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Dropbox Professional
- dabernathy89 9y agoIf 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-without-selective-sync/idi-p/5926 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Ignore-folder-withou...
- npkarnik 9y agoI don't work at Dropbox, but I believe it's ignored by design. Fewer users would upgrade their storage to the paid plans.
- dabernathy89 9y agoI hadn't even considered that TBH.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rdslw 9y agoIm not from Dropbox but answer is easy: because that would canibalize on selective/smart sync feature.
- roryisok 9y agoI did not realise I wanted that until now. Makes perfect sense
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Nition 9y agoSimilarly: "Stop auto-inheriting new folders when using selective sync"[1] Another many-page thread from 2014. It's a big problem everywhere, but especially in business settings where there's often tons of data and anyone adding a new folder to Dropbox ends up syncing that new folder to everyone, whether they want anything to do with it or not. For personal use it sucks when you only want to sync a few folders to e.g. a PC with a small hard drive, or if you've got a data cap. The new "online only" option is nice but "don't auto-sync new folders" is a seemingly simple option that's been missing for years. OneDrive has it.[1] [1] https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Stop-auto-inheriting-new-folders-when-using-selective-sync/idi-p/4630 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Stop-auto-inheriting... [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Choose-which-OneDrive-folders-to-sync-to-your-computer-98b8b011-8b94-419b-aa95-a14ff2415e85 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Choose-which-OneDri... "If you're choosing folders on two computers and you create a new folder on computer A that you want to sync to computer B, you'll need to go to computer B and select the new folder there."
- steindavidb 9y agothis is actually fixed with selective sync in dropbox pro
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bpicolo 9y agoSo they're trying to compete with Behance? That actually kinda sorta explains the recent, somewhat odd redesign. Not sure how they'll manage to take market from Behance though.
- digitalengineer 9y agoA 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.
- willtheperson 9y agoYou're on Hacker News and your name is "digitalengineer." You're probably not their target customer :) I have a bunch of friends in the creative space who use dropbox exclusively to share their work. It's a portfolio for them that's easier to update and control what the prospective client sees. Some of them also have a website portfolio (typically a squarespace setup) but they take so much time to build and maintain with fresh work that they end up sending both a link to the website and dropbox for the latest work. I totally see why Dropbox is doing this, I just wonder if there are enough creatives who use it this way to make them any substantial gains or if the cool kids convinced them this was the most important thing to do.
- ehsankia 9y agoIt 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.
- sidcool 9y agoI would love to see Dropbox get into the Productivity market. Google and Microsoft gives everything an enterprise would need, Storage, Sync, Document collaboration, Online word, sheets etc., email etc. Dropbox so far is a brilliant file sync and storage service. Dropbox Paper may be a start, but if they want to stay relevant, productivity is something they will have to do.
- bachmeier 9y agoI think they have less reason to be concerned about their competitors than they do about their pricing. $99/year for a somewhat crippled version of Dropbox is steep.
- monkmartinez 9y agoI am not sure what you mean by crippled... nor do I have vested interest in Dropbox. However, I would be remiss to not mention 1,000GB of storage on S3 would run you $23USD. Now this is before calculating management, request and data transfer pricing. I just did the math and now thinking I should pay for Dropbox, instead of S3.
- kayoone 9y agothe thing is, many people would be happy with 100GB for a lower price and still having the option to chose betwenn plus or pro. But it's either plus or pro for 100 / 200 per year which is a bit steep.
- mediaman 9y agoYes but most people don't use 1tb, which is a problem with inflexible pricing models like this. If you're using 100 gb, which is probably the more typical user, you're still paying $100 a year, which isn't competitive with other options in the market.
- forgot-my-pw 9y agoDropbox is also expensive for the average user. You either get 2.5G for free or pay $100/year for 1TB or even higher plan. There's nothing in between. Google drive in comparison has a 100G plan for around $20/year, which is enough for most people. Too bad Google has no delta sync.
