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Can someone explain the value proposition of Dropbox to me? They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better. T

by nxc18 10y ago

Can someone explain the value proposition of Dropbox to me? They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better. Their UI isn't spectacular. They only really have one big product. They charge an insane amount for what they do offer. Their file sync is difficult to control and has an uninspiring client. I get that people end up used to Dropbox, but what do they have to attract new users? Why do people see value here? A decade on, first-mover advantage isn't going to get them (or anyone) very far. It seems like their whole company is a competitor's marketing campaign away from being basically irrelevant. It seems their one hope is business. But why would business choose Dropbox over Office 365, Box, or Google Drive. All of them seem to offer better collaboration/productivity tools. Office Delve is incredible. Google Drive is Google Drive. What's the value here? And then I read articles like these: - http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9372563/dropbox-really-is-a-feature http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9372563/dropbox-really-is-... - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-24/dropbox-is-struggling-and-competitors-are-catching-up http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-24/dropbox-is... - http://www.businessinsider.com/the-clock-is-ticking-for-dropbox-2015-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-clock-is-ticking-for-drop... What am I missing?

j_koreth 10y ago
Although fairly niche but the lack of Google Drive and OneDrive support in Linux left with me with Dropbox and combined with a free 50g deal from my S4, it was a fine arrangement in the end.
findjashua 10y ago
I think they're the only one w linux support? (Not that I expect that to be a significant marketshare)
- wanda 10y ago
  It's not difficult to mount Box on Linux. Google Drive integration comes built into Nautilus IIRC. There are other solutions for Linux integrations with both. Perhaps not as easy as Dropbox but can't see it being a winning USP. I read somewhere that Google Drive has a Linux client used by Google enployees internally—so if it were significant, it would probably only be a matter of time before this client would be released for public use. I don't think it is significant though.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    I'm a mixed Linux / OS X user. > It's not difficult to mount Box on Linux It is, I've been there. > Google Drive integration comes built into Nautilus IIRC All available Google Drive "integrations" for Linux are complete shit. The only one that works is Insync.com, a commercial solution that implies you have to give the access to all of your data to yet another third-party. > I read somewhere that Google Drive has a Linux client used by Google enployees internally This just adds salt to injury. In other words they don't give a crap about their customers, preferring instead to just sit on that big pile of money they make from advertising and intruding on their users' lives. > I don't think it is significant though. But of course it is. Anything having to do with file storage also has to do with servers and Linux is the most popular server operating system, successfully used as a home server as well. For cheap you can setup a Raspberry Pi, with an external hard-drive and you could sync all of your files, as a private backup. Heck, all sorts of projects could use Google Drive for online storage. The actual significance is that they don't want people to do this, plus the Linux desktop competes with both Android and Chrome OS, being a conflict of interest. And like any other company that wants to control the underlying platform, for lock-in purposes, they only develop apps on a need-to-do basis, only for really popular platforms and they aren't doing a good job on non-Google OSes. For example their iOS apps are inferior and with less features than the Android ones. Microsoft has taught them well.
- johnward 10y ago
  Didn't know that and have since moved to Google drive. We use box at the corporate level. https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx
CPLX 10y ago
I love Dropbox and am a paying customer. It just does the thing I want it to do, and nearly everyone I work with also has it, so getting started with a folder to collaborate with any ad-hoc group of writers, designers, or coders, is usually a 2 minute affair. It's hardly free but it's a trivial cost in the context of a year of business. What, exactly, does Google Drive do "better" than be a totally hassle free way to sync a folder? I don't really see a lot of room for improvement. Did I mention it just does what I expect it to do? I find this argument highly compelling: http://www.michaelrwolfe.com/2013/10/19/why-is-dropbox-more-popular-than-other-programs-with-similar-functionality/ http://www.michaelrwolfe.com/2013/10/19/why-is-dropbox-more-...
niftich 10y ago
> It seems their one hope is business It's always been that way. Individual accounts make very little money compared to enterprise accounts. Individual accounts significantly contribute to mindshare, but don't pay the bills. Dropbox and Box have recently been named as Leaders by Gartner in their magic quadrant (normally reg-walled, but pic in this recent article [1]). Microsoft and Google have been named as Challengers. Dropbox actually runs a pretty innovative shop [2] on a technical level. For the enterprise, Google and Microsoft offer basic run-of-the-mill storage bundled with their respective office-and-apps suites, while Dropbox and Box have a similar approach of offering APIs to make it possible to create addons or apps that integrate with the datastore or individual documents. In a way, this enables line-of-business apps to be built that use Dropbox as backend storage and operate on documents stored in Dropbox, which has the capability to challenge a Word or Excel-based workflow. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/gartner-enterprise-file-storage-companies-box-dropbox-wiped-out-in-2-years-2016-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/gartner-enterprise-file-stora... [2] https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/
