
Dropbox adds a device limit to free accounts - redm
https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/computer-limit
======
Barrin92
I'm a little sad that there's no low price offering comparable to Google
drives 2$/100GB. I just don't need a TB of personal space but I like the
dropbox client a lot better. Especially because of linux support and for some
reason syncing seems to be significantly faster.

~~~
uishax
Dropbox uses full differential syncing, the only mainstream client that does
that universally. Onedrive only differential syncs with office files. Google
drive, well, uses full file syncing for every file.

~~~
spectramax
Could you please elaborate on what differential syncing means? Does Dropbox
break down each file into small chunks before uploading? What are the
advantages?

~~~
hs86
[https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/upload-
entire-f...](https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/upload-entire-file)

This should save some bandwidth at the expense of CPU time.

------
spectramax
I don't understand the Dropbox negativity on HN. I've used it since 2010 and
it has provided me with incredible value. I used to have free service for
documents but my library of data grew larger. I signed up for their $10/month
program without a hitch and have been a paying user for years. You get a
terabyte of space.

I got rid of NAS backups and I have selective sync enabled on folders that I
need synced. Large files remain in the cloud.

There are a few things that I think are worth paying for. Dropbox delivers
every day, every hour with no worries of backups.

In terms of limiting devices, remember when iTunes introduced 5 authorized
devices? Spotify Free has ads all over. Dropbox's business model is to convert
free paying users by exemplifying the value that they provide without
excessive nags, ads or annoyances.

~~~
gutnor
There has been several things:

• Dropbox has failed to improve their offering and even for a paying customer
you do not get anything more for your money today than you were getting
several years ago. That is not objectively a bad thing, I mean a spoon has
hardly evolved in hundred of years and is still worth every penny. But this is
HN and that's a bit of a sin around here.

• In search of profitability Dropbox has used several dark marketting
patterns. Its website also pushes way too much business/team option that are
per user/per month. A lof of people on HN are private user and they basically
have access to a single option.

• The new features that Dropbox did introduce work only for corporate/team
user. There is now a Professional user but it costs a standard business plan
for 2 users with less feature.

• There was some complain about the Mac OS client uses of apis.

Despite the negativity, HN users seems major paying users. So I think rather
than negativity it is more disappointment. The feeling that Dropbox could have
been so much more and they would have paid for it gladly, but it is instead
becoming a network feature for large companies and startup.

~~~
spectramax
I think you could say the same thing about GMail. It looks and works the same
way as it did 15 years ago. At times, less is more and feature creep ends up
being like Microsoft Outlook - bloated, slow and frustrating to use.

I don't love my set of spoons like I love Dropbox, Digital Ocean, Eames Lounge
Chair, Sublime Text/Merge and Teenage Engineering synthesizers. There are a
handful of companies that give you immense pleasure in using their products
daily.

~~~
ymolodtsov
Gmail changed a lot and its new design is just great although some people
might disagree with me. It’s also free.

------
Uninen
I've been using free Dropbox for a long time. After hitting my storage limits
about year ago, I started learning about alternatives for the paid plans.
Ended up with self hosted Nextcloud (
[https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/) ), which is open source. Been
super happy with Nextcloud, would definitely recommend it for anyone who isn't
fully happy with Dropbox.

The clients for macOS and iOS are not as polished as Dropbox and many apps use
Dropbox integrations, but I've managed to find workarounds for everything
except 1Password, which is why I'm currently looking for alternative
(preferrably open source) solutions for it.

For me the self hosting is not a problem and there are several hosted options
available as well. (For example:
[https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud](https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud)
)

~~~
wtmt
> I've managed to find workarounds for everything except 1Password

I haven't personally used it, but I've seen Bitwarden being highly recommended
here. It's free and open source. It has a free option (with an account on
bitwarden.com), a paid hosting option (with an account on bitwarden.com) and
also a self-hosting option.

------
the_common_man
What is dropbox basic? I see no explanation anywhere.

It's been ages since I visited dropbox but my god how things have changed.
Every flow and part of their website is about converting people to paid.

~~~
hisnameisjimmy
The nerve! It's almost like they want to make money!

~~~
bachmeier
Because Dropbox wants to make money, we should all happily put up with steady
annoyance?

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kristianp
That's a little inconvenient, but I'm running on three devices at the moment.

Now can we get a .dropboxignore file for developers please? I don't need the
temporary files in my projects being synced.

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JshWright
They freed up the half-dozen devices on my account when they stopped
supporting anything other than vanilla ext4 on Linux.

~~~
williamscales
Wait, what? Why should the Dropbox client care which filesystem you are using?

~~~
rythie
I think it's something to do with extended attributes - though why they need
them now, after all these years, I don't know.

~~~
ymolodtsov
For differential sync maybe?

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wtmt
> If you're a Basic user and you linked more than three devices prior to March
> 2019, all of your previously linked devices will remain linked, but you
> can’t link additional devices.

For how long will the previously linked devices remain linked...in other
words, when will Dropbox force basic plan users to reduce the count to three?
I foresee that happening in the future.

And what does this mean for people who change devices (like get a new phone to
replace the old one)? Do they have to use the same device name or can they
unlink the older device and link the new device in its place? This page does
not talk about this scenario.

Seems like it's time to move out of Dropbox.

~~~
rincebrain
AIUI they're not claiming to ever remove already-linked devices, but you can't
add more devices without going back under that threshold.

------
rmykhajliw
It seems, time to use Amazon Drive: $12 for 100Gb annual. I was dropbox paying
customers for years but stopped my subscription in 2016 in favor of Google
Photos and iCloud. I realized there's nothing to store there other than a
general photos/videos, all my docs takes less than a few gigabytes of data.
Also I was changed for nothing, like restore file deleted a minute ago.

~~~
mciancia
There are multiple alternatives to dropbox which are cheaper, but which are
giving the same or better client and user experience?

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sotsoguk
What is the actual Limit? I am redirected to the German Version which states
„no limit“

~~~
merb
you can switch the language at the bottom left side of the page.

the limit is three.

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EliceGrey
Fortunately, some 3rd party tools like CloudMounter can still connect Dropbox
to an unlimited amount of devices.

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Florin_Andrei
"Devices" are both PCs and smartphones, is that correct?

~~~
banana_giraffe
I'd assume so, given the URL itself is
"[https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/computer-
limit"](https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/computer-limit")

~~~
Grue3
Considering smartphones don't even sync anything by default, why should they
be counted as devices. The app is just a glorified website wrapper.

~~~
SvAGYIc2q
Exactly. We've been waiting for years for a real Dropbox client for
smartphones, and now this.

I think you can you can activate sync for individual files. But as you have to
activate this for each file individually, this it somewhat defeats the point.
There are more options in the pro version, but why then count it towards the
limit for free users.

I hardly even use dropbox on mobile anyway, it just happens to be one of the
most convenient ways to transfer pdfs to my iPad.

------
buboard
so, whatever happened to btsync?

~~~
willk
It turned into [https://www.resilio.com/](https://www.resilio.com/)

~~~
gtufano
Beware that I deployed it in an enterprise environment (after a successful
pilot and having used it successfully on my, small, network for months) and it
often failed when tasked with rapidly changing files from multiple different
clients. This was on a 30-client/3 buildings on a point-to-point VPN setup.
The customer lost data on regular basis and I had to back out from the
solution. This was when it still was btsync, and may be it meanwhile has
improved, but just test it with a significant number of client and concurrent
edits before trying a (relatively) big deploy.

------
ykevinator
Doomed

