> They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better.

I'm not sure on what you base this opinion. We do sync much, much better, and that's no coincidence--we work very hard on it (I'm new on this team, so I deserve essentially zero personal credit). It is our business. We're not an advertising company--doing sync well translates directly to dollars for us.

On a technical level, it is extremely nontrivial to get right multiplatform, in the face of races, vague filesystem semantics, application-specific behavior, offline, etc. Our competitors aren't even trying things like infinite (https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...).

We're not sitting still, though. We're actually building a next generation sync engine right now (btw, more Rust @ Dropbox). The plan is that this will put even more distance between us and others.

Also: thank you for Linux support :)

I would add:

* They only offer one service. I consider this a feature: they're not off building smart cars, they're not about to release a Dropbox wearable.

* It's not tied to any platform (Microsoft, Apple, Google). It's their core product. They have to be dependable.

* They charge money. None of my folders are brought to me by coca-cola. They're not "Sorted based on intelligent algorithms". And never has Dropbox prompted me with "Check out what documents are trending with your friends!"

* They don't encourage me to just keep everything "on the cloud". All my data is still on my devices.

It's a solid, dead simple, stable product that I hope never goes away.

I'd like to see some evidence that sync is actually better in a significant way that is noticeable to the user - noticeable enough to warrant an incredible premium. For example, $10/month or $100/year gets me full office for my entire home and mobile, 1TB of storage, and Skype minutes (not that anyone cares about that perk). If its just for one person, that goes down to $7/month or $70/year. Why should I pay $10/month for just 1Tb of storage and slightly better sync?

EDIT: After reading some other comments, I see some evidence that your syncing is in fact better. It might be useful to highlight that specifically rather than making the blanket statement (e.g. faster, more robust rather than better). Now I might take a look at dropbox especially as my reliance on Office is decreasing.

Yep, we're definitely aware of MS's placeholders. Infinite is different in several key ways, not the least of which is that it is cross-platform. And doing this well on Mac is particularly tricky.

More detail on the tech blog:

https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/going-deeper-with-pro...

My only complaints currently are the slow initial sync and the stuff infinite will fix.

For professional use I don't see the price as a problem. For personal use I would love some "cold storage" with cheaper per GB price, but familiar interface (just drop pictures to some folder and they would disappear from disk and end up in storage).

With the Dropbox brand there might be more opportunities in business world. Companies are for example still moving lots of stuff via (S)FTP.

So, thanks for that :)

Also, changing markets are part of the difficulty for almost all businesses. Apple would have been in serious peril of losing the business case of their ipods once everyone else was making cheaper devices with all of ipod functionality (plus phone calls!); fortunately they adapted.

It's always been that way. Individual accounts make very little money compared to enterprise accounts. Individual accounts significantly contribute to mindshare, but don't pay the bills.

Dropbox and Box have recently been named as Leaders by Gartner in their magic quadrant (normally reg-walled, but pic in this recent article [1]). Microsoft and Google have been named as Challengers.

Dropbox actually runs a pretty innovative shop [2] on a technical level. For the enterprise, Google and Microsoft offer basic run-of-the-mill storage bundled with their respective office-and-apps suites, while Dropbox and Box have a similar approach of offering APIs to make it possible to create addons or apps that integrate with the datastore or individual documents.

In a way, this enables line-of-business apps to be built that use Dropbox as backend storage and operate on documents stored in Dropbox, which has the capability to challenge a Word or Excel-based workflow.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/gartner-enterprise-file-stora...

[2] https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/

Is there any source where we can find the % of revenue coming from enterprise vs small accounts for the average Saas co.

They are, however, pushing hard not just for enterprise customers, but for service contracts and "Box Consulting" services. These are where companies like IBM, etc. really make bank.

So this suggests that individual accounts like those Dropbox is more well-known for, are either unprofitable or very low-margin. This may also explain why Dropbox charges more than everyone else.

They don't split out enterprise revenue but do talk about all their enterprise clients and that it is 59% of the Fortune 500.

https://www.dropbox.com/business

Not sure. The number of people where saying "hey go pay for this yourself" isn't acceptable behavior I suppose?

