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Dropbox Professional

blogs.dropbox.com

61–70 of 127 posts

Re: Dropbox Professional

#61

I might sign up for this just for Smart sync. A great next step here would be to venture into the online document signing space (Ecosign, RightSignature, etc). You’ve got probably 70% of what you need for it here already with Showcase. EDIT: Tried to sign up but the linux client doesn't support Smart Sync yet. Support people tell me it's pending.

Synology offers what I believe is the equivalent to Smart Sync. You pay for the machine upfront, a lot cheaper than these services over the long run, and you don't need to trust a third party with your data.

Re: Dropbox Professional

#62
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that too and that would definitely be a shame to have such a downgrade. I see how Dropbox is trying to diversify their prices based on features. But honestly, they should try to compete harder with providers like Apple and Google by providing different storage tiers. Apple has 2TB for the same $9.99/mo Dropbox provides 1TB. At this point Dropbox has me mostly because of inertia and their reliability.

It's difficult to compare Dropbox to Apple, Google and Microsoft in terms of what they offer and for how much. All three of those giants are able to subsidize their storage offerings. Apple has their hardware business, Google has their ad business, and Microsoft has their software business. The storage offerings from all three are used to entice you into using their other services. It doesn't matter if they're profit…

If iCloud's storage offering matures to be on par with Dropbox Plus, I'd drop by Plus account in a heartbeat.

Dropbox isn't competing on storage alone anymore. It wants to release productivity tools and start getting more into the Business space (which I can't fault, biz is where the volume and margins are at). But for storage alone? Sync fast, don't lose my files, and you can have my money.

I won't dare say iCloud/OneDrive/Dropbox are a commodity...yet. Storage is a commodity (S3, Backblaze, Azure, GCP, etc), and the consumer-friendly layer on top will eventually commoditize (and you'll be able to migrate your entire "drive" between providers super quick). The treadmill only speeds up.

Re: Dropbox Professional

#63

If anyone from Dropbox is following along in this thread, can you explain why your most requested feature has been ignored for years? https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Ignore-folder-withou...

I don't work at Dropbox, but I believe it's ignored by design. Fewer users would upgrade their storage to the paid plans.

Re: Dropbox Professional

#64

If anyone from Dropbox is following along in this thread, can you explain why your most requested feature has been ignored for years? https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Ignore-folder-withou...

Im not from Dropbox but answer is easy: because that would canibalize on selective/smart sync feature.

Re: Dropbox Professional

#65

Dropbox has been dropping out of favor for me. Their app now has non-notifications on my system menu (Check out this new feature!), and it drains my laptop's battery when there's lots of syncing going on. I also I didn't like how they handled the Accessibility controls fiasco. I bought my parents a subscription to iCloud and whats really great about the product is that they don't even know they have it, they just kno…

Consider onedrive.

Cheaper, you can have 5seat office license and family plan.

Disclaimer: no decent linux client but macos is more less okeish.

Re: Dropbox Professional

#66

If anyone from Dropbox is following along in this thread, can you explain why your most requested feature has been ignored for years? https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Ignore-folder-withou...

I did not realise I wanted that until now. Makes perfect sense

Re: Dropbox Professional

#67
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OneDrive has been around for 10 years and we're one of the best known companies for backwards compatibility and keeping things far past their prime (Hotmail/Outlook.com, for instance, which has been out for 21 years, albeit only 20 under the company.) What makes you think it's going to be surprise-discontinued?

Perhaps you'll decide to buy a competitor like Dropbox, choose their product as the one true product and close down OneDrive. Like you bought Skype and shut down MSN Messenger. That said, it probably won't happen overnight and it's not that difficult to migrate from OneDrive to Google Drive or such. Lock-in is low.

I mean, yeah, no product will last forever. MSN Messenger was alive for 14 years and was slowly dying as users were moving on to other services. At a certain point, it becomes unprofitable to keep sustaining a service. But even when it did get discontinued, all Messenger accounts and their contacts got transferred to the Skype service. If you still wanted to talk to the same people, you could just through a different client. You could sign in to Skype with your same credentials and talk to the same people for over a year before that happened, too, to give people time to adjust.

Groove Music is an even more recent example. Yes, the service is going away, and certain parts of the deprecation might be annoying (you have to download all purchased music before the end of the year, for instance) but all accounts can be migrated to Spotify, a previous competitor of the service. It's not like we left people completely stranded without any options.

Re: Dropbox Professional

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a consumer, it's easy to compare, though. Consumers don't care about the vendor's costs, just the price and some perception of stability (of which, if I had to bet, Dropbox and Apple are the most likely to not surprise-discontinue on us in the future). That said I'm pretty happy with Dropbox and not going to switch. I'd love Smart Sync, though, but not at 2x the price I'm paying for Plus right now. $99 a ye…

OneDrive has been around for 10 years and we're one of the best known companies for backwards compatibility and keeping things far past their prime (Hotmail/Outlook.com, for instance, which has been out for 21 years, albeit only 20 under the company.) What makes you think it's going to be surprise-discontinued?

Probably more detail than I can really articulate, but I've lately perceived a shift in how Microsoft wants to support legacy and maybe getting more aggressive in taking a stance in eliminating some.

Right now Microsoft seems really high on cloud, particularly as a means to make Office a subscription product (which helps with legacy support, as in the long run, there are no legacy versions to support in this model). From that respect, I don't think OneDrive is at any risk of ceasing to be a product, but I do think they might yo-yo the storage quotas and things like that. Didn't they do that with SkyDrive a while back?

I'd certainly rate their risk lower than Google, which does have a history of abandoning things that people really like.

Dropbox and Apple are lowest risk for me, but for two different reasons. For Dropbox, it is their product, and they seem to make money. For Apple, it's baked into their user experience, and they tend to focus on that - rather than cut costs and compete on price, they'll make it more expensive if they need to, but it'll probably continue to work well.

Re: Dropbox Professional

#70

A showcase portfolio? Is that still a problem in need of fixing? I can't imagine myself using this and I've been using dropbox for ages and I work for myself in the creative industry.

It looks like a bunch of art students are taking over Dropbox, first with dropbox.design, and now with a dedicated way to make a portfolio? Looks like Dropbox is trying to pivot into new use cases.
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