DropBox really shines when it comes to the capabilities of their client.
I installed Box from few months ago at work, and used it to share a few screencasts that I was working on > 200MBs per file about 10 files.
I got home and fired up the home machine...For the next five minutes the internet connection was jammed.
Turns out you cannot do a selective sync of only certain folders. This would be a very basic use case in my opinion but is not supported by Box.
So, for all those whinging about the price...it is not really that bad.
I agree that the killer feature with Dropbox is that it "just works". I jumped on the 50GB Mac mobile app special from Box.net a few months ago and upon trying to use their Box Sync desktop client I found that it just doesn't work. Bogged the machine down, was never able to properly sync files. I've got 50GB at Box.net that I don't know what to do with and I definitely wasn't moved to the category of a prospective consumer client.
I might be alone here, but I actually really prefer Box to Dropbox even though I do not use the desktop sync tool very often (though I've tried it). I'm sure the free 50GB I've gotten skews my opinion. For a college student like me on the kind of budget I have, knowing 50GB from Box will never go away versus getting maybe 10GB for free only temporarily at Dropbox makes a big difference. It's useful to have that kind of space for school, work, or just family sharing.
FWIW, I've never really had any issues with it being bogged down even when using the desktop sync tool. So your mileage probably will vary.
Unless they drop the price soon we're going to move away from them. It sounds silly to argue over $15/user/month, but in comparison to Google Drive it's just started feeling too expensive.
I really like the product, but I don't know if any product in a commoditized space can sustain such a price premium.
Well, it's $15/user for unlimited storage. Google Apps is $5/user for 30GB for each user, and then you have to start buying additional storage with "licenses"[1] which brings the price a little closer to Dropbox if you have a lot of data. I only use a Google Apps account so I don't know how well the clients work with multiple accounts (private Gmail and Apps). Maybe Dropbox will handle it better?
Obviously, Google Apps gives you much more than just Google Drive so the comparison will greatly depend on what other services you need/use, what your employees and contractors already know, and whether you have Linux clients since Goolge Drive still doesn't support Linux.
Remember that Google Drive doesn't have official Linux support nor a Linux cli only client. Dropbox has both. This is very handy if you have any servers, some developers etc.
Dropbox for Business also includes their unlimited backups (older versions of files).
We tried to move to Google Drive but are about to go all in for Dropbox for Business. The Google Drive desktop sync client (for Mac at least) is just not reliable enough. Make sure you trial Google Drive first.
For Dropbox, it is their core business. For Google, it's a drop in their massive bucket of cash that comes from advertising. If business reliability matters to you, Dropbox seems comparatively better.
They already lost me. I had just recently upgraded to their $9/mo 100GB plan and was happy as could be. Then Google dropped their prices and suddenly that same $9 could buy me an entire TB, which allows me to do/store way more. I didn't even hesitate to switch, although I'd much rather be paying Dropbox than Google. If they ever make a similar price drop I'll switch back.
Shameless plug: http://www.nubisio.com. Our pricing is capacity based, so you can have as many users as you want, and our product (CloudStorm) supports all major cloud providers.
Not from a technical point of view but from a usage point of view especially when we talk enterprise.
Dropbox is great for small teams or personal accounts. As long as there are very few owners of the files stored there.
The problems starts to arise when larger groups of people use it as a place to store files. At that point it basically looses it's value namely because its no longer possible to find what you need simply by going to dropbox.
Instead what you now have to do is to find a given person working on a given project and then ask them where they put their files.
Dropbox will have to solve this problem either by adding some sort of history trail or by providing a better contextual search algorithm (files that James Jameson worked on in 2013 on project X)
From what I have seen in that area they are currently solving the wrong problems (again from a usage point of view)
This is just a new version of the network share that many companies have had in place for years. The standard computer setup at a company might include for example a T: drive where all employees are told to store their files. Usually this was intended as a way to allow collaboration on documents, as well as IT not having to backup individual computers. The network share will usually have various levels of organization depending on who is working in any particular folders. Not saying it isn't a problem that could use solving, but it's not new to Dropbox.
We used dropbox at my prior company, we are now using box. Not sure if it's just because I'm not used to box, or if I'm biased since I use dropbox for personal storage too, but I really wish we used dropbox instead of box.
I find the UI + integration way better on dropbox.
I understand that nobody likes a race towards the bottom with regard to pricing, but IMO Dropbox is playing their pricing a little over confidently right now given what competitors are offering.
In both the comments on HN and the original thread pricing keeps coming up.
And the response is that this is a great product and pricing is acceptable.
I don't think so.
Businesses switching costs are MUCH higher than consumer.
EG to switch a business service lots of co's have to incorporate multiple stakeholders, decision makers, etc.
