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Ask HN: Best Alternative to Dropbox?

5 points by benrapscallion 5y ago

Since Dropbox was launched on HN (in a way), it is only appropriate that I ask for alternatives to it here. I have been a paying subcriber for many years now but of late with their own app on Mac, they seem to have made many anti-user, pro-company-revenue, dark-patterns decisions (e.g., if I choose for some folders to be "local" I then see that all its subfolders are still cloud-only) that have sent me searching for another viable alternative, especially one that will allow an easy import from Dropbox.

mardiyah 5y ago
Mega cloud
mgh2 5y ago
Yeah Dropbox turned greedy by not standing out among competitors. Even OneDrive or Google Drive (free) are good alternatives
camb416 5y ago
[Syncthing](https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/) is the free version that doesn’t need a subscription. People on here seem to swear by it, I haven’t gotten around to ripping the bandaid of migrating to it yet though.
rPlayer6554 5y ago
I hate that even though I paid for the service, the web version still has a banner ad asking me to upgrade. It's so stupid that the "share" button on mobile goes to dropbox's own share and "export" (Android's share and what I usually want) is buried deep in a menu. Also photos, the whole reason I got dropbox (to switch away from Google photos) is a terrible experience. The web photos page is awful, you can't see albums made on mobile and it's slow. Also I have a bug I can't fix where on desktop if photos are downloaded for offline, the thumbnails disappear. It's frustrating that so many developers have taken such a strong mobile-first approach to the detriment of the desktop; especially something like Dropbox.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- benrapscallion 5y ago
  I share all these grievances. I hope Drew Houston is reading this.
vr46 5y ago
Mega, OneDrive
runjake 5y ago
Syncthing or the open source Maestral client for Dropbox that makes Dropbox just a synced folder again. Both are pretty robust in my experience. https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net https://maestral.app https://maestral.app
zingplex 5y ago
For a Linux user, you can replicate Dropbox trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.