- wonder_bread 9y agoSo a Squarespace/Wix replacement?
- komali2 9y agoPotentially better if there's a way to somehow automatically "blog" about my new photos on auto-upload. I don't see that feature, but they're more likely to be able to than squarespace/wix.
- jscheel 9y agoOh man, this was the same problem I ran into with my product years ago. Everyone wanted to shoehorn it into a website creator. Showcase (as was my product) is a form of "digital document." Think about sales sheets, proposals, document delivery, etc, etc. Not necessarily things for public consumption, but things that you want to present in an ordered, eye-catching way.
- brightball 9y agoI 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.
- komali2 9y agoDoesn't google drive have a similar feature?
- ptman 9y agoIt does now, and OneDrive seems to also have similar functionality with the latest win10 update. But many people have bad experiences with the sync algorithm of Google Drive.
- jpalomaki 9y agoSmart sync is great news, happy to pay the extra for that. Setting up on new computer has been painful since full sync takes couple of days (lots of small files). With smart it would be actually possible to travel with empty disk and sync needed files on destination.
- joshstrange 9y ago> Smart sync is great news, happy to pay the extra for that. I'm not, it doesn't cost them hardly anything extra and yet I have to pay twice as much a month just so I reclaim some HD space?
- hellofunk 9y ago> Setting up on new computer has been painful What about Selective Sync which has been there for years?
- jpalomaki 9y ago
- danieldk 9y agoSo they created a new Pro plan: https://www.dropbox.com/plans/individual?trigger=nr https://www.dropbox.com/plans/individual?trigger=nr Recently, they renamed the old Pro plan to Plus. This sucks quite a bit for long-time users, since they are only adding new features (smart sync, full content search) to the new Pro plan.
- monkmartinez 9y agoYeah, I bet they peg the average "storage" per customer around 300GB. People are forced to manage the space on their HDD and not simply dump everything to Dropbox. If everyone used the 1TB... I imagine Dropbox wouldn't look the same pricing wise and/or have some serious heart ache about it. Like over provisioning in the VPS space... maybe, I don't know for sure, just throwing this out there food for thought.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI got my Classic Dropbox account upped to around 300GB for life because I answered a question at a conference. I haven't exceeded it for the last seven years or so.
- tedmiston 9y agoPyCon by chance?
- zitterbewegung 9y agoNo, Reflections projections at U of I.
- myth_drannon 9y agothat's why they don't allow to combine multiple locations/folders for sync(there is a workaround with symbolic links but it's a hack).
- ulfw 9y ago
- brchr 9y agoAccording to the new plans page [1], "shared link controls" for things like passwords and expiration dates will now no longer be available on the Plus plans like they have been for the last 5+ years? Am I reading this correctly? If so, that is a deeply unsatisfying regression buried in this announcement. [1]: https://www.dropbox.com/plans https://www.dropbox.com/plans
- phren0logy 9y agoIf they drop expiring links, I don't see any reason I'd stay with them. I also have OneDrive, and I like DropBox better, but not that much better...
- superdaniel 9y agoI 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.
- kayoone 9y agonot only Apple and Google, compared to Office365 for $99 per year which includes 1TB Onedrive + full Office for up to 5 users, i don't see how dropbox is worth it nowadays
- ferdbold 9y agoWell they have me because Google Sync doesn't seem to work half of the time and/or takes forever to sync on all of my devices, and OneDrive and iCloud don't have clients on Linux (really?)
- vanous 9y agoWhat sync do you use on Linux then? I am moving over from the Goog to mega. Full Linux support, 50GB, TNO.
- kayoone 9y agoI have a hard time with Dropbox' pricing. I was a pro user once, but discontinued it because i didn't actually need that much storage, i would have been fine with 100GB for 40 EUR or something. I pay 99 per year for Office365 which gives me the full office suite for 5 people who can each install everything on 5 devices + 1TB OneDrive. Of course OneDrive is no Dropbox, but it does it's job and holds the bulk of my data while i use Dropbox just for sharing.