Which is why VC's pour buckets of money into proven SAAS models around business services - because businesses stick almost no matter what!
So is DropBox's pricing scheme out of line with their potential to grown more quickly?
In my experience from the consumer perspective I am actively seeking alternatives to DropBox due to their current pricing.
I was an average 100GB user very happy with the product for years.
Then I had kids.
And BOOM I have a million pictures, videos, etc that are PRICELESS to me.
And now I'm on a $600/year plan for 500 GB / mo.
And Google drive is now offering 2x as much storage as that for $10/month.
So 20% of the cost for twice as much.
I gotta say it is very compelling and I can't believe that the GOOG product a few iterations out isn't a direct comparable.
Dropbox's pricing is making this very loyal consumer unhappy, and seems like especially WRT to handling business users they should be aggressively pricing to own the market.
> I was an average 100GB user very happy with the product for years. Then I had kids. And BOOM I have a million pictures, videos, etc that are PRICELESS to me.
That sounds more like you need a backup service than a sync-things-conveniently-to-all-your-computers service.
You wouldn't expect a convenience store chain to be competitive in the market Costco operates in; they're two different kinds of business, serving two different kinds of needs. Convenience stores can get away with charging a lot more for e.g. soda than Costco, because Costco won't sell you exactly one bottle of soda.
Just as well, you shouldn't expect Dropbox to be competitive in the consumer digital archival storage market. (Though they could certainly branch out there, it's currently just not the market they serve.)
There is a benefit to the business if they can keep the price high by staying the market leader. If they lower their prices to compete the type of problems they will have to deal with in inherently different.
This is pretty interesting. I was just looking for executive summaries and I just found this Box[1] example which beings with a pretty hard hitting opener.
> Would you use your personal email account to message important customers?
> Would you make lengthy personal phone calls from your work phone? If not, then
> why would you use your personal Dropbox account to store critical business
> information?
That being said, I've been using Dropbox since Drew dropped that hilariously amazing deadpan intro to the product and I been loving it every since. For a small team, I feel like the $795 price point might be a bit steep considering how many other alternatives offer you free collaborative space, but the integration of Dropbox is one of the best I've seen yet.
The Box/Dropbox comparisons here ignore the collaboration layer and its value. Dropbox is hands down the best when you want a folder that syncs; it just doesn't save you much time in a business context when used that way. Cloud storage is just the first layer of value.
If you're thinking in terms of cost per gigabyte, you're missing the point for the audience this is aimed at. If you're thinking "how can this replace email threads" and solve business issues (like employees getting fired and files not being migrated), that's way better as a comparison.
Seems like that depth is 1-2 years out for Dropbox and ...well, not sure for Google Drive and their roadmap for business.
While they talk about "unlimited" storage, it's actually set to 1,000 GB: all the quotas throughout the UI are set at 1,000 GB, and you have to contact them if and when you want to go over that amount (they do mention this stipulation on the features page[1]).
I've gotten close (~850 GB), but never over so I'm not sure if it's a "no-questions-asked, 1,000-GB-is-just-a-sanity-check" type of conversation, or if they start to get more hands-on and want a really good reason for going over.
I don't make software service purchasing decisions for any companies, but I am always irritated by claims of "unlimited" for things that are very obviously not unlimited. "Unlimited vacation days," "unlimited cell phone data," "unlimited storage space," etc. all seem to me to be precisely what you said they are: ways of obfuscating the limits. You're not going to keep paying me if I take a 2 year vacation, and you're going to cut me off pretty quickly if I start piping /dev/random into Dropbox.
Was anyone else hoping for reduced pricing? Neat features for businesses, but with recent price drops by Amazon and Google I was expecting Dropbox to follow.
Hoping? Yes. Expected? No. Dropbox never seems to compete on price. They've had the same pricing/storage options basically since they were founded many years ago.
I am a big fan of Dropbox. I have tried other cloud storage/sync providers at various points of time and had a sour experience - Box: couldn't figure out how to sync, SkyDrive/OneDrive: refused to sync, Google Drive: was so slow that I tried to speed it up by copying over existing data from another machine and it created two copies of everything! In over 3 years I haven't faced a single problem with Dropbox.
Selling to the enterprise is a very different thing though. Quality comes way down in their priority list. The bureaucratic strongholds in enterprises require compromised quality at every level in order to maintain their fiefdom. I know Dropbox needs to make more money, but maybe this is not the right direction in which to probe?
As a business expense it seems like a no-brainer, especially with features oriented around security like remote wiping, account transferring and more detailed logs.
In addition to everyone else's comments on pricing, it's $125/user/year if you pay annually (additional users after the first 5 users, which are $795/year).
For business use it is probably one of the cheapest "serious" SaaS price levels I have seen (e.g. go and have a look at what Salesforce charge per user per month).
