Ask HN: Do you think Dropbox is expensive?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22339103

by ent101 • 6 years ago

22 26 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

The paid plans for Dropbox start at $9.99 per month. I think dropbox is great, but I can't get myself to pay this much every month. Am I a minority here or does anyone else think that Dropbox is expensive?

saramago• 6 years ago

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.

twunde2• 6 years ago

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.

holografix2• 6 years ago

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?

twunde2• 6 years ago

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.

KMnO4• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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

https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html

louky• 6 years ago

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

mark_l_watson• 6 years ago

I was a very happy GSuite customer for a short while a year ago. With my own domain set up, the experience was more like what it was like working inside Google (e.g., one search overall of your data). Then I discovered that I could not merge in my stuff from my 15 year old free gmail account which I had used to purchase a lot of books, movies, and tv shows like The Expanse. Having two Google identities was a nuisance. Google should have the option of freezing a free account and then transferring all your stuff into the paid account. Anyway, I quit the paid for service, which was a shame since there were so many things I liked about it.

toomuchtodo• 6 years ago

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.

viraptor• 6 years ago

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.

quickthrower2• 6 years ago

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.

proxybop• 6 years ago

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

asfarley• 6 years ago

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

dwaite• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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

maps7• 6 years ago

To me, it's worth the price of 1 alcoholic drink or a few coffees in a month. I've been a customer for nearly 6 years now.

li_am• 6 years ago

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.

throwaway3563• 6 years ago

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

runjake• 6 years ago

No. The price is perfect, IMHO.

robertbalent• 6 years ago

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.

Fizzadar• 6 years ago

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%.

wtmt• 6 years ago

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.

enonevets• 6 years ago

I think it’s reasonably priced.

Spooky23• 6 years ago

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.

strobe• 6 years ago

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)

Ask HN: Do you think Dropbox is expensive?

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