- rokhayakebe 10y ago
  Individual accounts make very little money compared to enterprise accounts. Is there any source where we can find the % of revenue coming from enterprise vs small accounts for the average Saas co.
  - bardworx 10y ago
    Since box.com and dropbox are private, that don't disclose that information. However, when they file, they might give some semblance of a breakdown/comparison.
    - traskjd 10y ago
      Box isn't private. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/box http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/box
    - jedberg 10y ago
      Box is a public company: http://www.boxinvestorrelations.com/press-release/financial-releases/box-announces-record-fiscal-year-2016-revenue-303-million-40-year-o http://www.boxinvestorrelations.com/press-release/financial-... They don't split out enterprise revenue but do talk about all their enterprise clients and that it is 59% of the Fortune 500.
Mahn 10y ago
The most important thing you are missing is traction. They reached half a billion signups recently, and have many millions of active users, which is very valuable in itself. Sure, if you were you start a file syncing dropbox competitor today you would have a hard time, but the position they are in is far more defensible simply because they have a massive user base. It's the same reason why WhatsApp was acquired for billions, their "value proposition" from a product and feature set point of view was weak, but they had a traction and a massive user base. And having a massive user base is almost all that matters nowadays.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  The reason WhatsApp is valuable is because a chat app is rather useless without a massive userbase. That's not true for file syncing. Having a massive user base may be all that matters for inherently social applications, but Dropbox is definitely not one of those.
  - gaius 10y ago
    It depends how much it's used for sharing files.
  - Fomite 10y ago
    It matters because an established DropBox user might not care to add other services. For example, all the new students in my lab will be using DropBox, because its what their PI uses.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  The jury is still out on conversion numbers for those sign-ups. If you were on a mission to maximize freely available online storage space, wouldn't you sign up for all available?
- vaishaksuresh 10y ago
  I've been using dropbox for many many years now. I had a lot of space because of the space race thing they did when I was in school. I still have about 7 GB of space which is ok for the moment.I would not pay for more space though. I have a NAS connected to the internet anyway. I am pretty sure a majority of the billion users also will not pay. So what is the point in having so many users?
hellofunk 10y ago
I'm curious why you think Dropbox's features are done better by Google Drive? They are vastly different in ease of use, and, I think, in intended use. Dropbox is vastly simpler for storing documents on your local machine and in the cloud, simultaneously, in sync. Google Drive does not do this nearly as reliably. I used it for awhile and many things would inexplicably not sync.
- manishsharan 10y ago
  I am a Ubuntu user and lack of native client for Google Drive is a recurring annoyance. However I do not see the need to buy Dropbox subscription, even though Dropbox has a near flawless Linux client, as Google drive is already included with Google Apps and my company runs on Google Apps. Having a centralized console to manage all user users and resources is why I stick with Google Drive.
jacobsenscott 10y ago
I can create dropbox accounts for everyone in my family and set them up on all their various devices, and manage all those accounts. I can have a linux box running and connected to all those dropbox accounts giving us local physical backups of all that dropbox stuff. I don't see how I can easily do that with apple or google. Maybe there are other newer services that can do that, but I don't want to take the time to figure it all out.
bad_user 10y ago
I'm a Dropbox paying user and have used Google Drive in the past, gave OneDrive a trial and interact with Box.com from time to time. I'm still on Dropbox because: - Dropbox has a Linux client; meaning they actually give a shit about me as their customer; yes, you can find either half-baked / broken projects for Google Drive or have to trust yet another third party with all your data (e.g. Insync), but none of that works for me. Of course, Dropbox might choose to stop supporting Linux, but that day will be the day when I'm dropping them. - Dropbox has a 1 year versioning add-on, that works for all your files. My data is very important to me and Google Drive only does 1 month, whereas OneDrive only does versioning for Office documents. Basically OneDrive is completely useless as a backup solution - get a ransom virus on your computer and watch in horror how your data is gone - the desktop client is probably the best and has nice touches to it. It can sync from your local LAN and on OS X at least it offers to import your photos and it automatically saves your screenshots and generates links ready to copy/paste. I mean, the clients of of both Google Drive and Onedrive are slow, featureless and unreliable. Not sure what you mean by "uninspiring" there - in general it has better integration with third-parties than the others, because Dropbox is considered the "neutral" solution. MS Office has integration with Dropbox for example ;-) - the web UI could need improvement, they keep nagging me to try their Business plan, but I'm really not using the web UI much, I really don't have much need for it The price is fair IMHO, because that's all of my data. Sure, I'm not paying $5/month for a password manager or other unjustifiable crap, but 13 EUR/month (includes VAT and the versioning add-on) keeps my 100 GB of family photos and my books and my work documents safe and available everywhere. Also, Google killed Google Talk, Google Reader, Picasa (partially) and Wave. And in the case of Microsoft, OneDrive is just a useless freebie they toss along with that expensive Office 365 subscription in order to justify its value.
