
Ask HN: Do you think Dropbox is expensive? - ent101
The paid plans for Dropbox start at $9.99 per month. I think dropbox is great, but I can&#x27;t get myself to pay this much every month. Am I a minority here or does anyone else think that Dropbox is expensive?
======
dwaite
The lack of an enthusiast tier between Free and $10/month has kept me from
being a customer. For years they have been trying to add value add features,
with some of the forced changes making the platform less attractive to me. The
features have really been geared around justifying business site license, not
'prosumer' usage.

The recent change of the free tier so that it no longer allows me to pair all
of my devices was the last straw, and I've moved off their service.

~~~
harish_yadav
That is also what kept me away from it. I love all of their features it is
price bracket that force me away. I love their SmartSync but that's not enough
to make me buy a 2TB plan.

So now I am using an extension to make iCloud work a lot like SmartSync

------
twunde
If you're running a small business which involves sharing files such as a
photographer, or a designer then this is cheap. If all you want is to backup
your files, it's expensive, especially since Google and Microsoft both offer
free storage. Dropbox's main feature is the ability to share files easily.

~~~
holografix
Genuine question: how much easier is it to share files on Dropbox vs just
doing it on GDrive? Is it the fact that the person accessing your files
doesn’t need a google account?

~~~
twunde
Yes, it's pretty much that they don't need a Google account. This is actually
a big barrier, especially when sending to corporate accounts since the
registration process involves a weird and confusing flow to sign up without
receiving email to a Gmail account.

~~~
holografix
Fair enough thanks for your reply

------
robertbalent
If you have friend in Microsoft, ask them to give you access to the company
store. You can get Office 365 Home for 6 family members for $20 per year. This
includes 1TB OneDrive storage and of course Office suite. Buy it for next 9
years ($180) and you are done for very long time.

Disclaimer: I'm ex-Microsoft employee and I'm very happy with OneDrive.

------
li_am
Left Dropbox this week after many years. I've got storage with iCloud and
Google Drive now, which are cheaper combined and provide a lot of other
services.

It felt like price increases were to pay for new features like Paper, which is
not what I ever wanted from their service. I'll keep an account on the free
plan, since many services have Dropbox integrations.

------
wtmt
Yes, I consider it to be expensive. The bigger issue with these storage
platforms is that they don’t offer a lower priced tier. Not everybody wants or
needs 2TB of storage. If they were to offer a lower quota at a lower price,
that would be more appropriate, especially for people whose main currency
isn’t USD or EUR or GBP. But this won’t happen even with a yearly pricing
(where transaction processing fees are a smaller fraction) because these
companies aren’t interested in providing solutions for those who don’t want to
spend a lot (and have lower requirements). They will come around after they
find that their developed country and enterprise markets are saturated and
want to expand further.

You can take a look at Backblaze B2 or Hetzner Storage services (there are two
kinds in this) for cheaper and lower priced options. I don’t have experience
with either of these to provide a strong recommendation either way.

------
toomuchtodo
I pay for it annually ($100/year plan), but will switch to iCloud Files
exclusively once it gets a bit closer to feature parity. Regardless, the price
is noise (about two coffees worth per month).

I’m paying for storage that “just works” with no time commitment on my part.

------
saramago
No. I really am happy that I have paid for it. Even with some other solutions
out there that appeared to be a bit cheaper.

For $10 you get a significant amount of storage, don't have to run your own
NAS (or shell out the capital expense of buying it), backup drive without
redundancy, or pay any electric bill related to it. You also get very nice
integrations into other platforms.

Just my take. Many have different opinions.

------
Spooky23
I don’t understand the point of Dropbox anymore. Constant upsell, even in paid
plans, and lots of performance regressions in the app. The syncing engine is
the key differentiator, but for me it’s less of a big deal for me now, as my
LTE connection is often faster than the office.

It’s pretty hard to justify vs the extra utility you get from Google One and
Office 365.

------
viraptor
Considering that a 1tb USB drive is ~45 USD these days, no it's not expensive
at all. There are other services offering cheaper personal storage. And if
you'd rather spend time than money, you can set up remote sharing from your
own system too.

Essentially, if $10 is a lot for you, they're likely not interested in your
business and that's ok.

------
asfarley
Yes, it feels expensive but I pay for it. I might swap to something else soon.
The only thing holding me back is inertia.

------
KMnO4
Personally I use Google Suite’s $10/month plan which includes unlimited[1]
Drive storage, as well as all the other nice things GSuite provides (Gmail,
photos, office, cloud, etc).

[1]: technically 1TB for <5 users but no Google doesn’t ever cut off anyone. I
consider it more as a “fair use” policy.

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
What plan is that? I don’t even see a $10/month offering.

[https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html](https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html)

~~~
louky
You have to open a business account. It's $10 user with unlimited storage. At
least that's what we have.

------
strobe
yes, because they not trying to solve customers' problems - honestly I
continue using it just because of the high cost of migration. Its desktop app
constantly consumes much more resources than any other app (actually it was
the main reason why I upgraded my MacBook Pro to decent model). Web ui
functionality doesn't allow property manage hight count of files (for example
it doesn't allow to move folders with 10k+ files - why they allow to
syncronize that if not possible to manage) and synchronization might take
weeks if you got few millions of files (I just have about 250gb of data so
it's for sure not too much)

------
Fizzadar
I still use it over Google/Microsoft because their clients don't sync updates
instantly, and Dropbox does. For that alone I think it's worth it. I do wish
they'd have a smaller plan around $5/month. Literally use 1%.

------
quickthrower2
I would have paid it, but decided my main needs are backup and I’ll make do
with Microsoft for sync. So I use office 365 and backblaze. Costs about 160/y
for both.

------
throwaway3563
Yes, I ended up using OneDrive instead for $3/mo. Also the Dropbox web UI is
atrocious.

------
proxybop
I do, yes. I use sync.com instead (about $60/year) and they have awesome
encryption

------
enonevets
I think it’s reasonably priced.

------
runjake
No. The price is perfect, IMHO.

