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Dropbox for Business

dropboxatwork.com

51–60 of 129 posts

Re: Dropbox for Business

#51
post #7

The unlimited storage is a pretty smart play. It makes it much harder to compare this head-to-head with Google Drive.

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 st…

I'm fairly certain they'll double it or more the minute you ask them, maybe a couple of times before scrutinising it. Posterous had the same thing btw, with a limit of 3 blogs, and they increased my limit in a few hours.

I've implemented the same kind of workaround, and for two reasons.

It's actually a lot easier technically. I mean DB already has a limit for free users, so all they have to do is rev up the limit and all their clients "just work". They don't have to add magic if-then logic to change how clients show and enforce the limit.

Secondly, it prevents a disaster scenario where some script - either malicious or accidental - smashes your monthly quota with 1s an 0s. Yeah you could try to rate-limit it or something, but it's just easier to prevent the whole scenario by changing a database column.

Re: Dropbox for Business

#52

Dropbox at work: The proxy server is refusing connections They're just blocking the whole domain. (Edit for those of you who think I'm just trolling for effect. I work at a LARGE fortune 500 (think 250,000 people) and http://www.dropbox.com/ is blocked at the proxy. If your company is going to offer business services, to, hum, businesses, one should insure that one should be accessible from businesses, no?)

Okay, I'll take the bait:

Yes, companies should be able to use the product. How is that at all related to your point? Your company blocks the domain, how is that in Dropbox's control?

Do you shut off your router and whine about how you should be able to use GitHub if they plan to make money?

Re: Dropbox for Business

#53
post #17

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.

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.

It sounds more like cost-plus pricing rather than value-based pricing. At the same time, it makes sense for Dropbox to go on the higher end of the pricing spectrum and drop it if things don't go as well as hoped since it's much easier to drop price than ever to raise.

Re: Dropbox for Business

#54
post #50
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why use this when there are options like bitcasa - 1TB at $10/month? Name brand recognition. Same reason why Tide detergent still exists when others are around half as expensive.

> Same reason why Tide detergent still exists when others are around half as expensive. Tide does not "subsist on brand recognition". "Tide is a perennial powerhouse in Consumer Reports' laundry detergent Ratings." [1] (although as of 2013, other brands are catching up in quality) [1] http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/06/wisk-kirklan...

Consumer Reports ratings are not double-blinded studies; I wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between product price and satisfaction ratings without blinding.

Re: Dropbox for Business

#55
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If business reliability matters to you, Dropbox seems comparatively better. If you're comparing Drive to the Reader fiasco, keep in mind that Drive for business is a paid offering.

But so is google apps no?

Re: Dropbox for Business

#56

Dropbox at work: The proxy server is refusing connections They're just blocking the whole domain. (Edit for those of you who think I'm just trolling for effect. I work at a LARGE fortune 500 (think 250,000 people) and http://www.dropbox.com/ is blocked at the proxy. If your company is going to offer business services, to, hum, businesses, one should insure that one should be accessible from businesses, no?)

You do understand that it's the IT department at the Fortune 500 company thats doing the blocking, right?

Dropbox has no control over your IT department, any more than you'd have control over my wireless internet.

Re: Dropbox for Business

#57
post #7

The unlimited storage is a pretty smart play. It makes it much harder to compare this head-to-head with Google Drive.

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 st…

They increased mine to 2TB, no questions asked.

Re: Dropbox for Business

#58
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think it is fair to equate the fact that Google Drive is less reliable than Dropbox, just based on the fact that Google has more irons in the fire compared to Dropbox. They also have orders of magnitude more employees and resources than Dropbox.

I think there are two kinds of "reliability" getting conflated here. There's reliability as in "this is built on the stable foundation of a big system and has a bunch of engineers ensuring it's Highly Available" -- both Google and Dropbox can give you that. Then there's reliability as in "this product won't blow away in the corporate-political wind" -- and Dropbox is the only one who can truly say that. (Though Googl…

On the other hand, Dropbox is a one-trick pony, providing a service that is easily replicable and becoming increasingly commoditized.

Dropbox don't even own the hardware they store your files on.

Google own the data centre, the hardware, in many cases the device (Android devices, Chromebooks, Chromecast, Google TV etc.) you use to access their services, and increasingly (with Google Fiber) the connection between you and them.

Re: Dropbox for Business

#59
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.

[1] - http://www.rochester.edu/it/box/assets/pdf/migratedropbox

Re: Dropbox for Business

#60

Why use this when there are options like bitcasa - 1TB at $10/month? 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.

Mediafire has just announced yesterday 1 TB for $5 a month:

http://www.androidcentral.com/mediafires-new-cloud-storage-p...

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