
Dropbox Transfer - sbolt
https://www.dropbox.com/transfer/about
======
TeMPOraL
Good to see them finally doing something addressing actual user needs for a
change, instead of chasing greener pastures. Given my informal observations
over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if transferring large files was the
main need that drives users to Dropbox - when dealing with individuals and
companies outside tech, I frequently saw them giving the advice to "get a
Dropbox" when someone needed to send them more files than fit in an e-mail.

~~~
tyingq
I suspect the bundled OneDrive in Office365 is hurting them. Dropbox is
better, but hard to justify if you already have something that's good enough.

~~~
datashow
I left Dropbox because they count shared space against everyone involved,
which makes me cannot share the "photos" folder with my wife (unless we both
purchase the 1T plan). Not sure whether they changed this practice. I am a
satisfied OneDrive+Office365 user now.

~~~
rhodysurf
I had this happen recently. Our photographer from our wedding shared the
photos on dropbox but we couldnt see them because we didnt have dropbox pro
and the folder was over the free size limit! Why does it matter how much space
I have if someone else is sharing them with me?!?!

~~~
Strom
It's not about your space, it's about your payment. If someone like a pro
photographer shares their stuff with clients all the time, then their dropbox
subscription won't necessarily cover all of that bandwidth. [1] Companies like
dropbox only mention bandwidth in fine print or buried somewhere deep in the
FAQ, but bandwidth is a key resource that every dropbox user consumes and
dropbox has to pay for.

\--

[1] It might if dropbox was a more lean operation, but it isn't.

~~~
jonny_eh
If it's the bandwidth that's so important, why isn't Dropbox charging the
receiver for Dropox Transfer files?

The postal system solved this problem ages ago, you charge the sender postage.
Done.

~~~
gtirloni
You'd have to increase the plan's price (bad) or charge a fee per share
(horrible).

------
elamje
Check out [https://send.firefox.com](https://send.firefox.com)

~~~
giarc
I've used that a few times to send myself files. I like the option to set max
downloads. However, the dropbox option seems to add the custom logo option
which is kind of cool for SMBs.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Firefox Send is open source, so you could brand it yourself if you want to
self-host. Dropbox wins if you want to provide a payment method and let
someone else deal with running it though.

------
ericflo
This is the first thing Dropbox has done in a long while that makes sense to
me as an external observer. Great product idea and totally reinforces the
prime Dropbox use cases.

------
gravitas
Collected alternatives from the comments here:

[https://wetransfer.com/](https://wetransfer.com/)

[https://swisstransfer.com/](https://swisstransfer.com/)

[https://transfer.midrive.io/](https://transfer.midrive.io/)

[https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)

[https://transfer.sh/](https://transfer.sh/)

ps: I _really_ wish HN supported basic markdown so we can make bullet lists
and other simple formatting controls, nothing wild like citation/footnote
support just the top 5-10 markups. Trying to make a list of URLs to share
looks like ass here.

~~~
kiza
I've been building a list[1] of file transfer tools with their perks, there's
a few new ones from this thread that I will add.

I used to run a transfer service myself but it wasn't up to scratch with the
competition and it was costing me money so I decided to aggregate them
instead.

\-- [1] [https://fastest.fish/](https://fastest.fish/)

~~~
app4soft
> I've been building a list

I just curios when found that MediaFire[0] service not added in this list yet
;)

[0] [https://www.mediafire.com](https://www.mediafire.com)

~~~
kiza
Added, thanks!

I definitely don't have them all!

------
puranjay
I do music production as a side hobby. Virtually all the producers and studios
I've worked with use WeTransfer. It's fast, efficient, and free.

I can't see any reason to switch.

~~~
PascLeRasc
That's a really nice service, thanks for the rec. From the name I expected it
to feel cheap like WeChat but I'm very glad to be wrong, it seems pretty much
perfect.

~~~
dgellow
How is WeChat cheap?

------
spoown
Can we really trust Dropbox for such activity ? Just wondering... I Get it ,
we can of course encrypt file before sending anything to dropbox, but
anyway... Just curious on your opinion ! There is also send file from Firefox,
with lower limit of
course....[https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)

~~~
cpach
That depends entirely of your threat model. One can’t simply issue a blanket
statement that could suit any potential user of Dropbox.

E.g. if a marketing firm would like to send over a company presentation video
to a client, perhaps that artifact isn’t sensitive at all. It all depends on
the specific circumstances, IMHO.

------
mcjiggerlog
"try for free" \- can't see what the pricing for this is anywhere. Does it
require Dropbox plus?

