Great move. Brings pricing on bar with Google Drive, Microsoft One Store and probalbly the upcoming iCloud Drive.
I wonder if they still keep everything on Amazon S3. I'm sure most users will not fill up the Terabyte, but still S3 costs 330USD per Terabyte per year (not including costs for outbound traffic) (http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/).
As far as I understand Dropbox is still using Amazon S3. S3 according to their pricing calculator is roughly $26/month per TB (not including outbound traffic). I'm sure because of Dropbox's multi-PetaByte scale they have negotiated better prices with AWS. I wouldn't be surprised if they are paying $20/month per TB. The amount Amazon charges for data-transfer is quite crazy roughly $120/month per TB. If about 10% of data on dropbox is transferred out on a monthly basis than Dropbox total cost for storage is roughly $20 + 0.1 * $120 = $32/month per TB. Thus in order to break-even they are probably expecting the average paying user to use less than 30% of the 1 TB space. (In reality that is less since Dropbox has a free-tier they need to amortize along with marketing expenses, employee costs etc ..)
I think that is the reason why they dont do other smaller plans. And adding data dedup along with some heavy discount to your equation they may break even with the pricing. But that still dont include other expenses you listed.
While some would argue dropbox to built their own DC. I still dont see it as a viable solution. Google, Apple, and May be Amazon dont need to make money from these Storage. And all 3 gets to leverage their existing infrastructure.
Well, almost (I paid 79 euros for 1TB + Office 2013). I don't really see how Dropbox is going to survive this price war as the others don't need to directly profit from these services (at least not in the near future). Dropbox cannot really cross-finance the storage costs as this is its main business.
I pay $9.99 a month for Office 365, which comes with a terabyte of OneDrive. Except that I can have five accounts on my Office 365 subscription, and EACH OF THEM gets a terabyte of OneDrive, plus each gets full access to Office 2013 and the Office webapps. It's a much better deal than Dropbox, even after this price drop.
Google, MS, and Apple can also afford to abandon or kill their cloud storage services. They'll do just that if said services don't generate a billion dollars a year in revenue fast enough.
Dropbox, however, is a one trick pony. Expect them to stick around as a premium priced service. Until someone acquires them and ruins everything...
Apple's strategy has never been to create products just for kicks and kill them off later. They spend a lot of time thinking about what they should be making, and focus just on that.
I trust that iCloud, in some iteration, will be around for as long as people are buying iMacs and iPhones.
Microsoft, miraculously, has been changing their spots lately, but I expect Windows Live Folders – I mean, Windows Live Skydive – or wait, just Skydive – er, I mean Onedrive – will be around in some iteration. What that will mean, though, is another question. They killed off Games for Windows Live pretty unceremoniously, and now Dark Souls, among other games, just straight up won't work properly. You can't save your game if you aren't connected to Games for Windows Live, which you can't do, retroactively crippling third party games.
So for throwing my documents onto so that they still exist after I wipe my Windows machine for the Nth time, Skydive is great, but I don't yet trust them to change direction/focus and ruin any plans businesses have made around them.
Google… well, they've cancelled enough stuff that I can't trust them with anything important related to business or lifestyle both.
They de-dupe files and surely have negotiated with Amazon. Still seems like they should start opening their own data centers otherwise they never have a chance beating their own supplier at price.
I wouldn't be surprised to see them buy up a company like Backblaze. It seems like a reasonable fit; Dropbox is already moving from document sync to 'all your stuff' sync. Adding straight-up backup would be a logical next step, and Backblaze has a huge amount of experience designing, building, and managing massive storage infrastructure.
The biggest difference with Backblaze would seem to be that their service can easily assume minimal reads; besides the backup index, the vast majority of their disk usage is probably one-time writes, plus the occasional massive bulk read.
I had the same moral objections as you and I've been using btsync (http://www.bittorrent.com/sync) and must admit it works great. My archive is not that big tough, ymmv.
To be honest I won't use dropbox again, even if Rice quits, since btsync is vastly superior for my use cases.
Don't single out Ms. Rice. Have you checked who made your jeans? Or why tomatoes are cheap at the local grocery store? Or the latte you paid $8 at Starbucks?
I unfortunately can't avoid produce and my pants (although I'd sure like to!), or thoroughly vet all of my local coffee shops' bean sources. I can, however, choose not to use this service.
You can find most clothing produced in the US so at least you're mostly guaranteed that the workers were at or above minimum US labor standards. And chances are any cotton/wool are of domestic origin as well.
If privacy matters use http://owncloud.org same experience like Dropbox with desktop client. Or host your data under the german privacy law like https://owner.io 500 GB for $ 89 per month.
