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Free Dropbox Accounts Now Only Sync to Three Devices
- eugeniub 7y agoThis started 2 months ago. I deleted Dropbox.
- rangibaby 7y agoI have a paid account and for awhile it kept nagging me to upgrade to a new and more expensive account tier and even added a nag to the right click context menu. I guess someone important complained, because things are mostly back to normal now
- woutr_be 7y agoI had Dropbox installed on all my devices, but wasn't really actively using it, that was until it kept asking me to upgrade to a paid account, that's when I moved all my files to iCloud and deleted my Dropbox account. Since I only use Apple products, I don't really have to worry about cross OS compatibility.
- damnyou 7y agoYou may still want to worry about platform lock-in, if only for the option value of being able to leave when Apple inevitably makes a decision you disagree with.
- judge2020 7y agoFiles, other than backups and app data that's only useful for the actual devices, are pretty service-agnostic. All you need to do is to copy over everything to another service and you're up and running.
- woutr_be 7y agoIt's in the back of my head, when I feel the need to switch, I can easily copy all my files over. So not really worried about being locked-in with Apple.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoNo matter what decision Apple makes, it'll likely never be so bad I switch to Windows, Linux, or Android. Married to the ecosystem for better or worse.
- copperx 7y agoI sometimes worry about becoming unemployed and then having my main machine die on me. I wouldn't be able to pay top dollar for an Apple machine. Using commodity hardware gives me peace of mind regarding this scenario, unlikely as it sounds.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- skinnymuch 7y agoYep I’m married to the ecosystem as well, but if my main MacBook from early 2015 breaks in the next few months while not being employed, I’m not sure what I’d do. I mean I know I’d probably use my family’s older 2011 MacBook until I get a new MacBook later on. But if that MacBook isn’t available, I might have to switch.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sidcool 7y agoSo you deleted the free service you were using when the service provided decided to charge for it?
- scarface74 7y agoOh well. Instead of paying $10/month for a terabyte with Dropbox, I can pay $10 for: - Office 365 with Word, PowerPoint, Excel for 6 users each with a terabyte of storage. - iCloud with 2 terabyte that I can use to back up all of my devices. Or I can get Amazon Cloud Storage up to 1TB for $60 a year. EDIT: Corrected iCloud and OneDrive storage.
- nafizh 7y agoThat sounds good value for money. But the Dropbox syncing experience is unparalleled for me. For that alone, 10$ is worth it.
- PascLeRasc 7y agoNot to mention a native Linux client, that's huge for me.
- Arbalest 7y agoAs long as you only use Ext4
- Benjamin_Dobell 7y agoA few years ago I would have agreed. However, when Dropbox started telling me which file systems I could use (not even consistent across OS), then Dropbox just became another dumb syncing service. The main killer of course being that they dropped support for exFAT, so there's zero way to use Dropbox on a drive shared between OS. That sounds a bit niche, but it basically means Dropbox can't be used on external storage. Don't get me wrong, exFAT is dated. However, the supported file systems vary between OS, so you can't even use Tuxera (or FUSE) NTFS on Mac. There's a lot of complaints about this on the Dropbox forums; so they know, they just don't care. So that's a black mark both technically and for customer support.
- awill 7y agoI quit dropbox when they dropped support for xfs on linux. I've been pretty happy with Google Drive with insync Linux client.
- nitemice 7y agoIt's worth noting that only devices (PCs, mobiles) using the official Dropbox app count as devices. I've never used the official app to connect to Dropbox, so now I guess I never will.
- nextlevelwizard 7y agoHow do you sync files? Do you just manually upload them throw browser and download them from another?
- copperx 7y agoIt seems like the OP doesn't use Dropbox's killer feature, which is seamless and faster syncing than anything else out there. I don't see the point then of using Dropbox exclusively in such fashion. All cloud storage services used like that are interchangeable.
- nitemice 7y agoFair and true. I've always been a bit scattered across multiple cloud service, for various reasons, so I opted to use software that could sync with multiple and avoid installing so many clients. That said, Dropbox's other maybe-not-quite "killer feature" is that it's exclusively intergrated into a number of applications for settings and data backup/syncing. In those cases, Dropbox's purpose is interchangable, but in practice it's not.
- thirdsun 7y agoJust like OP I'm a paying Dropbox customer that doesn't use the official client. I mainly use it to backup my 600 Gb and counting music library via Arq [1]. There's no way I'd store something as critical as my music collection in the default Dropbox sync folder. Plus, I only need a one way sync that preferably happens at night. So I have no need for the official client. I know there are dedicated backup services like Backblaze, however occasionally I also need to share a large file or two with someone or need to offer a public download. It's often enough that I don't want to use wetransfer or similar services. Even more often I need a service that syncs data and settings of various iOS apps. While iCloud is fine, Dropbox is widely supported on iOS. I basically need a general purpose web storage and Dropbox seems to be the only one that handles all these use cases fine. [1] https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/
- huxflux 7y agoSo glad I left Dropbox after they got hacked.