- dorfsmay 9y agoSame here, if you want a descent size sync storage for your spouse and kids, it adds up quickly. Given that gdrive and most equivalent offers don't support Linux client, I ended up going with pCloud, and have been really happy so far.
- mxuribe 9y agoI agree with you on all counts...and the only nitpicky thing i have with microsoft on this is that onedrive has no linux client. And in my family - while everyone else is on a PC - i have my linux laptop. but, yeah for a family who needs office (for docs, school, etc.) and basic storage, office 365 is hard to beat. (And, i should caveat that i am far from the type of person who would be considered a fan of anything that microsoft does.)
- stoolpigeon 9y agoMy family uses dropbox because of the platform support. And using one drive for personal stuff, and having a business account can be pretty messy from what I've seen. I have extra storage with google for my photos but I keep my dropbox account for keeping important stuff on every device. In fact I find Dropbox works better on my Android devices than google drive.
- 1123581321 9y agoI would say it's more that you don't need Dropbox's non-storage features and value Microsoft Office. My $100/year pays for the quality sync client and the web interface than the space (I have fewer files to sync than you do.) Since there are probably more people who are paying for quality/reliability than paying "per gigabytes," they would badly hurt their business by offering a plan that cheap. Since OneDrive's lower quality product satisfies you, you don't need what makes Dropbox good, and it doesn't make sense for them to pursue you by introducing commodity pricing.
- d--b 9y agoIt's not that surprising that Dropbox is moving into this space. They kind of lost the enterprise battle, and are still very popular among arty people who need to share large files easily (and without caring much about security). In a way it's a bit like Apple's move to cater to creative people after losing the enterprise to Microsoft. They have some way to go though, cause the brand is not really there yet...
- arachnids 9y ago> They kind of lost the enterprise battle What is this based on? Not saying you're wrong, just looking for some evidence because that seems like a big claim.
- Cookingboy 9y agoBox and Microsoft dominate this space.
- seanieb 9y agoBox has a fraction of the seats Dropbox has in Enterprise. And when you add Dropbox consumer business, it's not even close. It's not clear wrt Drive.
- swypych 9y agoCurious, who did they lose it to?
- tedmiston 9y agoBox
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoDropbox 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 know their iPhones and Macbook aren't nagging them about space anymore (They're not techies). So far iCloud has been working really smoothly for them and I'm considering the switch.
- i1856511 9y agoHow did you provide payment information for iCloud for an account that wasn't your own? Or is your CC the one on file for your parents' account? I want to do the same thing for my own parents, but they have their own CC on file and AFAIK there's no way to supply a different one for a one-off purchase.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoFamily controls let you pay for someone else's storage (if they're on your family account). Buying then an iTunes gift card works as well. I prepay my $36/year in iCloud storage for all of our synced family photos by purchasing a gift card each year and then applying it to my iTunes account (instead of dinging my CC $3/month, which is just annoying).
- i1856511 9y agoThank you. That's a good idea, and I will look into this. With this method, do you get an alert or email when your period is about to expire?
- toomuchtodo 9y agoApple sends me an email invoice every month for the storage. If I still have a credit, it says "stored credit" was applied. I put an annual reminder in Google Calendar to re-up the account balance with a gift card. If I forget, I get the American Express push notification that Apple charged my card.
- joshuamcginnis 9y agoAside from iCloud, are there any other comparable alternatives to Dropbox?
- jve 9y agoWhy wouldn't Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive be comparable? They also have online multiplayer document editing experience built in.
