[kevinios]

I recently sent an email to Dropbox support, asking/begging them to let me pay for their service. But at a normal price for a lambda user.

Dropbox is the only cloud service that I absolutely love since it was released, the only one I really want to support... and the only one I am not paying for. I pay for iCloud and for Google Drive, 2-3$/month each.

As a normal user, I do NOT need 1 To of storage for 10$ a month. I need a few hundreds Go, and am happy to pay 2-3$ a month for those.

I understand there are reasons to focus on "Entreprises", but still... My money is just waiting to be taken and has been for years. This year, I gave up on waiting for them and started paying for Google Drive, and unloaded some old files from Dropbox to Drive.

I would just like the exact same features I've been using since years, but with a few more Go of space available. That's all I am asking for. And that's 25$ a year I would be willing to give Dropbox, instead of me being a free-rider since years.

[ggg9990]

I had a lot of people asking me to buy my company’s software for 10% or 20% or 50% of what I was charging. I never responded to those cheapskates and rather, in limited number, looked at them as evidence that I wasn’t charging too little. I happily pay much more per GB for Dropbox than for whatever AWS charges because Dropbox has the best client apps, which is of course why they don’t charge per GB.

[Pulcinella]

best client apps

Seriously. I am still surprised that to this day none of the big players can compete at Dropbox’s level. Not even Apple can make iCloud “Just Work™” the way Dropbox’s client apps and service work.

As a customer I use Dropbox because of how well it works, not because of its $/GB.

[markcerqueira]

> Not even Apple can make iCloud “Just Work™” the way Dropbox’s client apps and service work.

Not surprising. Apple's main business isn't building a file syncing service and while they're a much larger corporation I'd bet that Dropbox has more resources dedicated to its core product compared to Apple's iCloud file syncing offerings.

[ggg9990]

I don’t think it’s resources as much as culture. Apple makes products for Apple users and their products for the benighted are dogshit (eg Itunes for windows). Dropbox on the other hand treats every platform as first class.

[toomuchtodo]

With Apple’s vast cash reserves and ample margins, it’s a matter of will and choice they haven’t bested Dropbox.

If Apple iCloud worked as well as Dropbox, I’d switch in a heartbeat.

[snake117]

At first I thought this too, but now I prefer for my file storage to be platform agnostic. For instance, if I decide to switch from iOS to Android in the future, I can just download the Dropbox app instead of implementing workarounds.

[toomuchtodo]

Can definitely appreciate this, but I’m married to the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, MacBook Air), so its less of a concern for me.

[FullyFunctional]

For me it's beyond that. I make constant use of my Dropbox files from Linux boxen, my iPhone, and a couple of MacBook Pros. I severely doubt iCloud would ever support Linux in a meaningful way.

[joering2]

There is enough competition around Dropbox although they are the biggest one.

I think the true reason you don't see too much fierce competition, is because of little profit you can make off of offering a raw storage, even with awesome client.

Even the almighty Dropbox alone may never be profitable...

https://qz.com/1214822/dropbox-is-filing-for-a-500-million-i...

[coupdetaco]

coming in under 1 Billion is the first sign that this doesn't seem to be super lucrative

[wcfields]

Google offers 'Google Drive Stream' that apes the killer Dropbox features: offline files that smart-sync as needed. Unfortunatly, it's only for GSuite accounts.

[BinaryIdiot]

Google also discontinued one of their apps to rename and launch it as a different name. I got confused as to how I was supposed to replace it so I just uninstalled it and never used it again. Google doesn't spend nearly enough time working on UX.

But Dropox? Always works great. Always. Never had a problem. So I use them more and more. Too bad I can't encrypt my entire Dropbox like, say, Spideroak but oh well.

[FullyFunctional]

Ahem, cross-platform case sensitivity issues, symlink utterly doesn't works, but yes, apart from that, it's amazing.

You might give gocryptfs [1] a try, with it you can keep [part of] your content encrypted in Dropbox.

[1] https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/

[ggg9990]

I tried Google’s file sync app a long time ago and it was dogshit compared to Dropbox. Unless Dropbox raised prices above $50/month I am not going to have a reason to ever try it again.

[kylehotchkiss]

It's a little clunky though, the UI parts are not so graceful visually or performance wise.

[ggg9990]

The big players can’t compete because all of them are invested in making the experience on their own platform the best. Box is the only platform agnostic competitor.

[kylehotchkiss]

Oh yeah, I'm a google drive user and I agree, google drive's apps are so clunky and slow

[dorfsmay]

> which is of course why they don’t charge per GB

That makes no sense. That's like saying a restaurant won't server a single to somebody, because they serve the best steak! Families are a good example where Dropbox are pricing themselves out (I ended up up going with pcloud because I couldn't justify paying Dropbox for all that space we don't need).

[ggg9990]

I mean, that is actually true. A restaurant that spends a lot of money on fixed costs (large tables with lots of space between them in expensive cities) will not accept a reservation for 1.

