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Dropbox lost me permanently as a potential customer with their greed and disregard for user experience. Constant nagging if you're at ~80% your free limit and t

Dropbox lost me permanently as a potential customer with their greed and disregard for user experience. Constant nagging if you're at ~80% your free limit and the more recent draconian device limits for two examples. I hope they fail.

djitz 6y ago
Well, I don’t hope they fail, but I will not be renewing my subscription this year. I’ve been onboard since they announced paid plans and.. it’s just more of an annoyance than it is unique or useful for me.
dralley 6y ago
I get what you're saying but "greed" is not the way I would put it. Look at their financials, 2020 is the first year in their history in which they will have been profitable at all. I think as consumers we're starting to get totally unrealistic expectations about what kinds of services small companies (ie. not behemouths like Google, Microsoft, Apple) should be able to provide to everyone for free. With that said, yeah, not a fan of their changes. I stopped using Dropbox a while ago.
- perlgeek 6y ago
  Dropbox is also to blame for user's expectations, because they did offer more in the past, for free.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > 2020 is the first year in their history in which they will have been profitable at all. That's because they are absolutely bloated company given the relatively simple service they provide. In 2019, they employed 2300 people.
  - tornato7 6y ago
    Yep, Dropbox created a nifty file sharing tool that a handful of devs should be able to support, but instead of keeping the team small they decided to go all "Big Enterprise Saas IPO" on us.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > I think as consumers we're starting to get totally unrealistic expectations about what kinds of services small companies (ie. not behemouths like Google, Microsoft, Apple) should be able to provide to everyone for free. The number of consumer services the average consumer actually pays for is very small. Video services like Hulu and Netflix are the primary exception, but they benefitted greatly from being compared to $100+ cable TV packages. It's easy to get people to transition from an expensive thing to a cheaper option. It's much more difficult to get people to switch from a free service to a paid service. YouTube is a good example of a platform that provides huge value and endless hours of video content to people, but selling people on the paid version of YouTube is a difficult battle. The outrage over the mere existence of YouTube premium on casual social sites like Reddit should be downright scary for anyone considering a Freemium service. Dropbox gambled that the average consumer would outgrow their 10GB free account as they took more photos and videos with cell phones. That gamble was correct, but of course other providers swooped in to offer better targeted plans. I'll take $3/month iCloud with transparent integration over $10/month Dropbox with a separate app. Dropbox business angle is promising, but again it's much easier for companies like Google and Microsoft to add storage plans to their existing office suites than it is for Dropbox to add office suites to their existing storage plans. As a techie, I wish Dropbox had stayed as a small $3/month for 100GB offering that did file sharing very well and nothing else. The latest apps get in the way more than they help, and I cancelled my paid plan because the core set of files I want to keep Dropbox-accessible is under 10GB. Bigger files go to other free services on an as-needed basis.
  - isignal 6y ago
    They could’ve stayed small if they hadn’t taken VC money and hired hundreds of engineers in downtown SF.
tachyonbeam 6y ago
It annoys me that they're adding features I don't need, reducing usability and increasing the cost. I wish there was a competent alternative that was just a plain cloud storage service (and worked well on both Mac and Linux).
mdoms 6y ago
The absolute audacity of free tier customers lol. You were a liability on their balance sheet.
- trevor-e 6y ago
  Yea, I'd understand the frustration if OP was paying for the service, but this reeks of entitlement. If you are a free user don't be mad when the company tries to convert you to a paid user. A better example is how pushy Apple is with upselling their iCloud plans. I opened my laptop the other day and it auto-opened the iCloud settings app with the more expensive plan pre-checked.
  - jimmaswell 6y ago
    Dropbox makes constant notifications on your desktop about upgrading alongside emails. I'd have considered paying for them if they weren't like this but now I never will. Maybe they'd have an easier time being profitable if they didn't push away all their long term users.
    - sushid 6y ago
      Are you suggesting that Dropbox could better monetize their free tier users by trying to not monetize them?
      - jimmaswell 6y ago
        There's a middle ground between aggressive nagging/spam/a sudden 3 device limit (not even at the same time, total) and no attempt to monetize.
nickm12 6y ago
Was there a possibility that you would ever gbe an actual customer and not just a potential one?
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  Yes, I would've considered it if they hadn't been so obnoxious to me.
- bombcar 6y ago
  Partner with Netflix. Offer Dropbox mini+Netflix for $1/mo more than Netflix. Offer upgrades.