Spideroak, but my storage needs aren't incredibly high. I only use it for old code archives. Everything else is on gdocs.
edit: if I'm putting a huge file up (last one that comes to mind is one my dad shot of him driving his MG TC), I put it up on S3 so he can share it around.
Mount Dropbox as a network drive. Smart local cache. Access the data on demand without syncing the repo in first. Also supports gdrive, s3, sftp, onedrive, box and more.
Makes a 1TB account make a lot more sense if you only have a 128GB SSD. Use selective sync with the primary client to only sync a portion of your Dropbox. Then use ExpanDrive to offload the rest and access it as needed.
I've been a daily user since before it was called Expandrive... I can't even remember the old name now, SFTPDrive? Anyhow it's been about 7 years that I've been using it. Definitely worth the money.
I've used ExpanDrive since about two major versions ago, and it's a very good product that I'd recommend to anyone that wants to interact with remote storage.
That is very shameless indeed... However it is warranted. I've actually been looking for something like this, especially a something like this that supports Hubic!
ExpanDrive is one of those names I've heard for years, over and over. Looking at the feature list, I can see why. Thanks for making such an amazing app!
I'd really like a 100gb for $40/year instead. I'd be happy to upgrade but can't justify paying $100/year. I know there are logical arguments that it's just $60 more per year etc. But this is how I feel and I'm sure I'm not alone in this kind of thinking.
- Dropbox is the only major service provider with native support for Linux, so they are the only ones that value me as a customer. I've got machines running Ubuntu Linux, OS X, Windows, Android, iOS and Windows Phone (freaking yes). Dropbox is the only one with native integration for all of them.
- Dropbox is the only one that doesn't treat this service as a complementary to another product. Google for example has been guilty of releasing cheap services, then killing them or raising their price. I'm tired of that.
I don't have a 1TB drive on my laptop so I'm not even sure how I can make use of all that space. I don't know how to sync things with Dropbox without actually putting that space it uses on my laptop.
Dropbox has 'selective sync' in preferences on your computer. You can select what to sync and what not to sync. Comes in handy with only 128gb SSD in my Air.
Having a 128GB Air, it would be nice if the client could do selective sync but also sync to more than one volume. I keep my iTunes stuff on a separate drive, but that's one of the first things I would want to sync with 1TB of space.
as @kalleboo suggested, symlinks are good too. I actually symlink my 'Google Drive' folder inside my Dropbox folder so I have that content "backed up', so to speak.
Get into video editing. I think my computer has access to about 6TB directly and another 16 or so in other various places.. struggling to find things to clear out :)
I use Onedrive with 1TB = $30 / year, which also allows me to use Office documents with clients of mine (who all use Microsoft Office and Outlook.) The convenience of the "syncing folder" is still the same, and I trust that Msft will be around longer.
I got 200GB for free with my Surface and I migrated away from Dropbox almost immediately.
The thing I like most about it is that it's totally transparent, moreso than the Dropbox client. It also does some kind of transparent archiving (easily switched off on a per-file or directory level) that removes local files if they haven't been used for a while and automatically re-downloads them if you try to access them. Perfect for directories full of photos.
The biggest flaw I've found is that it doesn't support long path names. npm stores its modules in very deep directory structure that absolutely will not sync.
My experience with Onedrive (when it was Skydrive) was fairly straightforward: the OS X client crashed all the time, when it even started properly at all, and the Windows 8.1 integration worked flawlessly. Dropbox, on the other hand, works flawlessly on both.
I trust that Microsoft will be around longer vs. Dropbox in its current form, but I'm still not convinced that Microsoft 'gets it' yet. With the new third-party cloud integration in iOS 8 and Yosemite I think this is a great opportunity for both to pick up a lot of users, though, and it'll even the playing field as far as engineering goes, so this is a good time to be on either one.
I agree. I have the $99/year plan. It's like getting Office for free. I'd love to support Dropbox monetarily as I've been there since the early days, but having an integrated office suite beats it out.
What they should do is partner with Corel and offer Wordperfect X7 with Pro, or have a $129/year version that includes it.
Really good, a lot of space and Dropobox software works very well. I'm a great fan of this company (I wrote this every time here on HN).
But... I'm currently using Amazon S3 with Glacier, it's just USD 0,01 per Gigabyte/Month. Good when you just want to make backups.
I also use BitSync, that uses the torrent network to you spread your files between the configured computers. A different approach but it's also works very well.
