[rjh29]

So far this year they've discontinued Paper (app), Passwords, Send and Track, Vault and Capture. Incredibly, Vault was discontinued by automatically turning PIN-protected folders into regular unprotected ones!

Would be stupid to rely on them for anything other than basic file storage at this point.

[bayindirh]

On the other hand, they are adding tons of invisible yet useful features like auto OCR on PDFs, auto-transcription of audio files, a much better search, etc.

It's not suitable to store anything that sensitive, but for regular stuff, they are becoming a powerhouse, and the web app allows you to work very efficiently and fast.

I personally like Dropbox, and don't find the direction they're heading ill-advised.

[pempem]

The direction is great. The communication and customer support leave a lot to be desired.

The thing is, its hard to have a product thats important to you and does cool things but also you don't rely on for anything crucial. Esp when its file storage.

[bayindirh]

> you don't rely on for anything crucial. Esp when its file storage.

Crucial and sensitive are different things. I trust them with the files I actively and regularly use, but I don't trust them with anything that needs encryption, which is a tiny sliver of what I have in terms of files.

Keeping things backed up is an entirely different conversation, though.

[tomrod]

That is far afield what I'd consider appropriate use of my data. I'll be discontinuing my very old subscription.

[adithyassekhar]

Are these opt in?

[AlexandrB]

> Would be stupid to rely on them for anything other than basic file storage at this point.

Ironically I stopped using Dropbox when they started trying to branch out into all the other stuff. I doubt I'll go back at this point though.

[causality0]

I stopped using Dropbox when they started limiting free accounts to three devices and I suddenly got a lot of confused and irritated messages from all the people I'd evangelized into using Dropbox.

[caycep]

what did you end up using for file storage?

[dunham]

I wrote off paper when they announced (later 2019) that everyone would be migrated to the new storage in a few months and then kept pushing the date out over the next four years.

It seemed that they were not allocating any resources to the project.

I did check back every year or so for entertainment purposes. Mine was migrated in November of 2024.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200615075409/https://www.dropb...

[gcr]

To my best understanding, my old paper documents were just deleted. I can still log into the old paper.Dropbox.com but see an empty list. I assume this means my account was never migrated.

[dunham]

Around November 2024, mine were all moved to a folder tree "Migrated Paper Docs" in my dropbox in a folder tree, as .paper files. The web UI says the folder has 84 decedents. My backup, done through the API years ago has 118, but there may be some deleted ones in there.

If I go to paper.dropbox.com, I only see six under "starred" in the left hand side (after unfolding the tree) and two in the main area. After opening another starred one, which links into dropbox, the main area now shows three.

So the migration to dropbox did mostly work for me, but whatever was left at paper.dropbox.com is messed up.

[smileybarry]

> Incredibly, Vault was discontinued by automatically turning PIN-protected folders into regular unprotected ones!

Oh that's great! I currently use OneDrive because of Personal Vault (and other smaller reasons), because no one else offered something like it. I didn't even know about Vault, but I guess that's for the better because I wouldn't want the folder holding my ID etc. becoming accessible to every single app connected to my Dropbox.

There had to have been a better way to discontinue it. Even making the folder require migration on next access would've been better than silently worsening it.

[privatelypublic]

Why rely on them at all? Dollar per GB they cost more than literally any other solution with file storage.

[homebrewer]

Years ago, their desktop client was the only one among popular similar services that supported proper delta sync while also covering all major platforms. Absolutely indispensable if you used it with things like TrueCrypt containers, where changing one byte within would cause most sync clients to resend the whole 50 GB, or however large it was. Dropbox handled this fine and would finish in a couple of seconds (actually sending new data, not just pretending it did that).

I don't know how it is these days, wouldn't be surprised if other commercial services still haven't figured it out.

[smileybarry]

Google Drive added delta sync this year, while OneDrive added it in 2020 apparently.

I also overstayed with Dropbox for that reason, and now I don't see a real reason for their higher $/GB. Though their client is more stable than Google Drive from my experience (which randomly stops working on Windows often enough), OneDrive has been rock solid for me on both Windows and macOS.

[Arnavion]

I do this with a WebDAV server (Fastmail Files) by breaking up my encrypted volume into 10MiB chunks, so that the sync has the granularity of that, plus a FUSE script to present the directory containing the chunks as a single block device for mounting. Obviously not cross-platform though.

[layer8]

AFAIK that's still their USP.

[a0123]

The only cloud storage that has a decent Linux client is Dropbox.

Koofr is a decent cloud solution. Their client is horrendous across all platforms and lacks the most basic functionalities.

You can argue OneDrive / GoogleDrive are semi decent if you also use insync, which adds another license to purchase when a basic client should come free with the service you've already bought.

And no, rsync doesn't come even close to it in terms of functionality/simplicity, no matter how much hardened Linux users who haven't been outside since 1988 are trying to convince everyone otherwise.

[pacifika]

I can recommend JottaCloud.

[bayindirh]

Because they provide nice features on top of basic file storage. If you use them, they justify the cost. If you don't need them, there's always pCloud.

[scarface_74]

With either Google or Microsoft, you get a complete office suite for the same price including storage

[derefr]

Right, and that's what Dropbox Paper was probably originally an attempt at working toward, from the opposite direction — "We have Google Drive, now we just need Google Docs."

It should be obvious that "a whole collaborative office suite" is not the kind of thing a regular company can build as an extension play... but somehow some manager inside Dropbox convinced them that direction was possible. At least for a while. Seems they've gradually come to their senses.

[bayindirh]

For various reasons, I have all three of them. There are some missing things in Google and Microsoft's offerings. Namely:

1. App integration (3rd parties can access to a single folder in your Dropbox, allowing "purchase to Dropbox" directly. Many merchants automatically update the files if they receive updates, too.

2. Auto OCR, incl. handwriting. My old comics which are not English are OCRd, and I can do full-text search inside them, which is very useful for me.

3. Fast, auto transcription in many languages. I needed a transcription of a file recently. All services needed memberships, etc. I did it from Google cloud API toolbox. However when I uploaded the the same file to Dropbox, I saw a transcription button. It produced equally good results in way less time.

4. Send-a-copy (aka Transfer). I don't want to share and try to remember to disable links. My Dropbox membership contains a complete "WeTransfer" replacement, and I use it a lot.

5. Request files. I open a link, people send in the files I need, then the "dropbox" closes automatically. I get notifications for uploads, too.

6. Funnily, a working Linux client.

...and possibly more I don't use or can't remember right now.

[privatelypublic]

Does dropbox still N-way "double dip" on #1 by counting the shared folders against your and the authors storage?

[rapidaneurism]

The Linux client is what did it for me, and why I am still using it.

[urda]

I'm still sad what they did to the Mailbox app...