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Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

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Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#11

Post by izacus »

Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

Because it's the only cloud provider that has reliable cross-platform syncing solution and works extremely well?

As soon as you try their competitors (Drive, Box, iCloud) you find out just how utterly crappy they are as soon as you need to share files with other people. Dropbox does it seamlessly. Bankrolling free accounts so students can have their thesis backed up is a small price to pay for that.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#12

Post by jakebasile »

Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

Dropbox's pricing is indeed frustrating, on both ends of the spectrum. Small time users pay a lot more than competitors so they can store a reasonable amount, and if you want to store a lot of stuff you're shit out of luck as the only option is to get their "team" storage which has more stuff than a single user needs. I don't even really need sharing, I can send stuff via email or other methods for that - I want personal file syncing.

I've been using iCloud Drive recently, and it works pretty well. Maybe if Apple ever gets around to releasing new Macs they'll bump the default storage level and cover more people because as it stands it's at 5GB which isn't competitive anymore.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#13

Post by yid »

Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

> I don't know why people put up with it?

Lock-in? Once you have a few gigs up on Dropbox, it's a bit of a challenge transferring it elsewhere.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#14

Post by Afforess »

Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

Dropbox works.

Put aside all the concerns over War Crimes or Spying, or Security, Dropbox simply works. Every mobile platform is supported. Every desktop platform is supported. Sharing, Teams, direct links, all the core features are there. Anyone can safely recommend and share Dropbox files with their Grandma (with a PC still running XP), or their Mac loving parents, or their weird hipster friend running Gentoo GNU/Linux, and Dropbox will still work.

A lot of HN prioritizes things like data security or political signaling over frictionless implementations. Sure you can get secure file synchronization with rsync and ssh keys, but the average consumer has never even seen a terminal. I'm sure security and politics are important when selling to other tech users, but Dropbox is general consumer facing, and they have succeeded at their task, making flash drives obsolete.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#15

Post by niftich »

Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

A combination of name recognition, customer satisfaction or customer inertia, a decent product, and data compartmentalization.

For example, it irks me that Google Drive is a catch-all storage space for Google products; sometimes all you want is a dumb folder that just syncs up and down whatever you put into it and Dropbox (and Box) give that to you without any mandatory integrations that benefit the companies that bankroll the storage (Google Drive, OneDrive), but not necessarily you.

It's also nice that Dropbox treats every platform as a first-class citizen. It's pretty obvious that some storage products are a just pieces of a larger puzzle that you happen to be able to use as a cloud drive, while some other companies make it clear that offering a cloud drive is their primary business.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#16

Post by rootusrootus »

Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

I don't understand your comparison. iCloud is only $0.99 for the 50GB option. I have over 300GB (and growing) worth of pictures and videos that I've been collecting since my first kid was born 6 years ago. It would be $9.99 on iCloud just as it is on Dropbox. Even cheaper on Dropbox, actually, because I buy by the year (and full disclosure, I get 2TB for the price of 1TB because I'm a long term customer, but I only use about half a TB overall so it's no difference to me).

Aside from the price, Dropbox just works. Android, iPhone, my Macbook Pros, my wife's Windows 10 laptop -- no problems, it just does what we expect it to.

I've looked at other solutions, even signed up for the trial of OneDrive (got burned on their filename length limit, oddly enough), and decided Dropbox works well enough to keep. I reevaluate every year and I'm perfectly willing to move when someone comes along that is conclusively better. They all match each other pretty quickly on pricing, so it's reliability (first) and features (second) that get my wallet to open.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#17

Post by rootusrootus »

yid wrote: post #13
Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

> I don't know why people put up with it? Lock-in? Once you have a few gigs up on Dropbox, it's a bit of a challenge transferring it elsewhere.

I disagree. As a long time paying Dropbox customer, I reevaluate each year, including copying all my data over to a competing provider to see how it shakes out. For all the big providers it's drag and drop. So far what keeps me coming back to Dropbox is that the other solutions have sync reliability issues on one or more of the platforms I use (we're a diverse family, with everything from a Linux server to OSX to Windows 10 to Android and iOS mobile devices sharing the same Dropbox account).

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#18

Post by azinman2 »

Nothing can be concluded from this data as is. It's by usage on their platform.

A totally different way to read this would be Dropbox needs the most help from 3rd parties. Another would be that Dropbox is the platform that people build for the most.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#20

Post by basch »

rootusrootus wrote: post #16
Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

I don't understand your comparison. iCloud is only $0.99 for the 50GB option. I have over 300GB (and growing) worth of pictures and videos that I've been collecting since my first kid was born 6 years ago. It would be $9.99 on iCloud just as it is on Dropbox. Even cheaper on Dropbox, actually, because I buy by the year (and full disclosure, I get 2TB for the price of 1TB because I'm a long term customer, but I only u…

if you dont care about the best usability, and you dont collaborate, Amazon Cloud Drive is 60/year for unlimited storage. not that youll hit 2tb soon, but for someone looking for cheap and easy cloud storage, dropbox is kind of expensive. you pay for the featureset not the storage size.
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