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Single plan at $795/year? Yikes. Dropbox is the absolutely easiest cloud storage service out there, that's certain, and I'm sure many people will find this a f

Single plan at $795/year? Yikes. Dropbox is the absolutely easiest cloud storage service out there, that's certain, and I'm sure many people will find this a fair package with a fair price. But I suspect most teams of up to 5 people will find this price way above the opportunity cost of setting up and getting used to a different cloud storage service. It bears repeating: I'm not saying it's a bad package, and it would be foolish of me to assume that the market will perceive this price the way I did. But I do think they should have started offering something simpler and cheaper, and worked their way up to plans like the one they just launched.

TomOfTTB 15y ago
It's cheaper than their nearest competitor in the space: http://www.box.net/pricing/ http://www.box.net/pricing/
- wildster 15y ago
  Jungledisk is much much cheaper. https://www.jungledisk.com/business/ https://www.jungledisk.com/business/
  - isnotchicago 15y ago
    200GB x 5 users (what Dropbox gives you) would cost $1950 per year on Jungledisk ($4 + 190gb*$0.15 per user). In practice, Jungledisk could be much cheaper since you only pay for what you use on Jungledisk. But you would have to do the math for your teams expected usage.
- rufibarbatus 15y ago
  Google Docs offers ca. 1 GB for free, and sells storage upgrades of 20 GB at 5 USD/year. That means prices match at about 3 TB. So on the one hand, you have DropBox with unlimited storage and a limited, upgradeable number of users. On the other hand, you have Google, with limited, upgradable storage, and unlimited users. If only Google's storage was a bit more usable. (Also, I have a hunch an AWS-based solution may be cheaper depending on some other variables.) Like I said, the problem is not so much the package and price as it's the fact that it's the only package they're offering right now. I see very few use cases in practice for unlimited storage and limited users. EDIT: s/unlimited storage/200 GB per user/ where applicable
ajross 15y ago
I'm part of a small team using Dropbox right now and yeah, this was a killer. We're living inside the 2G free limit at the moment, waiting vaguely on expense approval. It's not even the amount, it's that it lives right between the "just do it" level (e.g. $30/mo on someone's credit card for EC2 hosting) and "management-visible priority" ($4k for development boards). It's simultaneously too much for me to do on a whim and not enough for my superiors to care. Drop it to $35 and bill it monthly and we'd buy it in an instant.
kcurtin 15y ago
I wonder if making it monthly instead of yearly would reduce some of that sticker shot. Also, it would probably be easier for small teams to signup because they wouldn't have to scrape together as much cash up front.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
Don't think of it as $795/year. Think of it as $13.25 per user per month. And it comes with 200GB per user and the unlimited version history feature turned on, so this is actually cheaper than five 100GB personal pro accounts ($19.99 per user per month) and it comes with twice the storage and the Teams features! A bargain! The only remaining question is why Dropbox presents the data as they do. Perhaps they did some A/B testing? My hypothesis would be that individuals and companies simply think of prices in different units. I predict that the discussion here on HN will bear this out: Someone will complain about $795/year but be happy to pay $13.25 per month. ;)
- nobody314 15y ago
  So what's the difference in me just buying a single 50Gb $99/year account with a shared team@whatever email address and have all the team login to it?
  - mikeklaas 15y ago
    950GB, for starters
    - BrandonM 15y ago
      This is inaccurate, isn't it? The whole point of working in teams is to share files. Any file that is being shared with everyone is being counted against everyone's space. At least that's my understanding of how Dropbox works based on sharing a few folders with friends on free accounts.
      - nobody314 15y ago
        Yes we initially did that, bought a 50gb account and shared that folder with everyone, but it counts against their free 2Gb shares - so everyone needs their own 50Gb plan
  - T-hawk 15y ago
    One limitation of non-team accounts is that you can't easily run multiple accounts on one machine. (It's possible with some hackery involving multiple OS user accounts.) I would hope that Dropbox for Teams makes it easy to run the team account in parallel with a personal Dropbox account.

TomOfTTB 15y ago

It's cheaper than their nearest competitor in the space: http://www.box.net/pricing/ http://www.box.net/pricing/

wildster 15y ago
Jungledisk is much much cheaper. https://www.jungledisk.com/business/ https://www.jungledisk.com/business/
- isnotchicago 15y ago
  200GB x 5 users (what Dropbox gives you) would cost $1950 per year on Jungledisk ($4 + 190gb*$0.15 per user). In practice, Jungledisk could be much cheaper since you only pay for what you use on Jungledisk. But you would have to do the math for your teams expected usage.
rufibarbatus 15y ago
Google Docs offers ca. 1 GB for free, and sells storage upgrades of 20 GB at 5 USD/year. That means prices match at about 3 TB. So on the one hand, you have DropBox with unlimited storage and a limited, upgradeable number of users. On the other hand, you have Google, with limited, upgradable storage, and unlimited users. If only Google's storage was a bit more usable. (Also, I have a hunch an AWS-based solution may be cheaper depending on some other variables.) Like I said, the problem is not so much the package and price as it's the fact that it's the only package they're offering right now. I see very few use cases in practice for unlimited storage and limited users. EDIT: s/unlimited storage/200 GB per user/ where applicable

ajross 15y ago

I'm part of a small team using Dropbox right now and yeah, this was a killer. We're living inside the 2G free limit at the moment, waiting vaguely on expense approval. It's not even the amount, it's that it lives right between the "just do it" level (e.g. $30/mo on someone's credit card for EC2 hosting) and "management-visible priority" ($4k for development boards). It's simultaneously too much for me to do on a whim and not enough for my superiors to care. Drop it to $35 and bill it monthly and we'd buy it in an instant.

kcurtin 15y ago

I wonder if making it monthly instead of yearly would reduce some of that sticker shot. Also, it would probably be easier for small teams to signup because they wouldn't have to scrape together as much cash up front.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

Don't think of it as $795/year. Think of it as $13.25 per user per month. And it comes with 200GB per user and the unlimited version history feature turned on, so this is actually cheaper than five 100GB personal pro accounts ($19.99 per user per month) and it comes with twice the storage and the Teams features! A bargain! The only remaining question is why Dropbox presents the data as they do. Perhaps they did some A/B testing? My hypothesis would be that individuals and companies simply think of prices in different units. I predict that the discussion here on HN will bear this out: Someone will complain about $795/year but be happy to pay $13.25 per month. ;)

nobody314 15y ago
So what's the difference in me just buying a single 50Gb $99/year account with a shared team@whatever email address and have all the team login to it?
- mikeklaas 15y ago
  950GB, for starters
  - BrandonM 15y ago
    This is inaccurate, isn't it? The whole point of working in teams is to share files. Any file that is being shared with everyone is being counted against everyone's space. At least that's my understanding of how Dropbox works based on sharing a few folders with friends on free accounts.
    - nobody314 15y ago
      Yes we initially did that, bought a 50gb account and shared that folder with everyone, but it counts against their free 2Gb shares - so everyone needs their own 50Gb plan
- T-hawk 15y ago
  One limitation of non-team accounts is that you can't easily run multiple accounts on one machine. (It's possible with some hackery involving multiple OS user accounts.) I would hope that Dropbox for Teams makes it easy to run the team account in parallel with a personal Dropbox account.