- cfallin 7y agoFor anyone looking for an open-source self-hosted alternative: I've been really happy with Syncthing [0]. It's as invisible as Dropbox once set up. It supports arbitrary topologies (two peer machines syncing, one central always-on machine and lots of clients, etc.); with a VM in the cloud it can closely emulate Dropbox (sans web-based file browser), but it will also support e.g. just a desktop at home and a laptop that syncs when it's on the LAN. Pretty useful! [0] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
- tryptophan 7y agoIn my experience, syncthing works as advertised, however the UI is a bit of a mess(as many open source projects have). Especially the android app. The status of what the program is doing at the moment is not communicated very well. The refresh rate for status updates seems to be very low, and so you have connection status being disconnected, then jumps to connected after a few seconds of frustration("why isn't it connecting!!"). Then it sits there at 0% ("whats wrong!), and jumps to 64% after a few seconds, then 99%. Then sits there("is something wrong?"). Eventually it finishes and everything is fine("yay it worked!"). Love the project. Hope they get UI experience down though, as it is the main thing holding it back in my opinion.
- shaan7 7y agoTry Nextcloud, the UI is quite good (both the website and the app).
- JamesAdir 7y ago+1 for Nextcloud. The last versions are stable, well designed and really easy to install and maintain.
- distances 7y ago> +1 for Nextcloud. The last versions are stable, well designed and really easy to install and maintain. I agree on all but the last part. They only provide step-by-step upgrades, so when I finally realize it's time to upgrade I'm so far behind that it's much easier to nuke the instance and start from scratch than do the ten upgrades one by one. I'm sure this isn't a problem for more diligent maintainers though.
- herpderperator 7y agoI have been using a self-hosted Seafile[0] instance since 2014 hosted on my Linux server. It's written in Python[1]. I have never had an issue with it. I sync to my desktops, laptops, phones, etc. It works on all major platforms. It has an online browser just like Dropbox too, supports link sharing, WebDAV, etc. Its server-side storage is based on git[2]. I was really impressed with all the upgrades throughout the years. The upgrade scripts that come with their installations which I run on my Linux box are clearly labelled (e.g. 5.1_to_5.2.sh) and run successfully without giving me random obscure messages that you might sometimes expect. I recommend people check it out to see if it could work for you. The only downside really is that since it's git-based storage, you can't just specify "this is the directory I want to serve", rather you have to upload everything via Seafile and it will write it out in its git filesystem (which means it's duplicated if you already have a copy on your filesystem.) This is in contrast to OwnCloud[3] I think, which will let you access/serve remote files from their original location. [0] https://www.seafile.com/en/download/ https://www.seafile.com/en/download/ [1] https://github.com/haiwen/seafile https://github.com/haiwen/seafile [2] https://manual.seafile.com/develop/data_model.html https://manual.seafile.com/develop/data_model.html [3] https://owncloud.org/ https://owncloud.org/
- eemil 7y agoAgreed. BTW, parts of the server are actually written in C. Best thing about Seafile is its syncing performance. Worlds better than owncloud/pydio, and it doesn't choke on large directories.
- paxys 7y agoWhat's the point of having a freemium model if people can't actually use your service as intended to see what benefits a full version will provide? If I'm trying to open a file on my phone and the app won't let me log in, my reaction isn't going to be "guess I should pay to upgrade" but rather to hit uninstall.
- awill 7y agothey did what many other companies do. Use the freemium model to gain users and publicity, then try to reduce costs and convert free users to premium by destroying the free tier.
- scarface74 7y agoThey actually have to make money now instead of depending on VC funding.
- Johnny555 7y agoThe flip side is, what's the point of a freemium model if the free product gives most users what they want, so they have no incentive to ever pay to upgrade? I've been a dropbox user for years and haven't paid them a penny since the free product does everything I need it to.
- pjmlp 7y agoAs expected, the large majority of comments, on a site dedicated to starting up a business, are how to use free alternatives or stop using it altogether.
- function_seven 7y agoYou imply some sort of contradiction. 1. Businesses also want to minimize expenses. 2. Hacker News, despite its host, is not dedicated to starting up businesses. It has a broader range than that.
- threezero 7y agoA lot of things related to hacking (like phreaking) are about getting things for free, so it seems like it’s in the spirit of the name of the site, at least.
- WilliamEdward 7y agoDropbox is no longer a startup. I think they'll be just fine without the support of a niche internet circle.
- pjmlp 7y agoSure they will be just fine, my point was about how so many are eager to get paid, yet vocal to pay for the work of others.
