Why we are leaving Dropbox • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#31

Post by vetinari » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

gvb wrote: post #25

vetinari wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered, why do small companies use Dropbox at all? A 1 TB NAS in RAID-1 by Synology or QNAP will cost you about 400 EUR (including VAT). That's about 9% of what the author of the article paid for some 700 GB in Dropbox. It will do everything that Dropbox does, except you can use standard protocols (SMB, AFS, WebDAV, whatever) and the data will not leave your company.

> and the data will not leave your company. That is a two-edged sword. The data is also inaccessible outside of your company. There are ways to make it accessible outside the company (VPN, WebDAV over https), but they tend to be complex, fragile, and sometimes unworkable (see next). > standard protocols (SMB, AFS, WebDAV, whatever) Support for the standard file sharing protocols (SMB, NFS, I presume AFS, and WebDAV)…

Well, every single NAS box offers VPN solution that can be enabled by few clicks (usually OpenVPN).

Also, most NAS vendors provide mobile applications, so you can access the data. They realize, that the standard protocols on mobile devices are lacking.

Anyway, to pay someone to get you such a NAS and configure everything for you is still a fraction of cost, that you would pay for cloud providers.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#32

Post by dheera » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

I use Dropbox because they don't try to innovate on the UI side. I use it mainly to sync certain directories (like fonts, desktop backgrounds, themes, dotfiles, certain /etc files, code workspaces, and other configuration files) across my Linux machines.

It's also a billion times more easy to use Dropbox with people from China than Google Drive because you can set up an EC2 server in Japan, install the command line version of Dropbox, and have it serve a synced directory over HTTPS from a non-blocked IP address. Can't do that easily with Google Drive or anything that tries to be too much.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#33

Post by dagw » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #19

ccvannorman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you using it for? Are you part of a company that shares everything on Dropbox, and how often do you use it? I'm also a "happy" Dropbox customer -- but I'm part of a 3-person startup and we only share relatively small files and folders. This post (and numerous others) make me think it's time to move on when we grow the team.

I always wondered, why do small companies use Dropbox at all? A 1 TB NAS in RAID-1 by Synology or QNAP will cost you about 400 EUR (including VAT). That's about 9% of what the author of the article paid for some 700 GB in Dropbox. It will do everything that Dropbox does, except you can use standard protocols (SMB, AFS, WebDAV, whatever) and the data will not leave your company.

It will do everything that Dropbox does

Only after a whole lot of hacking and you'll probably end up having to slap a real server in front of your NAS.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#34

Post by DenisM » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

One problem we have witnessed with Dropbox is that low-tech users tends to delete files they don't personally need. Often times this causes deletion of the files for the entire company. Resultingly admins are afraid to share file access with users, and users are afraid to cause problems, so they ask admins to email the files instead, which sort of puts you back at the square one.

We might be approaching a point where different different kinds of users and maybe different verticals will be able to justify separate file sharing apps. Or even all other apps, for that matter.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#35

Post by galago » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

A good evaluation of current cloud storage options would actually be useful. "Why we're switching from Dropbox to X" wouldn't waste our time.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#36

Post by lstyls » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

thegreatpeter wrote: post #18

orenbarzilai wrote: post #4

I'm using dropbox + google drive (due to google docs) both home and for work and I get all of your claims. But what's the alternative? Besides google drive that has it's own issues all other solutions are less than dropbox or same with something missing (proper mobile app etc)... So what are you switching to?

> But what's the alternative? Sounds like an opportunity.

I don't think there's a great opportunity there. Cloud storage is at this point a commodity product, so a new business would be differentiating entirely based on user experience and would be at a competitive disadvantage in storage costs compared to the big hitters.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#37

Post by eevilspock » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

pppp wrote: post #12

6. No client-side encryption 7. Deceptive advertising. Telling their customers that they encrypt data enroute and at rest without telling them that they use a single common password for every customer.

8. Condoleezza Rice on the board.

9. Mailbox app has server-side access to your email (Gmail or iCloud). This is totally unnecessary for a mail client. They claim they need it to support Snooze functionality, but that is not true. It can be implemented entirely in the client, storing snooze meta-data (with a reference to, not a copy of, the email) only on their servers for cross-device sync purposes.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#38

Post by leojfc » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:52 PM UTC

I like Cubby.com because I can sync arbitrary folders. That said, development does seem to have slowed there too. This seems to be a pattern with other services I’ve used (Copy, Wuala, Dropbox) – hook you with a good free tier and one or two differentiating features, and then stop innovating...

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#39

Post by jayvanguard » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #32

I use Dropbox because they don't try to innovate on the UI side. I use it mainly to sync certain directories (like fonts, desktop backgrounds, themes, dotfiles, certain /etc files, code workspaces, and other configuration files) across my Linux machines. It's also a billion times more easy to use Dropbox with people from China than Google Drive because you can set up an EC2 server in Japan, install the command line v…

Same. Innovation is not what I want out of Dropbox. I want stability, speed, and continued bug fixes.

The one point I agree with him on though is that the web interface could use some work.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#40

Post by commentzorro » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #20

Complaint #1 - They aren't releasing new features, and are spending too much time on bug fixing and performance. Complaint #2 - It's buggy. Oooooooooooooooook.

He's saying that the _core_ part isn't adding any new features and that the _desktop_ is too buggy.