~~~
1123581321
You need Pro to change the expiration date or set a password.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
Thanks! Looks like Firefox Send is the better free tool for now then.

~~~
bayindirh
For occasional uses and normal transfers, Firefox send is really better.
Dropbox transfer becomes useful when you want to share files that you already
have in your Dropbox.

I use both and they both have their users.

------
fiatjaf
It's cool that they're doing something obvious and obviously useful this time.

It's sad that we don't have a better way to send files to other people than to
create a Dropbox account, upload files, then send a link over email.

I've written [https://filemap.xyz/](https://filemap.xyz/) so people are able
to send files and links without having to send URLs, instead you just agree on
a common geographical location -- but of course this isn't the best possible
solution yet.

~~~
trevyn
That’s... interesting. Could you share a bit about how you arrived at this
approach?

~~~
1f60c
There's also the problem that _anyone who knows your address will be able to
download your files_ , whereas most other services either seem to have strong
access control or unguessable links.

That said, it's an interesting and novel approach.

~~~
Piskvorrr
There's a password option...and the world is large. (Although I agree that
inhabited regions are far smaller, people are likely to choose their own
address, and possible address data collection is a concern: even though it
doesn't seem to happen here, not sure if I want to share my location with the
recipient)

------
Faaak
I use [https://www.swisstransfer.com/](https://www.swisstransfer.com/), which
even if it only supports 50Gb and not 100Gb, it is totally free and doesn't
need a account to upload the files. Way easier

~~~
kenneth
How does Swiss Transfer make money?

(As a Swiss, I love the sound of it. But need to figure out what their model
is, otherwise surely if I'm not the customer, I'm the product)

~~~
Faaak
They hope you'll use their other products (it's infomaniak.ch, a hosting
provider, that operates the service)

~~~
gravitas
I found a news article from February with a bunch of info:
[https://news.infomaniak.com/en/swiss-alternative-
wetransfer/](https://news.infomaniak.com/en/swiss-alternative-wetransfer/)

------
saagarjha
Does normal Dropbox have “download notifications”? Is this any different than
just emailing a link to a shared Dropbox file?

~~~
bayindirh
Dropbox transfer notifies you of views and downloads. I'm a paying user and
using transfer to send files to friends. It's very useful.

Transfers auto-expire after a week and links invalidate so it's maintenance is
minimal for the normal user.

~~~
jweather
The annoying thing is that you can't turn off those notifications, which pop
up in your tray and e-mail box. If there were options for turning off
notifications it would be perfect for my use case.

------
festivilia
So I need to have a Dropbox account to be able to use Dropbox Transfer. And
Firefox requires me to sign up to be able to use Firefox Send.

Why not MiDrive Transfer.
[https://transfer.midrive.io](https://transfer.midrive.io)

~~~
ataylor32
Firefox Send can be used without signing up. The limitations are 1 GB instead
of 2.5 GB, a maximum of 1 download instead of 100 downloads, and a maximum of
1 day instead of 7 days. So it's still useful in certain circumstances.

Why not MiDrive Transfer? I haven't heard of it and don't know how reputable
it is. And is it in beta? So it could be buggy?

------
FreeInFlorida
Their answer to Firefox Send?

send.firefox.com

~~~
johnchristopher
Unlikely. I have seen 0 send links around and wetransfer is still king of the
office.

I'd like to see some numbers, though.

~~~
bachmeier
> Unlikely. I have seen 0 send links around

Do you routinely monitor a large portion of file sharing that goes on in the
world? Sorry, but this is just a weird (but common) way to make a claim that
[something in the tech world] is not used...