You can use a VPN to virtually teleport yourself to US or many other places. Some VPN-providers even give you a free month, enough to sign up for Dropbox. A friend of a friend of mine (...) did exactly this with Dropbox. ;-)
I recently started using Dropbox to share a folder between two linux Desktops (a household shared Calibre ebook library). My criteria were: Free for some level of service (5GB or so), and decent desktop integration (It baffles me that Google Drive still doesn't have this).
After a bit of experience with the service, I now have a third criteria: a case sensitive backend. I have had to unsnarl several dozen problems in the last week simply as a result of file and directory name changes where the only change was in capitalization (Dropbox then creates a new folder or file with '(Case Conflict)' appended to the name).
Any suggestions for a replacement that meets all three criteria?
In Hubic (by OVH) you pay 10 euro / month for 10 TB. So it is more expensive if you need 1 TB, but if you need more then it can be nice option. https://hubic.com/
Nope nope nope. I can't for the life of me figure out how to cancel my damn account with them. They correspond only in French and my wife (who happens to be French) cannot figure out how to cancel either. They keep dinging me with a stupid €1 fee every month and I can't make it stop!
Your FAQ took 2 minutes to load the front page, I don't see anything about canceling accounts on it, and the forums are full of other people with exactly my problem. Can't you just make it easy to cancel an account, what the hell is your problem?
Dropbox is adding more space for the same old price. They are removing the various pricing tiers on Pro and give you 1TB for the 9.99/month or 99/year. My pricing is in euros, but I assume it is the same numbers for dollar prices.
Also looks like the old Packrat offering is going away and being replaced with "Extended Version History". I have a notification on my account saying if I want to continue having the Packrat with the old price I need take action before November 1st, 2014.
Glad to see permissions for shared files. We set up a shared folder for all of our family to upload our wedding photos. A few weeks later we discovered someone had deleted a couple folders and wiped the photos from everyone's machine. I didn't realize this would happen, and so Ididn't have a backup and had to go around to everyone to collect them again.
The problem I have with Dropbox along with all the other solutions is that I don't know of any way to do trust no one encryption including file names other then a massave truecrypt volume. If anyone knows a solution for this on either Windows or Linux I'd like to know about it.
It's quite heavy, but Tahoe-LAFS [0] is here for that. Dropbox becomes a simple HDD in the cloud, it only stores stuff and has no logic whatsoever. See [1] for an example of how you can use it (along with other providers to increase resilience of your data)
I'm using Boxcryptor Classic on daily basis for many of my projects and it works really well. The only problem I have seen was caused by Dropbox path lenght limitation. If you opt to also encrypt the file/directory names that paths quickly become too long for Dropbox in certain cases (for example Java projects which tend to have deep directory structures).
I decided that a good compromise is to leave the file names unencrypted and just crypt the contents. This way it is also easier to recover some old versions via Dropbox Web UI if needed (you don't see the contents, but at least you easily see what file you are dealing with).
mega.co.nz seems like the closest you'll get, but their Linux sync client has been "coming soon" for a year (you can always use the Chrome/Firefox plugins though, it's just not seamless)
Well buddy let me help you out. Since I have a system that does exactly what you're asking for on Debian Linux. I set it up a long time ago so I may be forgetting something.
Only an idiot would do "security stuff" blindly without researching on their own and my personal security hangups do not necessarily match anyone elses on the planet. So thats the disclaimer. Given that disclaimer:
Assuming a sane linux like Debian, as root "apt-get install fuse encfs". Make sure encfs shows up in the "lsmod | grep encfs" list. Make sure your username is in the fuse group, so "man adduser" or hope "adduser jareds fuse". If you add yourself to a group, you're not "really" in that group until you log out and log back in. That sounds like an awful amount of work but its really about 5 minutes. (and I do groups in LDAP, you probably don't, and I don't remember if this is proper syntax for old fashioned local files)
In yer ~/Dropbox, make a directory encfs
In ~/Dropbox/encfs make directories for your stuff. Lets be uncreative and make a directory called passwords to store passwords lists and things
Make a script in ~/Dropbox/encfs called encfs.sh and chmod a+x it so you can run it.
#!/bin/bash
# This script is ~/Dropbox/encfs/encfs.sh
# Dont forget to chmod a+x this script
# apt-get install fuse encfs
# make sure fuse shows up in lsmod | grep fuse
# make sure user is in group fuse as in adduser vince fuse and log out and log back in
echo We are now mounting your passwords directory aka ~/passwords
I'm making some assumptions about the locations of your home directory. You should be able to figure it out. I use AFS at home which makes for long path names. Others use NFS. Whatever. It seems self explanatory enough?