- brandon272 10y ago
  For such a simple service (i.e. "It's just syncing!") their competitors sure seem to have had a hell of a time replicating the product despite having had nearly a decade to do so. I have recently tried Google Drive, OneDrive and Amazon Cloud Drive and none of them compared to Dropbox at all. Syncing was slower or more inconsistent. Dropbox syncing is not always perfect but seems to be a lot better than everything else. The UI, both in terms of desktop client and website were slower and clunkier with GD/OD/ACD. All seem to make sharing more difficult than Dropbox does. Versioning is questionable. I haven't tried iCloud Drive in earnest but at first glance I don't see any way to check the status of syncing, nor do I see any indication that files are versioned. So that's really a no go right there. Will it one day be better than Dropbox? Maybe. But it isn't today.
deleted 10y ago
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yueq 10y ago
I migrated from Dropbox to Google Drive. - Better integration with Google Apps. - Better integration with various Android apps. - More free space.
sebisebi 10y ago
I used tried most file sync app extensively (Dropbox, Onedrive, Google drive, Box, copy). While Dropbox is not perfect (had a crashing bug for a month), it has the best client on all major systems that I use (Windows, Linux, IOS) and is constantly innovating. The automatically installed "sharing Icon" (round thing in word) was an intrusion I didn't like. Some people thought it's a virus. My university has "unlimited" google drive space, but it is a sad joke. While it is fine for a few google sheets/doc, it can't handle a few GB reliably. The client itself crashes on three different windows versions constantly and is a MAJOR resource hog. Google itself states it is not made to handle things like backups. Some of my folders are not synced correctly, don't know what is going on there. Once it followed a link to a network drive and started copying everything from there to the hard drive until it was full, that was fun. It is also not possible to unsync subfolders (if the app ever loads all folers), which is ridiculous, because my hardrive is not "unlimited" and now I have to make different first level folder for everything that I don't want on my laptop. Talk about usability. OneDrive is an okay user experience on windows. They tried to partially sync but show all files, which definitely causes confusion. At least they try to innovate here. When they cut down the free tier I moved, because it is not as good as the Dropbox client. It also does some things with synced word files, which I don't fully understand and to be honest my trust is just gone after the privacy turd of Windows 10 (which I use and find OK otherwise). Copy.com was very promising but was shut down for small time users. I used Box.com only shortly, wasn't even close to Dropbox at that time. Probably still doesn't have a Linux client. TLDR: I started paying for Dropbox and am rather happy. Small innovations like the scanning features eliminate friction even more, so they are working on things that I actually use. Dropbox is miles ahead of its competition.
kevindong 10y ago
On the consumer side, Dropbox has better UX than Google Drive (I've never tried Box nor OneDrive). When I tried out Google Drive, syncing was actually incredibly poor. As in, only one computer could synchronize files at a time (meaning, if computer B logs in while computer A is logged in, computer A gets logged out). Since I have multiple computers, this instantly killed Google Drive for me. In addition, Google Drive (at least back when I tried it out) did not have "instant" file synchronization. Meaning, it took the Google Drive app a minute or two or recognize that files have changed and to upload/download them. Dropbox always recognized changes within a second or two. Dropbox's web UI was also far better than Google Drive's. When you select multiple files to download on Dropbox's website, it starts instantly. Google Drive makes you wait and even offers to email you when the file are ready to download. Several times, I never actually got those emails.
- fnord123 10y ago
  >When I tried out Google Drive, syncing was actually incredibly poor. I've been using Google Drive for years. Since when has it supported local folder syncing? <researching...> oh it looks like Google uses Linux for Android, Linux for Chromebooks, many of their developers run Linux. Lots of their data centres run Linux. But the Google Drive doesn't have a daemon for Linux. The product manager is a shitforbrains and should be fired.
  - kevindong 10y ago
    Since it first debuted? https://www.google.com/drive/download/ https://www.google.com/drive/download/
- danieldk 10y ago
  When I tried out Google Drive, syncing was actually incredibly poor. It still is, it doesn't sync chunks, but only full files. Moreover, it does not have LAN (peer to peer) sync, which Dropbox does have. Dropbox's web UI was also far better than Google Drive's. When you select multiple files to download on Dropbox's website, it starts instantly. Google Drive makes you wait And Dropbox has basic functionality like getting an overview of shared folders/files, which is for some unfathomable reason not possible in Google Drive (instead you have to rely on 3rd party scripts that scan all files).
nathancahill 10y ago
Obligatory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- seyinanigans 10y ago
  Thanks for this
rokhayakebe 10y ago
And what makes you think the company with the best product wins? Or the best guy for the girl? Or the best gal for the job?
morgante 10y ago
> They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better. I'm curious why you think their competitors are superior? Having tried all the major solutions, Dropbox is by far my favorite. It just works—I don't have to manually control files, I don't have to worry about being forced into a janky web editor, and I don't have to think.
scotchio 10y ago