Sync and share is commodity. The trick is to add value and create APIs that unlock the value of having all your data in the cloud. Right now, the whole space is just a big land grab with many entrants and many different strategies. My money is on Box. They have realized that the dollars are in enterprise and that enterprise customers have a few needs around security and control that frankly noone else can offer.
The chatting while editing feature is great. This is something that has been missing versus Google Drive. The added benefit of using existing apps is very nice since you can be working on files that Drive does not support. Will have to take a look at this. Price wise though, it is a little high.
Hmmm, I already had two dropboxes running on my computer (one personal and one business) using Dropbox Encore and I have my work Dropbox (much bigger than personal Dropbox) to sync to another folder on my regular hard drive -- personal syncs to my smaller SSD. Linking my accounts (which obviates the need for Dropbox Encore) seems to want to create a new Dropbox folder to download all my work things and not give me a choice of where to put it AND automatically change the name of my personal dropbox folder, which is a shame as I have some local scripts using that run it. Any chance of an "advanced setup" where we can pick which accounts sync where with no need to automatically rename folders that already exist on my hard drive?
One of the most important features to the company I work for is being able to share sub-folders within a shared folder. Without it, you have to completely give up hierarchical organization of your data.
This feature is still missing as far as I can tell.
Does dropbox allow others to upload to specific folders within your account? Can I create a folder for each client then send a link that will allow them to upload documents to their folder?
> Can I create a folder for each client then send a link that will allow them to upload documents to their folder?
Yes, as long as they have their own Dropbox account (free version's fine for this purpose). You can otherwise share read-only access to folders with anyone.
I lost trust in Dropbox when it comes to the quality of their client and I would therefore not use it for business purposes.
* I've had two instances of near data loss where I could only recover data from the local hidden cache folder that gets deleted after a week. It had to do with a user error with moving out files from the Dropbox directory when the client was off - previous versions in the webapp can easily become corrupted this way.
* the Mac client is a total CPU hog since Mountain Lion.
The business account comes with unlimited history of deleted/modified files, so you can recover anything that once was on Dropbox.
On my Macbook Pro, the "average battery impact" (last 8 hours) as reported by Activity Monitor is 1.2 (not sure what's the unit, but it's a low value compared to other apps), and we use it daily for work so it's kind of active the whole day. I wouldn't call it a CPU hog by far.
It's not just their Mac one. The one on Windows for me kills it, it just seems to make the machine really slow (only whilst it is syncing). Seems as if it is a bit of "the nature of the beast" as it's a similar story with other desktop clients. Great apps otherwise!
[+] [-] suprgeek|12 years ago|reply
So, for all those whinging about the price...it is not really that bad.
[+] [-] ereckers|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spike021|12 years ago|reply
FWIW, I've never really had any issues with it being bogged down even when using the desktop sync tool. So your mileage probably will vary.
[+] [-] malanj|12 years ago|reply
I really like the product, but I don't know if any product in a commoditized space can sustain such a price premium.
[+] [-] spindritf|12 years ago|reply
Obviously, Google Apps gives you much more than just Google Drive so the comparison will greatly depend on what other services you need/use, what your employees and contractors already know, and whether you have Linux clients since Goolge Drive still doesn't support Linux.
[1] https://support.google.com/a/answer/1726914
[+] [-] rogerbinns|12 years ago|reply
Dropbox for Business also includes their unlimited backups (older versions of files).
[+] [-] dwb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nileshtrivedi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toxican|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yabood|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|12 years ago|reply
Not from a technical point of view but from a usage point of view especially when we talk enterprise.
Dropbox is great for small teams or personal accounts. As long as there are very few owners of the files stored there.
The problems starts to arise when larger groups of people use it as a place to store files. At that point it basically looses it's value namely because its no longer possible to find what you need simply by going to dropbox.
Instead what you now have to do is to find a given person working on a given project and then ask them where they put their files.
Dropbox will have to solve this problem either by adding some sort of history trail or by providing a better contextual search algorithm (files that James Jameson worked on in 2013 on project X)
From what I have seen in that area they are currently solving the wrong problems (again from a usage point of view)
[+] [-] markkanof|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jypepin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aresant|12 years ago|reply
In both the comments on HN and the original thread pricing keeps coming up.
And the response is that this is a great product and pricing is acceptable.
I don't think so.
Businesses switching costs are MUCH higher than consumer.
EG to switch a business service lots of co's have to incorporate multiple stakeholders, decision makers, etc.
Which is why VC's pour buckets of money into proven SAAS models around business services - because businesses stick almost no matter what!
So is DropBox's pricing scheme out of line with their potential to grown more quickly?
In my experience from the consumer perspective I am actively seeking alternatives to DropBox due to their current pricing.
