
Dropbox for Business - seanponeil
https://www.dropboxatwork.com/2014/04/new-dropbox-business/
======
suprgeek
DropBox really shines when it comes to the capabilities of their client. I
installed Box from few months ago at work, and used it to share a few
screencasts that I was working on > 200MBs per file about 10 files. I got home
and fired up the home machine...For the next five minutes the internet
connection was jammed. Turns out you cannot do a selective sync of only
certain folders. This would be a very basic use case in my opinion but is not
supported by Box.

So, for all those whinging about the price...it is not really that bad.

~~~
ereckers
I agree that the killer feature with Dropbox is that it "just works". I jumped
on the 50GB Mac mobile app special from Box.net a few months ago and upon
trying to use their Box Sync desktop client I found that it just doesn't work.
Bogged the machine down, was never able to properly sync files. I've got 50GB
at Box.net that I don't know what to do with and I definitely wasn't moved to
the category of a prospective consumer client.

~~~
Touche
It really frustrates me that there are separate clients that do the same
thing, but talk to a different domain. If these companies cared about their
customers they would be putting together an open source spec for cloud syncing
so that we could just pick our favorite clients and tie them to the individual
accounts.

~~~
tommi
Not going to happen. Part of the reason is just what you mentioned: they care
about their customers. With various clients they would have to support the
problems coming from all of the clients and that would cause their service to
look bad even though the problem lies within client app.

~~~
Touche
You are really fluent in newspeak aren't you.

That's a crazy weak argument. I'm sure glad JPEG's aren't limited to only work
with apps created by JPEG Inc. Dropbox's new image app would be pretty
worthless if every company was as insistent about keeping things proprietary.

------
malanj
Unless they drop the price soon we're going to move away from them. It sounds
silly to argue over $15/user/month, but in comparison to Google Drive it's
just started feeling too expensive.

I really like the product, but I don't know if any product in a commoditized
space can sustain such a price premium.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
For Dropbox, it is their core business. For Google, it's a drop in their
massive bucket of cash that comes from advertising. If business reliability
matters to you, Dropbox seems comparatively better.

~~~
yid
> If business reliability matters to you, Dropbox seems comparatively better.

If you're comparing Drive to the Reader fiasco, keep in mind that Drive for
business is a paid offering.

~~~
zhoujeffrey
But so is google apps no?

~~~
yid
Yes, and google apps for business continues to exist...

------
ThomPete
Dropbox has a scaling problem.

Not from a technical point of view but from a usage point of view especially
when we talk enterprise.

Dropbox is great for small teams or personal accounts. As long as there are
very few owners of the files stored there.

The problems starts to arise when larger groups of people use it as a place to
store files. At that point it basically looses it's value namely because its
no longer possible to find what you need simply by going to dropbox.

Instead what you now have to do is to find a given person working on a given
project and then ask them where they put their files.

Dropbox will have to solve this problem either by adding some sort of history
trail or by providing a better contextual search algorithm (files that James
Jameson worked on in 2013 on project X)

From what I have seen in that area they are currently solving the wrong
problems (again from a usage point of view)