- asdf21 7y agoIt is ironic, you're right. But we all know Dropbox was never really respected by the userbase here, beyond being a magical money making endeavor. All the initial comments were about how Dropbox simply repackaged the abilities of free built-in linux tools.
- pjmlp 7y agoSurely Dropbox wouldn't have been a sucessful business if it was more than just a repackaging of built-in UNIX tools.
- kristianp 7y agoPrevious discussion 65 days ago, 52 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362778
- valleyjo 7y agoWell... I guess they have to try to make money somehow
- gopher2 7y agoI would be curious to learn/hear some of the backstory on how they picked 3, since where to draw the line with freemium seems like it's hard to get right.
- boulos 7y agoIf I had to guess: Computer, Tablet, Phone.
- ohyeshedid 7y agoMy guess would be: Desktop, Laptop, Phone.
- asdff 7y agoForce nuclear family unit into pricier plan. I know a lot of people that use dropbox for family photos, and after events and gatherings pass links to people to view or add their own photos from these events.
- indigodaddy 7y agoWhat about BitTorrent Sync? Is that still a thing, and didn't do Dropboxy type things?
- rtomanek 7y agoI use it to sync my multiple android devices, home laptop and two servers. Quite happy with it.
- alpaca128 7y agoI don't remember details but the last time I tried it the program didn't work reliably enough for me. Nowadays there's Syncthing which does the same thing but better.
- danieldk 7y agoIt is not the same thing. SyncThing's model of having to add every host to every other host (possibly with introducer nodes) is much more complex. With Bittorrent/Resilio Sync, you can just give someone else a read-only or read-write key for a folder, and they become part of the swarm. Also, Resilio Sync supports encrypted-only nodes, which participate in the swarm by providing bandwidth, but only see ciphertext. This makes it possible to use e.g. an untrusted VPS as an always-available node. Unfortunately, Resilio had to ruin it with complex enterprice-y license schemes.
- danieldk 7y agoIt is now called Resilio Sync and it still works fine. Unfortunately, they have focused more on enterprise customers and now have more enterprise pricing.
- goerz 7y agoI’ve been evaluating Resilio Sync as an alternative to Dropbox these past few weeks. The main problem I’ve come across is the extreme amount of RAM this program needs. Their website says they require 2kB RAM for every indexed file, which is insane. I’d wanted to run this on a Raspberry Pi, but it doesn’t fit in the Raspberry’s 1GB of memory
- Cyclone_ 7y agoWonder how much of this is related to them being public now. It's still useful for me with only 3 devices so I wouldn't be ready to start paying them though.
- MAGZine 7y agoI just ran into this because I use Dropbox sync with 1Password. My 1Password standalone license is now limited to three connected devices as a result. Very disappointing. Can't say I'll be giving dropbox my business.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TheChaplain 7y agoUh, you didn't give them your business earlier either, because you were using the free tier?
- MAGZine 7y agoWhy would I give them my business now, after being kicked off? If I'm going to pay for a service, I'd sooner pay for Google Drive.
- nicky0 7y ago"As a result of this decision, I will continue to not pay for this thing that I have never paid for"
- goerz 7y agoAs a result of this decision, I will no longer consider doing business with Dropbox in the future, and I will steer colleagues and students away from using Dropbox
- pdimitar 7y agoOne could easily argue they would never become paying customers anyway, though.
- goerz 7y agoWhy wouldn’t they? They have in the past. I myself would have considered upgrading to a paid account if I’d needed more space then what I got from referrals. Now, I’ll stay away from them out of sheer spite for being treated in such a backhanded way.
- nextlevelwizard 7y agoHow many people have more than 3 devices to sync between anyways? I bet normal use case is to sync between desktop, laptop, and phone. And I'm sure now some people will comment how they use Dropbox to sync stuff to their whole extended family for some obscure reason and that is fine. Then the free version is just not for you. For me it seems to still work like it used to.
- michaelmrose 7y agoYou being technically apt would probably set up distinct accounts for say yourself and a spouse and share between if relevant but family accounts are incredibly common for average people. The average immediate not extended family size is 4. Also please note that setting a distinct device limit of 3 is only an effective and useful change if and only if it effects a significant number of users and pushes a significant number to paid accounts.
- nextlevelwizard 7y agoIf you are miss using service then you accept the consequences, which in this case is paying for it.
- michaelmrose 7y agoI don't think we disagree that they can charge whatever they like. I think we disagree that having 4+ devices attached to an account is uncommon. I suspect that its actually the common case like a netflix or hulu account.
- nextlevelwizard 7y agoStreaming services are completely different they contain no personal information.
- sidcool 7y agoYours is a fair argument, but you are being downvoted for a contrarian view. I too have two devices I ideally have to sync between. Also, why do we expect corporations to dole out free goodies for everyone? Dropbox has a good product, they should be able to charge for it.