I was an average 100GB user very happy with the product for years.
Then I had kids.
And BOOM I have a million pictures, videos, etc that are PRICELESS to me.
And now I'm on a $600/year plan for 500 GB / mo.
And Google drive is now offering 2x as much storage as that for $10/month.
So 20% of the cost for twice as much.
I gotta say it is very compelling and I can't believe that the GOOG product a few iterations out isn't a direct comparable.
Dropbox's pricing is making this very loyal consumer unhappy, and seems like especially WRT to handling business users they should be aggressively pricing to own the market.
[+] [-] derefr|12 years ago|reply
That sounds more like you need a backup service than a sync-things-conveniently-to-all-your-computers service.
You wouldn't expect a convenience store chain to be competitive in the market Costco operates in; they're two different kinds of business, serving two different kinds of needs. Convenience stores can get away with charging a lot more for e.g. soda than Costco, because Costco won't sell you exactly one bottle of soda.
Just as well, you shouldn't expect Dropbox to be competitive in the consumer digital archival storage market. (Though they could certainly branch out there, it's currently just not the market they serve.)
[+] [-] fragmede|12 years ago|reply
OTOH, the cost of a new MacBook Pro always comes up when looking to buy a new laptop, but that hasn't hurt Apple at all.
[+] [-] gnopgnip|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeblau|12 years ago|reply
[1] - http://www.rochester.edu/it/box/assets/pdf/migratedropbox
[+] [-] shahzad_76|12 years ago|reply
If you're thinking in terms of cost per gigabyte, you're missing the point for the audience this is aimed at. If you're thinking "how can this replace email threads" and solve business issues (like employees getting fired and files not being migrated), that's way better as a comparison.
Seems like that depth is 1-2 years out for Dropbox and ...well, not sure for Google Drive and their roadmap for business.
[+] [-] tnorthcutt|12 years ago|reply
Sounds awesome!
Minimum 5 users
Well, phooey. This seems...arbitrary. Do they enforce this limit just to reduce support queries from low-profit customers?
[+] [-] smackfu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itafroma|12 years ago|reply
I've gotten close (~850 GB), but never over so I'm not sure if it's a "no-questions-asked, 1,000-GB-is-just-a-sanity-check" type of conversation, or if they start to get more hands-on and want a really good reason for going over.
[1]: https://www.dropbox.com/business/features
[+] [-] baddox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theseanstewart|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] higherpurpose|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tatqx|12 years ago|reply
Selling to the enterprise is a very different thing though. Quality comes way down in their priority list. The bureaucratic strongholds in enterprises require compromised quality at every level in order to maintain their fiefdom. I know Dropbox needs to make more money, but maybe this is not the right direction in which to probe?
[+] [-] btgeekboy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diziet|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|12 years ago|reply
In comparison, Salesforce Sales Cloud starts at $25/user/month, and Box for Business starts at $15/user/month.
[+] [-] rhc2104|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matdes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giovannibajo1|12 years ago|reply
So AWS S3 does a big price drop, and Dropbox Business raises prices by 44%. Sounds good :)
[+] [-] dmourati|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coreymgilmore|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] llamataboot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techscruggs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] up_and_up|12 years ago|reply
Another plus is they offer a real external drive that doesnt duplicate data.
https://www.bitcasa.com/pricing
Disclosure: I am a happy bitcasa customer.
[+] [-] higherpurpose|12 years ago|reply
http://www.androidcentral.com/mediafires-new-cloud-storage-p...
[+] [-] yid|12 years ago|reply
Name brand recognition. Same reason why Tide detergent still exists when others are around half as expensive.
[+] [-] darkmighty|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tensor|12 years ago|reply
This feature is still missing as far as I can tell.
[+] [-] molsongolden|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itafroma|12 years ago|reply
Yes, as long as they have their own Dropbox account (free version's fine for this purpose). You can otherwise share read-only access to folders with anyone.
[+] [-] HorizonXP|12 years ago|reply
Worth checking out.
[+] [-] m_mueller|12 years ago|reply
* I've had two instances of near data loss where I could only recover data from the local hidden cache folder that gets deleted after a week. It had to do with a user error with moving out files from the Dropbox directory when the client was off - previous versions in the webapp can easily become corrupted this way.
* the Mac client is a total CPU hog since Mountain Lion.
[+] [-] giovannibajo1|12 years ago|reply
On my Macbook Pro, the "average battery impact" (last 8 hours) as reported by Activity Monitor is 1.2 (not sure what's the unit, but it's a low value compared to other apps), and we use it daily for work so it's kind of active the whole day. I wouldn't call it a CPU hog by far.
[+] [-] TheTechBox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ableal|12 years ago|reply
Not present in any of the 114 comments here so far, either.
Might be a problem.