What's wrong with their client? I'm really looking forward to the Infinite updates and have never had any issues with DropBox (or OneDrive). Google Drive on Mac though... Complete and total Hell of an experience. Really wanted to use it because Google/Gmail. But, we always had: * Syncing issues with the team, * CPU resources were insane, * Freezing when closing the app, * Tying to upload a relatively large file (~8gb) would just trash our home network. Maybe it was just our setup though. I would go back to them in a heartbeat if they worked on anything. :/
- rconti 10y ago
  Well, the UI used to make sense on the Mac before the redesign to a godawful all-black-and-white-looks-nothing-like-OS-X client maybe 2 years ago.
the_watcher 10y ago
Dropbox just works in the way you expect it to. Google Drive has value because of collaboration features and the fact that pretty much everyone has Gmail, but Dropbox is more intuitive to get working as a local filesystem. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Dropbox just works.
oscarteg 10y ago
Dropbox does follow symlinks and google drive doesn't.
petters 10y ago
Dropbox Infinite has a lot of potential to take the cloud to the next level.
oliwarner 10y ago
They support everything (including desktop Linux). They support sharing. And organisations. Many things do some of that. Few do it all.
tw04 10y ago
Not sure on box, I can tell you for OneDrive and Google Drive, if you have multiple people working against a shared directory - good luck. Their ability to sync with multiple clients hitting the same data is HORRENDOUS. We've got what amounts to FREE Onedrive as part of our ELA and the company still forks over for Dropbox because the shared user experience is lightyears ahead.
caconym_ 10y ago
Lack of ecosystem lock-in beyond Dropbox the product is amazing, and I've never in several years of using it been anything but 100% satisfied. Unfortunately I'm expecting it to be crushed any day now by competitors who can bundle their analogous products with other ubiquitous software (e.g. Gmail).
fapjacks 10y ago
All of their employees are fanatical about their service. I've asked the same question and usually it boils down to a hip je ne sais qois.
rrdharan 10y ago
Dropbox significantly outperforms its competitors when it comes to file sync performance. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2015/10/sync-performance/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2015/10/sync-performance/ You might be surprised how much that actually matters. Disclaimer: I used to work at Dropbox, so I'm biased.
deleted 10y ago
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jamwt 10y ago
I'm a sync quality engineer at Dropbox--on the team that writes and maintains the sync engine. So caveat, I'm clearly quite biased. :-) > They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better. I'm not sure on what you base this opinion. We do sync much, much better, and that's no coincidence--we work very hard on it (I'm new on this team, so I deserve essentially zero personal credit). It is our business. We're not an advertising company--doing sync well translates directly to dollars for us. On a technical level, it is extremely nontrivial to get right multiplatform, in the face of races, vague filesystem semantics, application-specific behavior, offline, etc. Our competitors aren't even trying things like infinite (https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-project-infinite/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...). We're not sitting still, though. We're actually building a next generation sync engine right now (btw, more Rust @ Dropbox). The plan is that this will put even more distance between us and others.
- nxc18 10y ago
  There are definitely some interesting features in development. Things like placeholders (infinite) have been in OneDrive for a while (then removed because Microsoft) and then were reintroduced. I remember a few years ago a company I was working for used dropbox and I was shocked when installing DropBox instantly depleted my local storage - it felt totally bizarre that infinite functionality wasn't the default as that was what I was used to with OneDrive. I'd like to see some evidence that sync is actually better in a significant way that is noticeable to the user - noticeable enough to warrant an incredible premium. For example, $10/month or $100/year gets me full office for my entire home and mobile, 1TB of storage, and Skype minutes (not that anyone cares about that perk). If its just for one person, that goes down to $7/month or $70/year. Why should I pay $10/month for just 1Tb of storage and slightly better sync? EDIT: After reading some other comments, I see some evidence that your syncing is in fact better. It might be useful to highlight that specifically rather than making the blanket statement (e.g. faster, more robust rather than better). Now I might take a look at dropbox especially as my reliance on Office is decreasing.
  - jamwt 10y ago
djhworld 10y ago
I use their beta product "Dropbox Paper" a lot, it's really good.
benologist 10y ago
Why should any of that be proprietary, online services you pay for forever first with eroded privacy and then with money? My NAS has coherent open source alternatives to heaps of cloud stuff including Dropbox: https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing
oatmealsnap 10y ago
Their UI is much better than their competitors, and they have some great major and minor features being released that others don't have, and they charge the standard set by their competitors. Sure, compared to buying a physical drive it is expensive, or compared to setting up your own VPS, but there are clear downsides to those options. I recently looked into moving form our current (really shitty yet fascinatingly expensive) cloud storage solution, and even though I still have a grudge against them for shutting down Mailbox...Dropbox was by far the best solution for us.
gcr 10y ago
Google Drive sync is nowhere close to Dropbox's sync in terms of reliability. I've had Google Drive create entire copies of folders while URL-encoding every filename in the second copy, for example. Dropbox is the only one I can trust at the moment.
gcr 10y ago
Google Drive sync is nowhere close to Dropbox's sync in terms of reliability. I've had Google Drive create entire copies of folders while URL-encoding every filename in the second copy, for example. Dropbox is the only one I can trust at the moment.