~~~
markkanof
This is just a new version of the network share that many companies have had
in place for years. The standard computer setup at a company might include for
example a T: drive where all employees are told to store their files. Usually
this was intended as a way to allow collaboration on documents, as well as IT
not having to backup individual computers. The network share will usually have
various levels of organization depending on who is working in any particular
folders. Not saying it isn't a problem that could use solving, but it's not
new to Dropbox.

~~~
ThomPete
Oh I agree completely. My point was exactly that they didn't solve this
problem and that I think it's worth solving. Otherwise it doesn't "deserve" to
be in the enterprise world IMHO.

Dropbox even have most of the necessary meta data and have the potential to
solve it via their large app install base.

------
jypepin
We used dropbox at my prior company, we are now using box. Not sure if it's
just because I'm not used to box, or if I'm biased since I use dropbox for
personal storage too, but I really wish we used dropbox instead of box. I find
the UI + integration way better on dropbox.

------
aresant
I understand that nobody likes a race towards the bottom with regard to
pricing, but IMO Dropbox is playing their pricing a little over confidently
right now given what competitors are offering.

In both the comments on HN and the original thread pricing keeps coming up.

And the response is that this is a great product and pricing is acceptable.

I don't think so.

Businesses switching costs are MUCH higher than consumer.

EG to switch a business service lots of co's have to incorporate multiple
stakeholders, decision makers, etc.

Which is why VC's pour buckets of money into proven SAAS models around
business services - because businesses stick almost no matter what!

So is DropBox's pricing scheme out of line with their potential to grown more
quickly?

In my experience from the consumer perspective I am actively seeking
alternatives to DropBox due to their current pricing.

I was an average 100GB user very happy with the product for years.

Then I had kids.

And BOOM I have a million pictures, videos, etc that are PRICELESS to me.

And now I'm on a $600/year plan for 500 GB / mo.

And Google drive is now offering 2x as much storage as that for $10/month.

So 20% of the cost for twice as much.

I gotta say it is very compelling and I can't believe that the GOOG product a
few iterations out isn't a direct comparable.

Dropbox's pricing is making this very loyal consumer unhappy, and seems like
especially WRT to handling business users they should be aggressively pricing
to own the market.

~~~
derefr
> I was an average 100GB user very happy with the product for years. Then I
> had kids. And BOOM I have a million pictures, videos, etc that are PRICELESS
> to me.

That sounds more like you need a backup service than a sync-things-
conveniently-to-all-your-computers service.

You wouldn't expect a convenience store chain to be competitive in the market
Costco operates in; they're two different kinds of business, serving two
different kinds of needs. Convenience stores can get away with charging a lot
more for e.g. soda than Costco, because Costco won't sell you exactly one
bottle of soda.

Just as well, you shouldn't expect Dropbox to be competitive in the consumer
digital archival storage market. (Though they could certainly branch out
there, it's currently just not the market they serve.)

------
joeblau
This is pretty interesting. I was just looking for executive summaries and I
just found this Box[1] example which beings with a pretty hard hitting opener.

    
    
      > Would you use your personal email account to message important customers? 
      > Would you make lengthy personal phone calls from your work phone? If not, then 
      > why would you use your personal Dropbox account to store critical business 
      > information? 
    

That being said, I've been using Dropbox since Drew dropped that hilariously
amazing deadpan intro to the product and I been loving it every since. For a
small team, I feel like the $795 price point might be a bit steep considering
how many other alternatives offer you free collaborative space, but the
integration of Dropbox is one of the best I've seen yet.

[1] -
[http://www.rochester.edu/it/box/assets/pdf/migratedropbox](http://www.rochester.edu/it/box/assets/pdf/migratedropbox)

------
shahzad_76
The Box/Dropbox comparisons here ignore the collaboration layer and its value.
Dropbox is hands down the best when you want a folder that syncs; it just
doesn't save you much time in a business context when used that way. Cloud
storage is just the first layer of value.

If you're thinking in terms of cost per gigabyte, you're missing the point for
the audience this is aimed at. If you're thinking "how can this replace email
threads" and solve business issues (like employees getting fired and files not
being migrated), that's way better as a comparison.

Seems like that depth is 1-2 years out for Dropbox and ...well, not sure for
Google Drive and their roadmap for business.

------
tnorthcutt
_give users one Dropbox for personal stuff and another for work stuff. Users
can easily access both Dropboxes from any of their devices._

Sounds awesome!