[dorfsmay]

I've never heard of such a thing and from a cursory search, this could probably be considered a hidden way to discriminate and be illegal.

[ggg9990]

Just call any Michelin 3 star restaurant in an expensive city and ask for a reservation for one at a table, not the bar. It’s not at all illegal to deny this. Number of people in your dinner party is not a protected class.

[coupdetaco]

It is shocking how bad GSuite is

[sbierwagen]

Comments like these are what makes selling software to consumers such a joy. The time it took a CSR to read your email asking for a 50% discount off of $10 a month probably cost them all the profit they would have received from that account for a year.

[ac29]

Dropbox's fixed storage for a fixed price business model probably assumes a large majority of their customers wont use the full 1TB they pay for. Providing smaller amounts of storage for a lesser price would just reduce revenue without reducing storage costs, so it doesn't make sense for them.

If you want a pay per GB service, setup a S3 account (or similar) and get one of the many decent frontends to it. Its what I do.

[jjnoakes]

Have you found decent frontends which let you sync files between Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and iPhone, using S3 as the backend? If so, I'd love a few pointers, because I've been looking for something like that.

[ac29]

Sounds like you want Dropbox.

My personal use case involves files stored on a NAS, which is accessible via VPN and any client with a file browser (so, basically every platform). NAS is backed up via rclone to cloud storage. Its not sync, but I dont really want files synced to all my devices.

[odorousrex]

Possible business opportunity here?

I think $10 for a windows/mac/linux desktop app, $5 for a android/Ios version. (Maybe get all versions for $20)

You drop in an S3 or Azure storage key, it lists the files, create containers, lets you upload/download to whatever device you are on at the time.

Not necessarily a dropbox killer since you'd have to have a cloud storage account and no how to use it, but it would definitely serve a certain niche.

[kylehotchkiss]

For Mac, Transmit app works pretty well for me. Their transmit iOS app was good also but sadly discontinued.

[troydavis]

Based on Dropbox’s S-1 [1], they received $1.107 billion in revenue (2017) and the “cost of goods sold” (COGS) just to deliver those purchased services - excluding software development, sales, marketing, and general corporate expenses - was $0.369 billion, or about 33%. That 33% is basically hosting, support, and devops/SRE (see S-1 page 68 for a detailed description of Dropbox’s COGS).

Stated another way, very roughly, at most 33% of your money went to storage. The real number is probably lower than 33% because the 33% includes support, but let’s use 33% for simplicity.

That means of $100 per year for the 1 TB plan, very roughly[2] $33 is spent on storage. If one wanted to ask “How much less would it cost Dropbox to provide me with 250 GB than 1 TB?” the answer is probably at most 75% of $33 [3], or about $24.

So, if your argument is that Dropbox should offer a 250 GB plan that incorporates their decrease in cost, that 250 GB plan would be priced at about $76/year, not $25.

(These numbers may be a little off because the S-1 doesn’t have per-plan COGS, but they probably aren’t far enough off to change the conclusion. Maybe it’s $70 or $80, but it’s not $25.)

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dropbox add a less expensive plan, but I’m guessing it would be 10 or 25 GB, not 250, and thatthe plan would be significantly less profitable than their current consumer plan (that is, they’d intentionally ignore the conclusion above). IMO, they’d do so because they thought enough subscribers to this new plan would (a) upgrade to the bigger plan (or business service) eventually, and (b) stay on the free plan forever otherwise. This plan’s entire purpose would be to get users used to paying for something.

1: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467623/000119312518... page F-4

2: This is inferring based on company-wide COGS and revenue, even though COGS almost certainly varies by plan.

3: In practice, the decrease in COGS is probably less because the average usage on a 1 TB plan will be much less than 1 TB.

[djhworld]

I'm of the same opinion, I'd be happy to kick $2-$3 a month for 100GB of storage to Dropbox.

However I don't think storage is really their concern, their product is the syncing capability, the apps on all devices, Dropbox Paper etc.

Additionally I'd be really interested in knowing what % of paying customers actually use their 1TB allowance, or even half of it. This is probably where the majority subsidise the cost of the "whales", like at an all you can eat buffet

[JumpCrisscross]

> My money is just waiting to be taken and has been for years

Donate it to the FSF, or EFF or Wikipedia or something. Otherwise this sounds like “I’m cheap; give me a discount”.

[ribosometronome]

Not wanting to pay for a level of service you know you won't use isn't being cheap, it's rational behavior.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Not wanting to pay for a level of service you know you won't use isn't being cheap, it's rational behavior

Not wanting to pay is fine. Complaining about it in this manner is cheap.

[jonny_eh]

I disagree, he's pointing out a missed opportunity at price discrimination.

Imagine if airlines only had first class tickets, would it be cheap to say "plz sell me a cheaper ticket with less leg space and alcohol"?

[deejaybog]

All the while they're paying $80+ for bundled cable service. Penny wise, pound foolish.

[dorfsmay]

Cable service will serve an entire household, a Dropbox account will serve a single person.