by nxc18 10y ago

j_koreth 10y ago

Although fairly niche but the lack of Google Drive and OneDrive support in Linux left with me with Dropbox and combined with a free 50g deal from my S4, it was a fine arrangement in the end.

findjashua 10y ago

I think they're the only one w linux support? (Not that I expect that to be a significant marketshare)

wanda 10y ago
It's not difficult to mount Box on Linux. Google Drive integration comes built into Nautilus IIRC. There are other solutions for Linux integrations with both. Perhaps not as easy as Dropbox but can't see it being a winning USP. I read somewhere that Google Drive has a Linux client used by Google enployees internally—so if it were significant, it would probably only be a matter of time before this client would be released for public use. I don't think it is significant though.
- bad_user 10y ago
  I'm a mixed Linux / OS X user. > It's not difficult to mount Box on Linux It is, I've been there. > Google Drive integration comes built into Nautilus IIRC All available Google Drive "integrations" for Linux are complete shit. The only one that works is Insync.com, a commercial solution that implies you have to give the access to all of your data to yet another third-party. > I read somewhere that Google Drive has a Linux client used by Google enployees internally This just adds salt to injury. In other words they don't give a crap about their customers, preferring instead to just sit on that big pile of money they make from advertising and intruding on their users' lives. > I don't think it is significant though. But of course it is. Anything having to do with file storage also has to do with servers and Linux is the most popular server operating system, successfully used as a home server as well. For cheap you can setup a Raspberry Pi, with an external hard-drive and you could sync all of your files, as a private backup. Heck, all sorts of projects could use Google Drive for online storage. The actual significance is that they don't want people to do this, plus the Linux desktop competes with both Android and Chrome OS, being a conflict of interest. And like any other company that wants to control the underlying platform, for lock-in purposes, they only develop apps on a need-to-do basis, only for really popular platforms and they aren't doing a good job on non-Google OSes. For example their iOS apps are inferior and with less features than the Android ones. Microsoft has taught them well.
johnward 10y ago
Didn't know that and have since moved to Google drive. We use box at the corporate level. https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx https://www.dropbox.com/install?os=lnx

CPLX 10y ago

I love Dropbox and am a paying customer. It just does the thing I want it to do, and nearly everyone I work with also has it, so getting started with a folder to collaborate with any ad-hoc group of writers, designers, or coders, is usually a 2 minute affair. It's hardly free but it's a trivial cost in the context of a year of business. What, exactly, does Google Drive do "better" than be a totally hassle free way to sync a folder? I don't really see a lot of room for improvement. Did I mention it just does what I expect it to do? I find this argument highly compelling: http://www.michaelrwolfe.com/2013/10/19/why-is-dropbox-more-popular-than-other-programs-with-similar-functionality/ http://www.michaelrwolfe.com/2013/10/19/why-is-dropbox-more-...

niftich 10y ago

> It seems their one hope is business It's always been that way. Individual accounts make very little money compared to enterprise accounts. Individual accounts significantly contribute to mindshare, but don't pay the bills. Dropbox and Box have recently been named as Leaders by Gartner in their magic quadrant (normally reg-walled, but pic in this recent article [1]). Microsoft and Google have been named as Challengers. Dropbox actually runs a pretty innovative shop [2] on a technical level. For the enterprise, Google and Microsoft offer basic run-of-the-mill storage bundled with their respective office-and-apps suites, while Dropbox and Box have a similar approach of offering APIs to make it possible to create addons or apps that integrate with the datastore or individual documents. In a way, this enables line-of-business apps to be built that use Dropbox as backend storage and operate on documents stored in Dropbox, which has the capability to challenge a Word or Excel-based workflow. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/gartner-enterprise-file-storage-companies-box-dropbox-wiped-out-in-2-years-2016-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/gartner-enterprise-file-stora... [2] https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/

rokhayakebe 10y ago
Individual accounts make very little money compared to enterprise accounts. Is there any source where we can find the % of revenue coming from enterprise vs small accounts for the average Saas co.
- bardworx 10y ago
  Since box.com and dropbox are private, that don't disclose that information. However, when they file, they might give some semblance of a breakdown/comparison.
  - traskjd 10y ago
    Box isn't private. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/box http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/box
  - jedberg 10y ago
    Box is a public company: http://www.boxinvestorrelations.com/press-release/financial-releases/box-announces-record-fiscal-year-2016-revenue-303-million-40-year-o http://www.boxinvestorrelations.com/press-release/financial-... They don't split out enterprise revenue but do talk about all their enterprise clients and that it is 59% of the Fortune 500.