 _Minimum 5 users_

Well, phooey. This seems...arbitrary. Do they enforce this limit just to
reduce support queries from low-profit customers?

~~~
derefr
> Do they enforce this limit just to reduce support queries from low-profit
> customers?

Almost certainly. To quote patio11: "Pathological customers: they get things
for free and then ask for their money back." The more money a business has,
the more professional it can _afford_ to be (literally) in dealing with you.
If you want 80% of the money with 20% of the effort, draw a line between the
head of your profit distribution, and the long tail of pathological customers
who think they're owed support because they pay $coffee per month, and then
keep raising your rates until everyone in that long tail leaves.

Though there's also the fact that for ≤ 5 people, using your personal
Dropboxes and having a Shared Folder for your business works just fine.

~~~
tnorthcutt
I totally understand the reasoning.

Re: personal + shared folder, that starts to get a little messy when you're
sharing folders/joining shared folders with outside people. Doable, but messy.
Another option is one account for the business, with e.g. 2 people logged into
it. I do this, plus a hacky workaround to also have a personal account logged
in on my laptop.

------
smackfu
The unlimited storage is a pretty smart play. It makes it much harder to
compare this head-to-head with Google Drive.

~~~
itafroma
While they talk about "unlimited" storage, it's actually set to 1,000 GB: all
the quotas throughout the UI are set at 1,000 GB, and you have to contact them
if and when you want to go over that amount (they do mention this stipulation
on the features page[1]).

I've gotten close (~850 GB), but never over so I'm not sure if it's a "no-
questions-asked, 1,000-GB-is-just-a-sanity-check" type of conversation, or if
they start to get more hands-on and want a really good reason for going over.

[1]:
[https://www.dropbox.com/business/features](https://www.dropbox.com/business/features)

~~~
mmahemoff
I'm fairly certain they'll double it or more the minute you ask them, maybe a
couple of times before scrutinising it. Posterous had the same thing btw, with
a limit of 3 blogs, and they increased my limit in a few hours.

I've implemented the same kind of workaround, and for two reasons.

It's actually a lot easier technically. I mean DB already has a limit for free
users, so all they have to do is rev up the limit and all their clients "just
work". They don't have to add magic if-then logic to change how clients show
and enforce the limit.

Secondly, it prevents a disaster scenario where some script - either malicious
or accidental - smashes your monthly quota with 1s an 0s. Yeah you could try
to rate-limit it or something, but it's just easier to prevent the whole
scenario by changing a database column.

------
theseanstewart
Was anyone else hoping for reduced pricing? Neat features for businesses, but
with recent price drops by Amazon and Google I was expecting Dropbox to
follow.

~~~
higherpurpose
Hoping? Yes. Expected? No. Dropbox never seems to compete on price. They've
had the same pricing/storage options basically since they were founded many
years ago.

~~~
giovannibajo1
In fact, this business offering is a 44% price increase compared to the
previous Dropbox Team offer (which used to be $125/user/year), for a slightly
smaller feature set.

------
tatqx
I am a big fan of Dropbox. I have tried other cloud storage/sync providers at
various points of time and had a sour experience - Box: couldn't figure out
how to sync, SkyDrive/OneDrive: refused to sync, Google Drive: was so slow
that I tried to speed it up by copying over existing data from another machine
and it created two copies of everything! In over 3 years I haven't faced a
single problem with Dropbox.

Selling to the enterprise is a very different thing though. Quality comes way
down in their priority list. The bureaucratic strongholds in enterprises
require compromised quality at every level in order to maintain their fiefdom.
I know Dropbox needs to make more money, but maybe this is not the right
direction in which to probe?

------
btgeekboy
Does $180/user/year seem excessively high to anyone else?

~~~
diziet
As a business expense it seems like a no-brainer, especially with features
oriented around security like remote wiping, account transferring and more
detailed logs.

~~~
btgeekboy
As a business expense for a 50+ person company, that's over $9000 a year. That
doesn't seem like a no-brainer, especially when Google will give me Apps
(including Drive) for $50/year/person.

~~~
krschultz
A 50+ person company is burning >$5,000,000 on salary + benefits + office
space.

~~~
btgeekboy
Yes, but for $9000/year, I could very easily stand up a server, backups, and a
VPN to access more than 1TB of data.