- mtzet 7y agoThis really happened a couple of months ago, and really sucks. There aren't that many alternatives to Dropbox if you require both Windows, Mac and Linux client support. I ended up settling on Nextcloud (ownCloud fork) hosted by Hetzner[1]. So far it's pretty good. Photo sync works from Phone works perfectly, and the desktop apps are decent enough. I did get bitten by a recursive folder-sync bug [2], which is certainly not of Dropbox quality but at least pull-requests are welcome. [1] https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud [2] https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/1000 https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/1000
- josteink 7y agoLinux support is already effectively dropped if you use anything beside ext4, so it’s no longer the reliable cross-platform champion it used to be. They’ve certainly lost my goodwill. What a shame.
- Uninen 7y agoI switched to Nextcloud about a year ago and I've been very happy. Firstly, I now have as much disk I need, and secondly, the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know your files are now in your own control :)
- aerique 7y agoThere's pCloud[1] as well. I've been using it for a couple of years now after Dropbox → Google Drive → Seafile. (And maybe another one I forgot.) They're not perfect but definitely good enough. They reeled me in with a lifetime subscription when I was contemplating buying a NAS for home. Where I've run into syncing issues with them is working in a project directory with Git on Linux and Windows (using Git Bash). The latter (I think) caused syncing issues. Anyway, it's a bit niche and one isn't supposed to do this anyway. Still Dropbox and Seafile seemed to handle this fine. [1] https://pcloud.com/ https://pcloud.com/
- JackPoach 7y agoBitrix24 is another decent Dropbox alternative for group accounts. Available both on-premise and in cloud - https://www.bitrix24.com/features/docs.php https://www.bitrix24.com/features/docs.php
- josteink 7y agoAll the previous noise about explicitly disabling itself on ZFS (non ext4-filesystems) on Linux made me kind of disenfranchised with Dropbox. It’s no longer the universal solution it used to be. That was it’s one unique selling point its competitors didn’t have. Good job ruining it! If my next phone is an Android, I’ll probably move everything to syncthing and call it a day.
- paxys 7y agoAre there any open-source file syncing apps out there that you can point to your own AWS account? Sure you are still dependent on another service, but S3 costs are negligible compared to Dropbox or others.
- neurostimulant 7y agoNextCloud supports S3 as primary data storage. https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/13/admin_manual/configuration_files/primary_storage.html https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/13/admin_manual/configurat...
- eemil 7y agoSeafile's paid version support S3 backend storage and is free for 3 users.
- needle0 7y agoFeeling some deja vu, as it's quite similar to what Evernote did (also equally feeling like shooting themselves in the foot in regards to user goodwill). Well, at least I already have a crapton of devices synced and they didn't retroactively disable it like Evernote did.
- teekert 7y agoSo, you set up Nextcloud in snap a [0] on some home computer or server and then leave it like that... or, if you must, point Dropbox to the the same folder on said pc/server (remember to use Ext4 people, ugh) and group clients like that. But at this point, I'd be looking for alternatives. [0] https://snapcraft.io/nextcloud https://snapcraft.io/nextcloud
- bane 7y agoI'm weirdly fine with this. I've noticed over the years that I'm using dropbox less and less as competitors have sliced up the file-syncing and sharing problem in different ways. For example, one of the things I used to use DB for was to make sure documents or other media were available on all my devices. Now I just host them with an ebook server or plex or whatever. Lots of my office document needs are covered with Google drive or Office 365. My work uses OneDrive extensively and it integrates really well across devices and the web for on-line editing. Dropbox never really had a better use-case than syncing and missed the boat on using the easy u/l mechanism for various kinds of sharing/social activities. I'm more or less considering moving to OneDrive for home use as well even if the sync isn't quite as good because it works better than DB across almost all other parameters. Also nobody here's mentioned Amazon Drive which I find interesting.
- cozzyd 7y ago"Fortunately" they also dropped support for XFS so I can't even use on my work computer anymore...
- BrandoElFollito 7y agoI moved to seafile. Excellent alternative covering all dropbox features.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoThis is what happens when a great company/product decides they want to squeeze money out of their customers. I saw this happen with Evernote. It's starting to happen with Dropbox. I wish there were a company really focused on the long term, and that cared about customers more than bottom line. Dropbox / Evernote competitors: please, show up.
- segmondy 7y agoIt's free. FREE. Free costs money. Give me a break. I use Dropbox & Evernote free tier. I can't complain about the limits, either I pay up or shut up and use it or find an alternative.
- goerz 7y agoThe problem isn't having limits on the free tier. The problem is changing the services for existing accounts (free or otherwise), in this case to completely cripple free accounts. I wouldn't even complain if they only applied the 3-device restriction to new free accounts