Mahn 10y ago

The most important thing you are missing is traction. They reached half a billion signups recently, and have many millions of active users, which is very valuable in itself. Sure, if you were you start a file syncing dropbox competitor today you would have a hard time, but the position they are in is far more defensible simply because they have a massive user base. It's the same reason why WhatsApp was acquired for billions, their "value proposition" from a product and feature set point of view was weak, but they had a traction and a massive user base. And having a massive user base is almost all that matters nowadays.

PeCaN 10y ago
The reason WhatsApp is valuable is because a chat app is rather useless without a massive userbase. That's not true for file syncing. Having a massive user base may be all that matters for inherently social applications, but Dropbox is definitely not one of those.
- gaius 10y ago
  It depends how much it's used for sharing files.
- Fomite 10y ago
  It matters because an established DropBox user might not care to add other services. For example, all the new students in my lab will be using DropBox, because its what their PI uses.
prostoalex 10y ago
The jury is still out on conversion numbers for those sign-ups. If you were on a mission to maximize freely available online storage space, wouldn't you sign up for all available?
vaishaksuresh 10y ago
I've been using dropbox for many many years now. I had a lot of space because of the space race thing they did when I was in school. I still have about 7 GB of space which is ok for the moment.I would not pay for more space though. I have a NAS connected to the internet anyway. I am pretty sure a majority of the billion users also will not pay. So what is the point in having so many users?

hellofunk 10y ago

I'm curious why you think Dropbox's features are done better by Google Drive? They are vastly different in ease of use, and, I think, in intended use. Dropbox is vastly simpler for storing documents on your local machine and in the cloud, simultaneously, in sync. Google Drive does not do this nearly as reliably. I used it for awhile and many things would inexplicably not sync.

manishsharan 10y ago
I am a Ubuntu user and lack of native client for Google Drive is a recurring annoyance. However I do not see the need to buy Dropbox subscription, even though Dropbox has a near flawless Linux client, as Google drive is already included with Google Apps and my company runs on Google Apps. Having a centralized console to manage all user users and resources is why I stick with Google Drive.

jacobsenscott 10y ago

I can create dropbox accounts for everyone in my family and set them up on all their various devices, and manage all those accounts. I can have a linux box running and connected to all those dropbox accounts giving us local physical backups of all that dropbox stuff. I don't see how I can easily do that with apple or google. Maybe there are other newer services that can do that, but I don't want to take the time to figure it all out.

bad_user 10y ago

I'm a Dropbox paying user and have used Google Drive in the past, gave OneDrive a trial and interact with Box.com from time to time. I'm still on Dropbox because: - Dropbox has a Linux client; meaning they actually give a shit about me as their customer; yes, you can find either half-baked / broken projects for Google Drive or have to trust yet another third party with all your data (e.g. Insync), but none of that works for me. Of course, Dropbox might choose to stop supporting Linux, but that day will be the day when I'm dropping them. - Dropbox has a 1 year versioning add-on, that works for all your files. My data is very important to me and Google Drive only does 1 month, whereas OneDrive only does versioning for Office documents. Basically OneDrive is completely useless as a backup solution - get a ransom virus on your computer and watch in horror how your data is gone - the desktop client is probably the best and has nice touches to it. It can sync from your local LAN and on OS X at least it offers to import your photos and it automatically saves your screenshots and generates links ready to copy/paste. I mean, the clients of of both Google Drive and Onedrive are slow, featureless and unreliable. Not sure what you mean by "uninspiring" there - in general it has better integration with third-parties than the others, because Dropbox is considered the "neutral" solution. MS Office has integration with Dropbox for example ;-) - the web UI could need improvement, they keep nagging me to try their Business plan, but I'm really not using the web UI much, I really don't have much need for it The price is fair IMHO, because that's all of my data. Sure, I'm not paying $5/month for a password manager or other unjustifiable crap, but 13 EUR/month (includes VAT and the versioning add-on) keeps my 100 GB of family photos and my books and my work documents safe and available everywhere. Also, Google killed Google Talk, Google Reader, Picasa (partially) and Wave. And in the case of Microsoft, OneDrive is just a useless freebie they toss along with that expensive Office 365 subscription in order to justify its value.