------
dmourati
Sync and share is commodity. The trick is to add value and create APIs that
unlock the value of having all your data in the cloud. Right now, the whole
space is just a big land grab with many entrants and many different
strategies. My money is on Box. They have realized that the dollars are in
enterprise and that enterprise customers have a few needs around security and
control that frankly noone else can offer.

------
coreymgilmore
The chatting while editing feature is great. This is something that has been
missing versus Google Drive. The added benefit of using existing apps is very
nice since you can be working on files that Drive does not support. Will have
to take a look at this. Price wise though, it is a little high.

------
llamataboot
Hmmm, I already had two dropboxes running on my computer (one personal and one
business) using Dropbox Encore and I have my work Dropbox (much bigger than
personal Dropbox) to sync to another folder on my regular hard drive --
personal syncs to my smaller SSD. Linking my accounts (which obviates the need
for Dropbox Encore) seems to want to create a new Dropbox folder to download
all my work things and not give me a choice of where to put it AND
automatically change the name of my personal dropbox folder, which is a shame
as I have some local scripts using that run it. Any chance of an "advanced
setup" where we can pick which accounts sync where with no need to
automatically rename folders that already exist on my hard drive?

~~~
techscruggs
Seems like symlinks could solve your problem in the mean time.

~~~
llamataboot
yeah, that's how I eventually worked around it...

------
up_and_up
Why use this when there are options like bitcasa - 1TB at $10/month?

Another plus is they offer a real external drive that doesnt duplicate data.

[https://www.bitcasa.com/pricing](https://www.bitcasa.com/pricing)

Disclosure: I am a happy bitcasa customer.

~~~
yid
> Why use this when there are options like bitcasa - 1TB at $10/month?

Name brand recognition. Same reason why Tide detergent still exists when
others are around half as expensive.

~~~
diydsp
> Same reason why Tide detergent still exists when others are around half as
> expensive.

Tide does not "subsist on brand recognition".

"Tide is a perennial powerhouse in Consumer Reports' laundry detergent
Ratings." [1] (although as of 2013, other brands are catching up in quality)

[1][http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/06/wisk-
kirklan...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/06/wisk-kirkland-
give-tide-laundry-detergent-a-run-for-the-money/index.htm)

~~~
yid
Consumer Reports ratings are not double-blinded studies; I wouldn't be
surprised if there was a correlation between product price and satisfaction
ratings without blinding.

~~~
Spooky23
Exactly. They are not unbiased.

They are awful with cars. If it's a Honda or Toyota, it's awesome, period.
They'll list negatives like "road noise" or poor OEM tire choices.

I own two Hondas, one a 2006 Odyssey minivan -- it's a decent car. If you know
anyone who owns a 2005-2010 model of this car, ask them about trouble with the
sliding power door. I betcha 5/10 times, they'll start spewing about a
ridiculous $500-800 repair to replace a broken door hinge, because of a
defective $0.50 plastic wheel that breaks.

When I read my CR review back in 2009/2010, not a single mention of this
issue.

------
tensor
One of the most important features to the company I work for is being able to
share sub-folders within a shared folder. Without it, you have to completely
give up hierarchical organization of your data.

This feature is still missing as far as I can tell.

------
molsongolden
Does dropbox allow others to upload to specific folders within your account?
Can I create a folder for each client then send a link that will allow them to
upload documents to their folder?

~~~
itafroma
> Can I create a folder for each client then send a link that will allow them
> to upload documents to their folder?

Yes, as long as they have their own Dropbox account (free version's fine for
this purpose). You can otherwise share read-only access to folders with
anyone.

~~~
snomad
Yeah, but for write access you have to add everyone to the folder, which is
unfortunate.

With Google Drive, you can give write access with just a link.

Recently, my organization did an open feedback forum. We wanted everyone to be
able to add comments via DropBox, but their was no easy way to add a random
list of 50+ people. Ended up switching to Google Driver as a result.

