[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