but I'd rather they stop throwing in bullshit kitchen-sink features.
I was in a similar boat and fairly recently started using pCloud, which I've been liking a lot. It has minimal frills and just focuses on file storage and sharing. I mainly use the Linux and web clients, both of which are excellent. I don't have any association with them outside of being a happy customer.
I have zero interest in administering my own services like it appears Nextcloud, even with Hetzner, would require. I've been there and done that, but I'm too far out of the sysadmin game now to do a good job of it. It's a bad use of my time, and not something I enjoy as a hobby.
I'm unwilling to use Google services if I can avoid it.
The service I mentioned (Hetzner, but there are others) do all the administration for you. You get a login and password into a Nextcloud instance, that's it. No administration required.
I can vouch for this. I haven't really done anything on the web interface, I use it for file sync like i used to use Dropbox, and I have clients in Windows, Linux and Android and it just works.
I made the decision to migrate away for exactly the same reason. I think they are desperately trying to be more than a “feature” (as Steve Jobs correctly labelled them) and in this desperation they are obfuscating the very feature that brought people to them in the first place.
I think Box ate their lunch in the corporate sphere and they have a lot more competition in the consumer space from things like OneDrive and iCloud Drive. The only reason I still have Dropbox at all is because I don’t have a reason to pull the plug—and it wouldn’t have to be much of an excuse.
Their device limit gave me my reason to leave them. When they started haemorrhaging corporate customers, they attacked their consumer users. I can't say I find the result hugely shocking.
I'm interested in moving off Dropbox in the same way, and B2 sounds interesting. Is there an app comparable to Dropbox working with B2, or did you have to build that app yourself?
I used RClone to sync to B2. They've got an iPhone app that you can download to browse + download from the bucket, else the website itself.
There might be further reasons for it, but I mostly use it as an offsite backup that my wife could upload to -- so usability was a plus -- but not worth that kind of premium.
It was not meant to be a slight. I have Google Drive, but I primarily use iCloud and I was thinking in terms of desktop OS platform rather than major tech companies or market share; ie, I use iCloud on Mac, what’s the one MS built into windows?
Their UX has become worse, questionable design choices, and 2 GB limit is almost a joke. Chances are, if you're in the market, you just use something like Box which provides a lot more value for free.
I'm a long time user and when people talk about the UX (many, not just you), I am always puzzled. What UX are you speaking of? For me, Dropbox is just a folder on my hard drive with no real UX to speak of. It's the ultimate "gets out of my way and just works". Are you talking about the web site?
There's a challenging to use UI that has become part of the installation process on recent updates. Most of the time it tries to advertise to me that I need to use Dropbox Paper rather than making it easy to copy/manage folders from external sources. (I need to do a bit more than just manage files/folders, like handle external shares, so I have to use the UI they provide for doing this.)
I churned when Dropbox started removing features and asking for more money. e.g. limits on number of devices, more frequent nags, forcing me to unlink devices that had already been linked. I'm not going to be bullied into being a paying customer.
Storage-as-a-service is a commodity and race to the bottom. Check $BOX and $DBX 5 year charts.
Good luck competing with GAFA on this, best hope is a buyout. Firesale on depreciating assets.
On the consumer side, storage will become an appliance, like a (stick of butter sized) fridge. Or just included in your centralized home + family control center.
> On the consumer side, storage will become an appliance, like a (stick of butter sized) fridge. Or just included in your centralized home + family control center.
You can already get an inexpensive Synology NAS with a slick UI and backups to a cloud provider of your choice, or Nextcloud, although there's probably room on both for one click import from your existing Dropbox account using your auth and their API to migrate contents.
This is not backed up by anything besides your opinion. The main chart you should look at is the increase in number of paying customers month after month.
Dropbox is much more than just storage. They also have their own infrastructure and don't depend on GAFA. They made a decision to not compete on the consumer side. I didn't like it but you cannot blame them given the large pockets of the competition and the fact they can monetize those costumers with their other products unlike Dropbox. They compete in enterprise where price is not the main factor like it's for consumers and doing it successfully.
I will ping you in 5 years... (they might indeed get acquired though. If that happens it's gonna be for at least double of what $dbx is worth today)
It makes no sense not to compete on the consumer side. The enterprise side has enormous barriers to entry, like a long sales cycle, RFPs, security audits etc. Office 365 simply offers more, plus with a familiar interface that doesn't require extra training for end-users.
Who is going to be championing Dropbox on the enterprise buyer's side? Employees that are satisfied consumers or the IT office that uses the same 4-5 vendors for everything?
I don't say you're right or wrong, cause I don't know. All I can say is that you cannot say "makes no sense" because it's been working OK for them so far. They have ~15M paying users and the number keeps growing (not at a very high pace but still steady growth). Their revenue is growing at a higher pace than expenses. Enterprise sales is not easy but they have been doing it for a while now. They also expand their product line to be a more complete solution for team productivity and collaboration. They have been doing a lot of mistakes on the way. They launched many products that failed. Their vision was lacking. But overall their numbers show it's a healthy company moving in the right direction. It's just not been growing in the pace everyone was thinking they would after their IPO.
I'm guessing because they solve interop problem between systems, which is going away.
Great idea and execution, very valuable but seemed valued even higer than that to me (i.e overvalued).
They were well-placed for app hosting - but lots of competition and it's hard to hit the jackpot twice (even google hasn't managed it, nor apple, arguably).
Most of the people do need to find a ways to share files more efficiently, but hardly any sane company would choose Dropbox given their security proposal.
For any given technology or service, given the choice between the cheapest consumer option and a reliable enterprise option that costs 50% more, most small businesses will choose the consumer option every time.
For me and my company and friends this has meant more realizing the features of things we already paid for (Office 365, etc) rather than paying for Dropbox.
The last thing my free account does is sync my 1Password - and I’ll likely go cloud on that soon anyway
I imagine that sharing files would be the same regardless of whether you are remote or not. Even in a real office people don't usually hand USB sticks back and forth.
I have no data, but more remote people either has 0 impact, or impact on more data sharing online. Lots of businesses still work a lot on paper (think lawyers, notaries, etc) especially while working with clients, and are not forced to share docs differently.
We see a lot of SMBs using Dropbox and have rarely encountered Box out in the wild. In both cases, they are often converting over to OneDrive - the Office Suite is still a very, very strong play in that most companies need/prefer it to alternatives, and since OneDrive is bundled the question inevitably gets asked, "why am I paying for DropBox if I have OneDrive/SharePoint included in this cost over here?". No good answer, really. I mean there are things that DropBox does better, but for a lot of businesses those strengths aren't valuable enough to pay the premium.