I personally use Firefox Send all the time. Works very well and I trust it to
do the job.

~~~
johnchristopher
> Do you routinely monitor a large portion of file sharing that goes on in the
> world?

I routinely receive assistance requests for expired links that lead to data
loss (as in at least once a week) during work hours and assistance requests
like "how to upload a folder of files, not just that file" or "where do I put
the email ?" or "why are the files gone ? I just sent the link again but my
contact says it's not working".

None are about FF send (not for a lack of trying).

> Sorry, but this is just a weird (but common) way to make a claim that
> [something in the tech world] is not used...

I monitor enough, without having all the variables in the world and the number
of TCP packets that went through Firefox send at hand, to form an opinion that
goes something like: "Yeah, that FF send thing isn't catching enough users to
impact wetransfer usage significantly any time soon or to force Dropbox into
releasing their own spin of the thing." Hence my question - that you
conveniently cut off - for numbers. It shows that I am ready to change my
mind, that my opinion is just... my opinion.

Yeah, people navigate the world with intuition and mushy feelings and
opinions. What's weird is that you are surprised by it and feel like pointing
it out.

Of course there'll always be people using niche things... doesn't mean it's
relevant at large.

Hacking Gameboy ROM in your free time ? Pretty cool. Guess what, that console
is still dead.

> Sorry, but this is just a weird (but common) way to make a claim that
> [something in the tech world] is not used...

I don't believe for a moment that you are "sorry".

Sorry, but this is just a weird (but common) way to try to pass for being
polite while truly offering a condescending and insincere apology before
telling someone that he's wrong.

Do you have numbers to add to the conversation ?

> I personally use Firefox Send all the time. Works very well and I trust it
> to do the job.

So do I. So big what ?

------
Hackbraten
Dropbox is not going to win me back as a user. Not after they chose to drop
support for non-APFS/HFS+ filesystems on macOS without sufficient explanation.

~~~
angry_octet
What filesystem are you using? ZFS? You don't have any HFS+ or APFS volumes?

~~~
Hackbraten
Correct, I use ZFS for my home directory. I do use APFS for everything else.
But I’d have preferred to keep my Dropbox folder under my home so I got rid of
Dropbox altogether.

~~~
angry_octet
To be honest the market for ZFS support must be quite small, and the semantics
just different enough to cause unpleasant bugs, so I wouldn't blame them for
that.

Interestingly, there are signs that they have been working on support for a
wider range of file systems: [https://itsfoss.com/dropbox-brings-back-linux-
filesystem-sup...](https://itsfoss.com/dropbox-brings-back-linux-filesystem-
support/)

~~~
Hackbraten
Good point.

------
geekamongus
Not sure how I feel that security is casually referenced as a passing thought
on that page.

Compare it with something else, like Firefox Send, which puts security and
privacy front-and-center in its description.
[https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)

Why should I trust Dropbox Transfer over Firefox Send?

------
anderspitman
Seems useful, and a step in the right direction. I think the future of file
sharing is permanent URLs to files stored on decentralized hard drives, with
dead simple access control settings (ie here's the list of email addresses
that can access this file). You need either ipv6 (plus an ISP that allows port
80), or some sort of proxy for this to work. Range requests must be supported.
Also I think it needs to be designed from the ground up for sharing not just
with people, but also with apps, just like you can access Google drive data
using their API. It's surprising to me that WebDAV is the closest thing we
have to an open protocol for doing this sort of thing. I think we need
something simpler, with a standardized auth protocol. Maybe RemoteStorage, but
honestly it still looks complicated to me.

~~~
mtzaldo
This is a great idea. We can named it hftp :p

------
aehtyb
i prefer [https://glft.gucci.com:3443/](https://glft.gucci.com:3443/)

~~~
esquire_900
Nice hidden internet gem

------
eebynight
My company (Fortune 500 Aerospace/Defense) has implemented something like this
for years now.

I’ve personally used it to send CAD files to outside manufacturers/suppliers
who are under an NDA.

I’ve really grown to like the service and always wished I could use it for
personal stuff so I will definitely be trying this out.

~~~
kop316
If you want to self-host, Nextcloud has this service and it works incredibly
well.

------
laurentdc
100 GB only in the Professional plan though ($19.99/mo)

~~~
angry_octet
Doesn't really seem good when Google has:

$ 1.99 100GiB

$ 2.99 200GiB

$12.99 2000GiB

~~~
stjohnswarts
But doesn't google scan the files and use them for advertising and profiling
you? Yeah I know you can encrypt the data, but my point still stands for
"regular" users.

~~~
severaldayz
I've never heard this before. Is there any evidence (not speculation) that
this is true?

~~~
rurp
Is there any proof that Google does not? Scanning user's private data to
target them with ads is the primary reason Google offers services. Absent
other evidence, the default assumption should be that Google scans as much
data as they can.

~~~
severaldayz
Proving absence of something is an unreasonable standard. Your answer does
sound like "no, there is no such evidence" to my ears, though.

~~~
rurp
I guess I wasn't clear. I had something in mind like a public statement from
Google saying that they do not scan a particular set of data. I would accept
that as evidence. Absent a statement from them either way, I assume they read
whatever is uploaded to their servers.

------
angry_octet
When I saw this I thought, Finally, A Way to Transfer Large Files. But alas,
it is only for small files, up to 100GB. And it gives no indication of using
resumable and fault tolerant transfer.