------
m_mueller
I lost trust in Dropbox when it comes to the quality of their client and I
would therefore not use it for business purposes.

* I've had two instances of near data loss where I could only recover data from the local hidden cache folder that gets deleted after a week. It had to do with a user error with moving out files from the Dropbox directory when the client was off - previous versions in the webapp can easily become corrupted this way.

* the Mac client is a total CPU hog since Mountain Lion.

~~~
giovannibajo1
The business account comes with unlimited history of deleted/modified files,
so you can recover anything that once was on Dropbox.

On my Macbook Pro, the "average battery impact" (last 8 hours) as reported by
Activity Monitor is 1.2 (not sure what's the unit, but it's a low value
compared to other apps), and we use it daily for work so it's kind of active
the whole day. I wouldn't call it a CPU hog by far.

~~~
m_mueller
1) That's good to hear about unlimited history - however that wasn't the issue
in my case - the files either didn't show up in in the history anymore, even
though it clearly wasn't past the grace period, or the showed up and reported
an error when trying to open them. So the last I checked, there were non
recoverable states in Dropbox and I therefore would never trust it as the only
backup (and neither should you).

2) The CPU hog thing is very inconsistent - it probably doesn't affect all OS
version/hardware combinations or they would have solved it since long ago. All
I know is that I regularly see the client go to 80-100% usage of one core for
a rather long time, meanwhile taking forever to sync just a few files - which
clearly shouldn't happen in an application that mostly does IO. There are
probably certain file types it has some problems with, but I didn't have the
patience to analyze it yet, I simply switched to SpiderOak.

So no, I just can't trust their code quality.

------
ableal
It's all very nice, but there's a very large elephant conspicuously absent
from the room: encryption.

Not present in any of the 114 comments here so far, either.

Might be a problem.

------
antjanus
Did anyone read the comments by the owner of DMS? It's such a funny thing to
see a legal/offer exchange in comments. I'd love to know the background of
that discussion.

------
frade33
>$795 / year for a 5-user team. Additional users are $125 / user / year.

I love dropbox for personal use. But hey! ever heard of Google Drive and know
their pricing?

------
vladgur
Finally they have a free trial available

Previously if you had to develop against Dropbox business features like SSO
you had to shell out $$$

------
csulmone
I wonder how the collaboration inside of applications works. Is there going to
be a new API for integration?

~~~
skore
Since dropbox knows which files are being worked on, I don't actually think it
needs to be _inside_ of the application, it could just as well be a standalone
overlay. The "sneek peak" screenshot does indeed look like an overlay that
pops up when you open a file and which tracks the collaborative status. It
also seems like it adds messenging functionality, which I must admit looks
neat - pointed messenging functionality tends to be a lot more productive than
general purpose messenging.

~~~
kayoone
Still right now if you edit the same file from different locations at the same
time you will end up with conflicting copies. I wonder how/if they solved
this.

------
a2tech
Did I miss the cost and signup page?

~~~
elwell
[https://www.dropbox.com/business/pricing](https://www.dropbox.com/business/pricing)

------
chris_mahan
Dropbox at work: The proxy server is refusing connections

They're just blocking the whole domain.

(Edit for those of you who think I'm just trolling for effect. I work at a
LARGE fortune 500 (think 250,000 people) and
[http://www.dropbox.com/](http://www.dropbox.com/) is blocked at the proxy. If
your company is going to offer business services, to, hum, businesses, one
should insure that one should be accessible from businesses, no?)

~~~
fragmede
You do understand that it's the IT department at the Fortune 500 company thats
doing the blocking, right?

Dropbox has no control over your IT department, any more than you'd have
control over my wireless internet.

~~~
chris_mahan
And the question becomes: why is this IT department blocking the dropbox
service?

~~~
spydum
Exactly.. some businesses are just not friendly to the idea of automatic
synchronization of their very private data to a 3rd party.