- Digory 9y agoLooking for Dropbox alternatives a few weeks ago, I found a consultant talking about Amazon as a competitor. Lo and behold, there’s an Amazon Workdocs buried at AWS. It’s $5/mo per head, 1TB of storage, Mac and PC clients. It is rough around the edges (nomobile ecosystem, for example) but it seems to be more than adequate for syncing and some sharing. [0] https://aws.amazon.com/workdocs/ https://aws.amazon.com/workdocs/
- tedmiston 9y agoTl;dr - It looks like a rebranding to charge more for single creative pro users that previously would have gotten nearly the same benefits of the personal plan for, I think, half the price. They are injecting a tier in between the normal plan and the teams / business plan. Selective sync isn't actually new despite the marketing spin that now it's available on a per file level. Nor are expiring and protected links. The webpage builder tool is new. Edit: Surprised to see someone downvoted this. Look at Dropbox's feature page… this stuff already exists.
- jaytaylor 9y agoWhy is Dropbox straying so far from its core mission and competency? Edit It seems like they're bloating up the product with features that have little relation to the core mission of providing secure storage, access, and sharing for files. As a user and investor, I'd rather see: - Better, more competitive pricing. Or if that's not an option, at the very least.. - Stick to relevant technological innovation. For example, wouldn't it be cool if intelligent caching and network awareness would let you turn a 1TB drive into a 5TB drive? That would be a much more compelling story. Given the stiff competition in the space, all this holds doubly true imho.
- product50 9y agoBecause companies evolve based on market needs and opportunity.
- jameskegel 9y agoThey're preparing for IPO.
- varenc 9y agothe "intelligent caching and network awareness" is basically the Smart Sync feature. Dropbox makes files appear as if they're on your hard drive when they're not and fetches them in the background when you actually need them all while trying to keep the files you really need locally cached for you. Edit: there's some cool tech around this you can read about here: https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/going-deeper-with-project-infinite/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/going-deeper-with-pro...
- rodgerd 9y agoBecause their competition isn't just the storage story. Microsoft's counter is Office + Storage + Sway + + + for the same price for a 5-person license (which covers multiple installs per user). Dropbox can either add features or slash prices.
- JohnBooty 9y agoI'd pay money for a replacement for their old "Public" folder that gives me: 1. A directory on my drive that's automatically synced to a public folder on a web server 2. The convenience of Dropbox's Finder/Explorer integration (right-click to copy link) First one is pretty trivial with a cron job (or equivalent) and some rsync-fu. Second one, not sure. That's basically the convenience factor I'd pay a few bucks a month for. That and never having to check if the cron job's running. I want brain-dead simple. Anybody know of something that does this? Their "link to your file(s) on Dropbox.com, embedded in a fancy web interface" feature(s) seems pretty useful honestly. Especially the history of who viewed the file -- that's a real differentiating feature. Different use case though. Edit: I'm not sure why this is being downvoted.
- varenc 9y agoYou can have most of what the public folder offered for $5/month here: https://www.site44.com https://www.site44.com (Dropbox API app) If you just want to right click to get a shared link...Dropbbox has always supported that. If you don't like the ugly chrome Dropbox puts around your content, append "?raw=1" to the links Dropbox returns.
- dhruvio 9y agoIMHO, IPFS paired with GPG is the best, open source solution out there.
- marcusjt 9y agoDropbox's "Smart Sync" sounds a lot like Google's "Drive File Stream" - https://gsuite.google.com/campaigns/index__drive-fs-eap.html https://gsuite.google.com/campaigns/index__drive-fs-eap.html
- zuccs 9y agoExcept Dropbox's Smart Sync has been available for a year already.
- StanAngeloff 9y agoI wonder if axing public folders was partially done because of the, at the time, upcoming Dropbox Professional? If you could share an interactive HTML mockup as part of the free service, there is little incentive to pay extra for a professional service.
- varenc 9y agoI don't think the decision to remove the public folder had anything to do with making money. I think it was getting very little use by new users and it complicated the product. And these days you can use a Dropbox API app to get something just as good and in some ways better than the public folder. Check out https://www.site44.com/ https://www.site44.com/ It has no problem linking to free Dropbox accounts. (though it is a paid service...)