If you want to transfer a large amount of data (like backups or any big data
collection, like a couple of years of RAW photos) via the cloud (e.g. because
of NAT and firewalls) it is still better to rent a machine from Linode/Digital
Ocean/OVH and use a tool like BT Sync or rsync (simple but low bandwidth).

~~~
chrisseaton
> And it gives no indication of using resumable ... transfer

Don’t you get that from HTTP?

And while I’m sure 100 GB is small for your domain whatever that is, surely
you can’t be so unaware to know that this is going to be sufficient for the
vast majority of consumers, businesses, and academics?

I don’t think I’ve ever handled a file that was 100 GB and I’m not a non-
technical person.

~~~
angry_octet
Individual files sure but apart from sending one file there are many more
transfer jobs. People can buy 4TB HDDs from their office supplies store, and
the fastest way to transfer data remains putting it in the mail, not because
of bandwidth but lack of services. Cloud backup is much cheaper than buying a
tape array and administrator, but at present that is all you can do with it --
backup. You should easily be able to have TB of personal data in the cloud and
send any file/directory, without worrying about how big it is.

Resumable transfers seem to fail a lot with http. Block level differencing
(like dedup) can also make things a lot faster.

------
maximente
i'm a huge fan of magic wormhole for simpler workflows (e.g. send some files
in a dir within a local network). it's CLI based, so not for your average
computer laborer but it's easy, secure, compact, and awesome for moving things
around.

[https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole](https://github.com/warner/magic-
wormhole)

------
kresten
Ha. I could do this with git, an ec2 instance, sftp a few Perl scripts and 200
lines of JavaScript.

Why would I use this service?

~~~
leovander
Jab at this... right?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

------
ongezoutenboter
Been a loyal user for years. Recently switched to pcloud for better pricing
and Linux compatibility.

They also offer a free 5gb transfer tool:
[https://transfer.pcloud.com/](https://transfer.pcloud.com/)

------
heavymark
This was from back in July right? Or is this something different?
[https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/product-tips/send-large-
file...](https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/product-tips/send-large-files-
transfer)

------
foobaw
This is amazing, but I wonder if traditional enterprises would accept Dropbox
to be secure. In the startup world, this will be great though.

------
lamnk
What's wrong with GG Drive? In my country people use GG Drive to share all
kind of files.

~~~
viksit
Is this specific to Eastern Europe? I’ve never had anyone send me a GG link!

------
sidcool
100 GB is a great value proposition. Is it E2E encrypted?

~~~
newscracker
I doubt it would be. Dropbox’s model for file storage has always been to
encrypt the data with its own key on the server.

~~~
narsil
.. and to also de-duplicate files across users to avoid repeatedly storing the
same file.

------
awinter-py
that endoplasmic reticulum staircase animation was totally worth turning on JS
for, can't wait for someone to make one of these IRL

------
ymerkli
Sounds great, what about E2E encryption though?

------
sorokod
So like Firefox Send with a bigger quota?

------
soapdog
If you need to send large files to someone, you can use Firefox Send:

[https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)

The file is encrypted, the urls are expiring, it costs nothing.

~~~
brianbreslin
This is limited to 1GB. Dropbox is limited to 100GB file size.

~~~
harias
That's their pro version. Free is limited to 100MB

~~~
rch
Given that we hit a file size limit with the paid version of Box at the work
the other day, this is welcome news.

------
Causality1
I'm done with Dropbox. I spent years preaching the Dropbox gospel to my family
and friends. When Dropbox decided to fuck their free users by limiting them to
three devices I got over a dozen pissed-off phonecalls blaming me.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I would have asked them why they felt entitled to space, bandwidth, and
computing power on someone else's computers.

~~~
damontal
Why offer it only to yank it?

~~~
lotsofpulp
I don't know what the offerer's motivations are, but I do know from experience
that there's no reason to expect an indefinite supply of free stuff.

------
istillwritecode
I dropped my paid Dropbox account when they instituted "two factor
authentication" because it broke the use case of file transfer between trusted
parties using a single account. Now I'm going to drop my OneDrive account for
the same reason.

~~~
dtech
You can also share the MFA private key if you really want to, and it's
excellent security for 99,999999% of the use cases otherwise.

Or just use 2 accounts and share the file...

~~~
istillwritecode
I don't use MFA because it requires me to provide a phone number. SMS is not a
reliable authentication method anyway - it's only an improvement for people
who can't manage passwords.