djitz 6y ago

Well, I don’t hope they fail, but I will not be renewing my subscription this year. I’ve been onboard since they announced paid plans and.. it’s just more of an annoyance than it is unique or useful for me.

dralley 6y ago

I get what you're saying but "greed" is not the way I would put it. Look at their financials, 2020 is the first year in their history in which they will have been profitable at all. I think as consumers we're starting to get totally unrealistic expectations about what kinds of services small companies (ie. not behemouths like Google, Microsoft, Apple) should be able to provide to everyone for free. With that said, yeah, not a fan of their changes. I stopped using Dropbox a while ago.

perlgeek 6y ago
Dropbox is also to blame for user's expectations, because they did offer more in the past, for free.
The_Colonel 6y ago
> 2020 is the first year in their history in which they will have been profitable at all. That's because they are absolutely bloated company given the relatively simple service they provide. In 2019, they employed 2300 people.
- tornato7 6y ago
  Yep, Dropbox created a nifty file sharing tool that a handful of devs should be able to support, but instead of keeping the team small they decided to go all "Big Enterprise Saas IPO" on us.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> I think as consumers we're starting to get totally unrealistic expectations about what kinds of services small companies (ie. not behemouths like Google, Microsoft, Apple) should be able to provide to everyone for free. The number of consumer services the average consumer actually pays for is very small. Video services like Hulu and Netflix are the primary exception, but they benefitted greatly from being compared to $100+ cable TV packages. It's easy to get people to transition from an expensive thing to a cheaper option. It's much more difficult to get people to switch from a free service to a paid service. YouTube is a good example of a platform that provides huge value and endless hours of video content to people, but selling people on the paid version of YouTube is a difficult battle. The outrage over the mere existence of YouTube premium on casual social sites like Reddit should be downright scary for anyone considering a Freemium service. Dropbox gambled that the average consumer would outgrow their 10GB free account as they took more photos and videos with cell phones. That gamble was correct, but of course other providers swooped in to offer better targeted plans. I'll take $3/month iCloud with transparent integration over $10/month Dropbox with a separate app. Dropbox business angle is promising, but again it's much easier for companies like Google and Microsoft to add storage plans to their existing office suites than it is for Dropbox to add office suites to their existing storage plans. As a techie, I wish Dropbox had stayed as a small $3/month for 100GB offering that did file sharing very well and nothing else. The latest apps get in the way more than they help, and I cancelled my paid plan because the core set of files I want to keep Dropbox-accessible is under 10GB. Bigger files go to other free services on an as-needed basis.
- isignal 6y ago
  They could’ve stayed small if they hadn’t taken VC money and hired hundreds of engineers in downtown SF.

tachyonbeam 6y ago

It annoys me that they're adding features I don't need, reducing usability and increasing the cost. I wish there was a competent alternative that was just a plain cloud storage service (and worked well on both Mac and Linux).

mdoms 6y ago

The absolute audacity of free tier customers lol. You were a liability on their balance sheet.

trevor-e 6y ago
Yea, I'd understand the frustration if OP was paying for the service, but this reeks of entitlement. If you are a free user don't be mad when the company tries to convert you to a paid user. A better example is how pushy Apple is with upselling their iCloud plans. I opened my laptop the other day and it auto-opened the iCloud settings app with the more expensive plan pre-checked.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  Dropbox makes constant notifications on your desktop about upgrading alongside emails. I'd have considered paying for them if they weren't like this but now I never will. Maybe they'd have an easier time being profitable if they didn't push away all their long term users.
  - sushid 6y ago
    Are you suggesting that Dropbox could better monetize their free tier users by trying to not monetize them?
    - jimmaswell 6y ago
      There's a middle ground between aggressive nagging/spam/a sudden 3 device limit (not even at the same time, total) and no attempt to monetize.

nickm12 6y ago

Was there a possibility that you would ever gbe an actual customer and not just a potential one?

jimmaswell 6y ago
Yes, I would've considered it if they hadn't been so obnoxious to me.
bombcar 6y ago
Partner with Netflix. Offer Dropbox mini+Netflix for $1/mo more than Netflix. Offer upgrades.