brandon272 10y ago
For such a simple service (i.e. "It's just syncing!") their competitors sure seem to have had a hell of a time replicating the product despite having had nearly a decade to do so. I have recently tried Google Drive, OneDrive and Amazon Cloud Drive and none of them compared to Dropbox at all. Syncing was slower or more inconsistent. Dropbox syncing is not always perfect but seems to be a lot better than everything else. The UI, both in terms of desktop client and website were slower and clunkier with GD/OD/ACD. All seem to make sharing more difficult than Dropbox does. Versioning is questionable. I haven't tried iCloud Drive in earnest but at first glance I don't see any way to check the status of syncing, nor do I see any indication that files are versioned. So that's really a no go right there. Will it one day be better than Dropbox? Maybe. But it isn't today.

deleted 10y ago

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yueq 10y ago

I migrated from Dropbox to Google Drive. - Better integration with Google Apps. - Better integration with various Android apps. - More free space.

sebisebi 10y ago

I used tried most file sync app extensively (Dropbox, Onedrive, Google drive, Box, copy). While Dropbox is not perfect (had a crashing bug for a month), it has the best client on all major systems that I use (Windows, Linux, IOS) and is constantly innovating. The automatically installed "sharing Icon" (round thing in word) was an intrusion I didn't like. Some people thought it's a virus. My university has "unlimited" google drive space, but it is a sad joke. While it is fine for a few google sheets/doc, it can't handle a few GB reliably. The client itself crashes on three different windows versions constantly and is a MAJOR resource hog. Google itself states it is not made to handle things like backups. Some of my folders are not synced correctly, don't know what is going on there. Once it followed a link to a network drive and started copying everything from there to the hard drive until it was full, that was fun. It is also not possible to unsync subfolders (if the app ever loads all folers), which is ridiculous, because my hardrive is not "unlimited" and now I have to make different first level folder for everything that I don't want on my laptop. Talk about usability. OneDrive is an okay user experience on windows. They tried to partially sync but show all files, which definitely causes confusion. At least they try to innovate here. When they cut down the free tier I moved, because it is not as good as the Dropbox client. It also does some things with synced word files, which I don't fully understand and to be honest my trust is just gone after the privacy turd of Windows 10 (which I use and find OK otherwise). Copy.com was very promising but was shut down for small time users. I used Box.com only shortly, wasn't even close to Dropbox at that time. Probably still doesn't have a Linux client. TLDR: I started paying for Dropbox and am rather happy. Small innovations like the scanning features eliminate friction even more, so they are working on things that I actually use. Dropbox is miles ahead of its competition.

kevindong 10y ago

On the consumer side, Dropbox has better UX than Google Drive (I've never tried Box nor OneDrive). When I tried out Google Drive, syncing was actually incredibly poor. As in, only one computer could synchronize files at a time (meaning, if computer B logs in while computer A is logged in, computer A gets logged out). Since I have multiple computers, this instantly killed Google Drive for me. In addition, Google Drive (at least back when I tried it out) did not have "instant" file synchronization. Meaning, it took the Google Drive app a minute or two or recognize that files have changed and to upload/download them. Dropbox always recognized changes within a second or two. Dropbox's web UI was also far better than Google Drive's. When you select multiple files to download on Dropbox's website, it starts instantly. Google Drive makes you wait and even offers to email you when the file are ready to download. Several times, I never actually got those emails.

fnord123 10y ago
>When I tried out Google Drive, syncing was actually incredibly poor. I've been using Google Drive for years. Since when has it supported local folder syncing? <researching...> oh it looks like Google uses Linux for Android, Linux for Chromebooks, many of their developers run Linux. Lots of their data centres run Linux. But the Google Drive doesn't have a daemon for Linux. The product manager is a shitforbrains and should be fired.
- kevindong 10y ago
  Since it first debuted? https://www.google.com/drive/download/ https://www.google.com/drive/download/
danieldk 10y ago
When I tried out Google Drive, syncing was actually incredibly poor. It still is, it doesn't sync chunks, but only full files. Moreover, it does not have LAN (peer to peer) sync, which Dropbox does have. Dropbox's web UI was also far better than Google Drive's. When you select multiple files to download on Dropbox's website, it starts instantly. Google Drive makes you wait And Dropbox has basic functionality like getting an overview of shared folders/files, which is for some unfathomable reason not possible in Google Drive (instead you have to rely on 3rd party scripts that scan all files).

nathancahill 10y ago

Obligatory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

seyinanigans 10y ago
Thanks for this

rokhayakebe 10y ago

And what makes you think the company with the best product wins? Or the best guy for the girl? Or the best gal for the job?

morgante 10y ago

> They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better. I'm curious why you think their competitors are superior? Having tried all the major solutions, Dropbox is by far my favorite. It just works—I don't have to manually control files, I don't have to worry about being forced into a janky web editor, and I don't have to think.