[usuallymatt]

I'm in the same boat as that guy and I donate to Wikipedia every year. I love the service. I'd happily pay Dropbox for 100GB. Instead I did a bunch of referrals and I now have 18.5GB which more than enough suits my needs.

[nemothekid]

>I need a few hundreds Go, and am happy to pay 2-3$ a month for those.

The cost for dropbox to host your 10MiB vs 1TiB is likely the same. Those numbers are so small, the fixed costs of the infrastructure (engineers, hard drives, networks) is way higher than the difference in storage space.

[microtonal]

As a normal user, I do NOT need 1 To of storage for 10$ a month. I need a few hundreds Go, and am happy to pay 2-3$ a month for those.

I understand there are reasons to focus on "Entreprises", but still...

The reason is not the focus on enterprise. It is that most of their competition makes money on other products (Google - Ads, Microsoft - Windows/Office, Apple - Hardware), so they can sell storage at cost price or even as a loss-leader.

You want to pay $2-3 for a few hundred GBs of storage space. But this is highly redundant storage, generally requires plenty of bandwidth, and they need to hire developers to improve the Dropbox backend and apps. Oh, and throw in support for some customers. Obviously, charging only $2-3 per month would be a terrible business choice.

I don't pay 10 Euro per month for the storage. For me the product is the absolutely stellar sync (with LAN sync, partial file sync, etc.), combined with wide platform support (including Linux), the file request functionality, and the fact that they are not in the business of selling my private data. I have paid for Dropbox a couple of years now and I am using 'only' 290 GB. I would still use Dropbox for 10 Euro for 500GB and probably even 10 Euro for 100GB.

[tempodox]

In “Go” & “To”, what does the “o” stand for? I assume, the “T” is tera & “G” is giga?

[hartem_]

GigaOctet and TeraOctet. In French-speaking countries that’s a quite common nomenclature.

[catwell]

Yes, an octet is basically a byte (B) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octet_(computing)). Note that it's less easy to confuse it with bit this way...

[jtmcmc]

There are likely amortized fixed costs per user + as other people have stated opportunity costs that make your 2-3 dollars have negative value to the company vs. you as a free user.

[paulcole]

From their perspective:

You're asking them to change their services just for you before you've even started paying. Just imagine the headache you'll be to deal with once you feel entitled as a paying customer.

[manishsharan]

I guess it is my civic duty to point out that Google drive does not have native support for Linux , lest this point be lost in the conversation.

[blfr]

I use Linux primarily and have three G Suite accounts. It drives (heh) me crazy. They even moved from syncing to this FUSE-like Drive File Stream on Windows but still nothing for Linux.

Meanwhile Dropbox has a CLI client for your headless servers.

Is there a reason? I just want to understand.

[GhostVII]

There are lots of unofficial clients that work quite well. Drive is pretty good, if you like manually pushing and pulling files, which I actually find kind of nice

https://github.com/odeke-em/drive

[Eridrus]

Have you found any good software for handling backups on Google Drive? Their pricing is appealing, but I haven't really done the research to see what the software is like.

[slivanes]

After CrashPlan closed their Home user plan this month, I have moved to using Arq Backup. I now only pay a few pennies every month and I still get to have versioned backup of my household shared network drive.

[CPAhem]

Depends on your operating system. If you are using Windows, Syncdocs is pretty reliable at backing up to Google Drive.

http://www.syncdocs.com/2011/09/backup-your-files-to-google-...

[cbhl]

For what it's worth, I am grandfathered into a $238/year billing plan and love it.

If you want $/GB, try Backblaze's B2 or Amazon S3.

[jostmey]

Dropbox is completely unresponsive to individual users. I want more space beyond the 1 TB for their personal plan. You would think they would want to take my money. How hard is it to offer more space? They offer more space to their business users.

My only choice is to get a business plan that costs x4.5 as much and provides me with 3 users accounts that I don't need. They're going to force me to switch to a competing provider like GDrive or SpiderOak

[braderhart]

G Suite annual plan is $99 and includes unlimited storage.

[kevinios]

To clarify, I do not need more storage, I already have what I need with Dropbox + Drive (that I already pay for). But I need more storage on Dropbox, because that's my preferred way of handling Cloud storage (having the files on my computer at all times) and I love that Dropbox has been pioneering the field with a great product.

I want to support them, but not at 5x the price of competitors.

[dchuk]

Maybe their product is worth the price because the features you just rattled off aren't provided by other companies to a satisfactory degree and therefore Dropbox is 5x better than competitors for you?

[dotsh]

They make great software, service and hire very talented people. Everything costs and you are not will to pay merely $10 a month? It's just silly.

[marksomnian]

GP does raise a valid point though. Most consumers don't pay for a product with cheaper, comparable alternatives just because they are feeling philanthropic.

The fact of the matter is, if Company A doesn't meet their needs but Company B does, they will pay Company B, and no amount of great software, service, and wages for very talented people will change that.

[fulafel]

Nitpick: G suite is 1 TB per user for <5 users.

[S3raph]

so true, I would instantly pay if they would offer some 2-5$ plan.