That unmount command will fail if its not mounted. Thats OK. The reason why this is necessary is if the system crashes or who knows what, sometimes the fuse mount gets stuck and can't be re-added by encfs. Annoying. But trying to unmount cures a stuck fuse mount.
Run it and I forget how you set your password. Likely it prompts. Been a long time since I set this up and I forget how to create. The script above is great for remounting an existing encfs, it is a somewhat edited version of what I use.
Anyway assuming you get it working go visit ~/passwords, and make a couple files. Don't matter what, just df > test1, free -m > test2 its all good enough. Go visit ~/Dropbox/encfs/passwords and see instead of test1 and test2, two filenames looking like line noise and the contents look like line noise. Edited to emphasize its one encrypted file per decrypted file, not a single giant file.
If you're ever bored, look at the xml file ~/Dropbox/encfs/passwords/.encfs6.xml So I'm using 256 bit AES with 1024 byte blocks, OK then.
Encfs is no speed demon. I wouldn't go putting 1080p high def video files on it. Then again I have no idea why I'd want to encrypt those.
(edited to add, I'm in "submitting too fast" prison, but to answer webmaven's question, wrapping in encfs also fixes the case conflict problem that dropbox has... you could presumably use UTF-8 filenames for all encfs cares, the encrypted filenames will look like 32 characters of line noise no matter what you name the file)
I'd much prefer 500GB for the same price that I can use to share our collected documents with one or two people in my immediate family without having to pay for the same space again for each of them. Dropbox for Business is too expensive, Dropbox Pro is too individual.
I'd recommend Office 365 Home Premium. It includes 5 user accounts, each getting 1TB of OneDrive storage and access to the full MS Office Suite. The retail price is $99/year, but you can typically find discounts, e.g. here it's $70/year http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/917386-REG/microsoft_6...
The native integration with Windows 8 is also quite nice. If you're not on Windows it still might be worth considering just based on price alone (especially if you use MS Office).
Finally! This is boon for all the RAW format lovers.
To see how outdated their pricing was - One could buy a $179 Chromebook to get 100GB Google Drive free for 2 years. Still cheaper than what Dropbox used to be, and you got a Chromebook!
Well, this is partly true. But this is a consequence of the fact that Google has a lot of other ways to make money than Google Drive -- like, say, those Chromebooks. (Does Google actually make money on Chromebooks? Google kinda baffles me, they have more 'loss leaders' than they do revenue sources, even though the sheer amount of revenue those sources produce means they're still totally profitable. Anyway.) Dropbox makes money on Dropbox storage. That's it.
I've been following the consumer storage space closely because of my startup Snapatr. Dropbox was probably forced to do this because their growth rate was slowing down. Merging all the plans and charging $99/year for 1 TB was a pretty smart move as the can amortize the cost of people who are going to use the full 1 TB against the people who are using say 50GB of space. I'm guessing the reason we haven't heard about Dropbox's IPO recently is because of slowing growth rates. The new pricing plan was to spur growth rates at the cost of revenue. Ideally you want to be ensuring consistent growth rates pre-IPO. It is unlikely we'll be hearing about Dropbox's IPO in 2014/2015 because of the intense competition, reduced profitability and slowing growth rates.
For me and my needs, dropbox still has the best experience for cloud storage, but I don't see the downward pricing trend for cloud anything abating any time soon. What will they do to innovate, I wonder?
It seems like whichever cloud storage provider nails the "family plan" is going to make a lot of money. My bet is that Apple will do that for iCloud before other companies figure it out.
So they finally give in and price it the same as Google Drive and iCloud. I guess they were expecting a huge lost of customer when iCloud launch in a few days, Their CEO said they wont compete on price, what happen to that?
And even if Amazon gave them a 50% discount, It would still be $150+ per year for 1TB excluding bandwidth. I wonder how are things going to work out for them.
I'd gladly upgrade if they offered something in between, let's say 500G for $5 a month/ $50 per year. Current pricing keeps my stuff on Google, it's not as useful (still waiting for a Drive client for Linux) but it's cheaper.
Jottacloud is a Norway based Dropbox clone. Their datacentres are powered by green energy and their Pro account offers unlimited storage across unlimited devices for $9,90/month (even cheaper than Dropbox's new lower prices). To be honest, it was a bit glitchy with regards sync-ing, when I first signed up about a year ago, but it's come on in leaps and bounds since and is now pretty much as seamless as Dropbox for me. Usual referrer link below gets us both some extra GB, when you sign up for the free account:
I wonder if they still keep everything on Amazon S3. I'm sure most users will not fill up the Terabyte, but still S3 costs 330USD per Terabyte per year (not including costs for outbound traffic) (http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/).