scotchio 10y ago

What's wrong with their client? I'm really looking forward to the Infinite updates and have never had any issues with DropBox (or OneDrive). Google Drive on Mac though... Complete and total Hell of an experience. Really wanted to use it because Google/Gmail. But, we always had: * Syncing issues with the team, * CPU resources were insane, * Freezing when closing the app, * Tying to upload a relatively large file (~8gb) would just trash our home network. Maybe it was just our setup though. I would go back to them in a heartbeat if they worked on anything. :/

rconti 10y ago
Well, the UI used to make sense on the Mac before the redesign to a godawful all-black-and-white-looks-nothing-like-OS-X client maybe 2 years ago.

the_watcher 10y ago

Dropbox just works in the way you expect it to. Google Drive has value because of collaboration features and the fact that pretty much everyone has Gmail, but Dropbox is more intuitive to get working as a local filesystem. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Dropbox just works.

oscarteg 10y ago

Dropbox does follow symlinks and google drive doesn't.

petters 10y ago

Dropbox Infinite has a lot of potential to take the cloud to the next level.

oliwarner 10y ago

They support everything (including desktop Linux). They support sharing. And organisations. Many things do some of that. Few do it all.

tw04 10y ago

Not sure on box, I can tell you for OneDrive and Google Drive, if you have multiple people working against a shared directory - good luck. Their ability to sync with multiple clients hitting the same data is HORRENDOUS. We've got what amounts to FREE Onedrive as part of our ELA and the company still forks over for Dropbox because the shared user experience is lightyears ahead.

caconym_ 10y ago

Lack of ecosystem lock-in beyond Dropbox the product is amazing, and I've never in several years of using it been anything but 100% satisfied. Unfortunately I'm expecting it to be crushed any day now by competitors who can bundle their analogous products with other ubiquitous software (e.g. Gmail).

fapjacks 10y ago

All of their employees are fanatical about their service. I've asked the same question and usually it boils down to a hip je ne sais qois.

rrdharan 10y ago

Dropbox significantly outperforms its competitors when it comes to file sync performance. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2015/10/sync-performance/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2015/10/sync-performance/ You might be surprised how much that actually matters. Disclaimer: I used to work at Dropbox, so I'm biased.

deleted 10y ago

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jamwt 10y ago

I'm a sync quality engineer at Dropbox--on the team that writes and maintains the sync engine. So caveat, I'm clearly quite biased. :-) > They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better. I'm not sure on what you base this opinion. We do sync much, much better, and that's no coincidence--we work very hard on it (I'm new on this team, so I deserve essentially zero personal credit). It is our business. We're not an advertising company--doing sync well translates directly to dollars for us. On a technical level, it is extremely nontrivial to get right multiplatform, in the face of races, vague filesystem semantics, application-specific behavior, offline, etc. Our competitors aren't even trying things like infinite (https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-project-infinite/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...). We're not sitting still, though. We're actually building a next generation sync engine right now (btw, more Rust @ Dropbox). The plan is that this will put even more distance between us and others.

nxc18 10y ago
There are definitely some interesting features in development. Things like placeholders (infinite) have been in OneDrive for a while (then removed because Microsoft) and then were reintroduced. I remember a few years ago a company I was working for used dropbox and I was shocked when installing DropBox instantly depleted my local storage - it felt totally bizarre that infinite functionality wasn't the default as that was what I was used to with OneDrive. I'd like to see some evidence that sync is actually better in a significant way that is noticeable to the user - noticeable enough to warrant an incredible premium. For example, $10/month or $100/year gets me full office for my entire home and mobile, 1TB of storage, and Skype minutes (not that anyone cares about that perk). If its just for one person, that goes down to $7/month or $70/year. Why should I pay $10/month for just 1Tb of storage and slightly better sync? EDIT: After reading some other comments, I see some evidence that your syncing is in fact better. It might be useful to highlight that specifically rather than making the blanket statement (e.g. faster, more robust rather than better). Now I might take a look at dropbox especially as my reliance on Office is decreasing.
- jamwt 10y ago

djhworld 10y ago

I use their beta product "Dropbox Paper" a lot, it's really good.

benologist 10y ago

Why should any of that be proprietary, online services you pay for forever first with eroded privacy and then with money? My NAS has coherent open source alternatives to heaps of cloud stuff including Dropbox: https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing

oatmealsnap 10y ago

Their UI is much better than their competitors, and they have some great major and minor features being released that others don't have, and they charge the standard set by their competitors. Sure, compared to buying a physical drive it is expensive, or compared to setting up your own VPS, but there are clear downsides to those options. I recently looked into moving form our current (really shitty yet fascinatingly expensive) cloud storage solution, and even though I still have a grudge against them for shutting down Mailbox...Dropbox was by far the best solution for us.

gcr 10y ago

Google Drive sync is nowhere close to Dropbox's sync in terms of reliability. I've had Google Drive create entire copies of folders while URL-encoding every filename in the second copy, for example. Dropbox is the only one I can trust at the moment.

gcr 10y ago