- zapt02 9y agoI disagree. They haven't publicly touted the feature for years but there are millions of files that are now dead and no longer accessible because they couldn't be arsed to keep minimal infrastructure in place to support it.
- varenc 9y agoPublic folders for legacy users were supported for several years after new users stopped getting the feature. The actual number of people still accessing public links after those years was quite low... But yea, it certainly sucks to have to remove functionality, especially from such long time and loyal users. I just want to make the argument that this wasn't done to somehow trick people into upgrading their plans, but with the goal of creating a better product (which sometimes means a simpler product). edit: For a timeline breakdown...accounts created after late 2012 stopped getting public folders. Public folders for legacy users kept working until March of this year. That's ~4.5 years of support for a feature only accessible to legacy accounts. They certainly did not foresee Dropbox Professional when they made the decision to stop creating more public folders. https://www.dropbox.com/help/files-folders/public-folder https://www.dropbox.com/help/files-folders/public-folder
- post_break 9y agoMore features leaving Dropbox paid plans. I don't get it. Public folder, the photos thing, now shared link controls are gone. I'm done with dropbox.
- post_break 9y agoIf you need to, here is how you cancel your dropbox account... they don't make it easy to find. www.dropbox.com/downgrade
- varenc 9y agoErrr, I don't get this reaction. If you were already a Dropbox customer, you haven't lost a single feature, right?
- dordoka 9y agoThey quietly removed shared link controls from Plus accounts (previously Pro accounts). Apparently customers already in Plus will keep that granfathered, but new customers won't. That's a feature lost, as if you decide to cancel and comeback, you won't get it back unless you upgrade. They have also negated selective sync to Plus customers, ignoring hundreds of comments on their forum.
- varenc 9y agoThe point still stands that if you have an account, and Dropbox was worth it yesterday, it's worth it today. Would be nice to get Smart Sync, but there's nothing you lost to make Dropbox less valuable then it was yesterday. (unless you were expecting your existing account to get Smart Sync soon?) (also note that selective sync != smart sync)
- zapt02 9y agoAs a paying Dropbox subscriber for many years, all I see is Dropbox removing features (like public folders) or making existing features worse (current situation of search is insanely bad). I for one am looking at alternatives now.
- dordoka 9y agoApparently they now have problems too. Getting HTTP 500 errors everywhere...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sigsergv 9y agoI've switched to resilio sync already. It works perfectly even on rapidly changing files.
- bad_user 9y agoI'm a long time Dropbox user, paying €14 per month (including the extended version history and taxes). If I upgrade to Pro to try it out and then downgrade to Plus, I'll probably lose the "shared link controls" feature. To take a feature out of a current plan in order to convince people to jump on your new plan — that's a pretty shitty thing to do for any company. Also €14 is already above the threshold that I'm willing to pay as a professional and yes, I rely on Dropbox to keep my data safe and for sharing stuff with others. But I've been doing it in the hope that Dropbox will include features that I need and I've been glad to support them. Features like online full-text indexing are missing from Plus and I need that, because I'm searching for documents on my mobile phone too. And I've been putting up with it hoping that it will eventually be included. And now they want me to pay €20 for that, not including the extended versioning? I'm also a FastMail user, paying around €4 for email. So that would be a €24 per month for file storage, plus email, forgoing the extended version history, going out of my own pocket. Well, Google's GSuite for Business is €9.52 (including taxes), which includes email and unlimited storage (they say 1TB for under 5 users, but truth is they aren't capping your account until you abuse it). And on last year's Black Friday I saw Office 365 Family offers for €4 / month. Now I understand that Dropbox has the best sync engine. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now — and I might try the Pro plan this month. But if that Smart Sync feature doesn't do wonders for me, I'm switching, sorry. Also Smart Sync is not available for Linux. Again, I've been putting up with their big price because I care about Linux. Not seeing the Linux client evolving however makes me wonder about their long term support and seriously, if they ever drop Linux support, I'll drop them like a hot potato.