The pricing seems pretty straightforward - both are priced per user and business is more expensive. It just seems to be a price vs features trade off unless I'm missing something.

It might seem like 32GB is a good baseline, but I am using 3.1 GB on my 4 year old smartphone and 16GB is probably plenty for the vast majority of people. But, if your actually recording video etc then 32GB is not that useful.

32GB flash drives are like 8$. So, Apple saves a few dollars on millions of phones and people who think they might actually needs extra storage get a significant amount.

I'm still on Dropbox because:

    - Dropbox has a Linux client; meaning they actually give
      a shit about me as their customer; yes, you can find 
      either half-baked / broken projects for Google Drive 
      or have to trust yet another third party with all your data 
      (e.g. Insync), but none of that works for me. Of course,
      Dropbox might choose to stop supporting Linux, but 
      that day will be the day when I'm dropping them.
      

    - Dropbox has a 1 year versioning add-on, that works 
      for all your files. My data is very important to me
      and Google Drive only does 1 month, whereas OneDrive
      only does versioning for Office documents. Basically
      OneDrive is completely useless as a backup solution -
      get a ransom virus on your computer and watch in horror
      how your data is gone

    - the desktop client is probably the best and has nice 
      touches to it. It can sync from your local LAN and on
      OS X at least it offers to import your photos and it 
      automatically saves your screenshots and generates
      links ready to copy/paste. I mean, the clients of
      of both Google Drive and Onedrive are slow, 
      featureless and unreliable. Not sure what you mean
      by "uninspiring" there     

    - in general it has better integration with third-parties
      than the others, because Dropbox is considered the
      "neutral" solution. MS Office has integration
      with Dropbox for example ;-)

    - the web UI could need improvement, they keep nagging 
      me to try their Business plan, but I'm really not
      using the web UI much, I really don't have much need 
      for it

Also, Google killed Google Talk, Google Reader, Picasa (partially) and Wave. And in the case of Microsoft, OneDrive is just a useless freebie they toss along with that expensive Office 365 subscription in order to justify its value.

I have recently tried Google Drive, OneDrive and Amazon Cloud Drive and none of them compared to Dropbox at all. Syncing was slower or more inconsistent. Dropbox syncing is not always perfect but seems to be a lot better than everything else.

The UI, both in terms of desktop client and website were slower and clunkier with GD/OD/ACD. All seem to make sharing more difficult than Dropbox does. Versioning is questionable.

I haven't tried iCloud Drive in earnest but at first glance I don't see any way to check the status of syncing, nor do I see any indication that files are versioned. So that's really a no go right there. Will it one day be better than Dropbox? Maybe. But it isn't today.

There's also silent corruption and bit rotting that may happen locally and which you wouldn't notice on any of those services. Particularly if you use old filesystems such as HFS+: there are quite a few stories of people losing pictures or finding artifacts in jpg/raw files years later.

I'm sure you're not, but if by any chance you're relying on Dropbox versioning or whatever similar "backup solution" please consider alternatives.

I pay something like 10$/month for 1TB with Drive.

So either a typo or maybe they're saying they have 100GB of stuff in a 1TB plan

What, exactly, does Google Drive do "better" than be a totally hassle free way to sync a folder? I don't really see a lot of room for improvement.

Did I mention it just does what I expect it to do?

I find this argument highly compelling: http://www.michaelrwolfe.com/2013/10/19/why-is-dropbox-more-...

Sure, if you were you start a file syncing dropbox competitor today you would have a hard time, but the position they are in is far more defensible simply because they have a massive user base.

It's the same reason why WhatsApp was acquired for billions, their "value proposition" from a product and feature set point of view was weak, but they had a traction and a massive user base. And having a massive user base is almost all that matters nowadays.

Having a massive user base may be all that matters for inherently social applications, but Dropbox is definitely not one of those.

For example, all the new students in my lab will be using DropBox, because its what their PI uses.

When I tried out Google Drive, syncing was actually incredibly poor. As in, only one computer could synchronize files at a time (meaning, if computer B logs in while computer A is logged in, computer A gets logged out). Since I have multiple computers, this instantly killed Google Drive for me.

In addition, Google Drive (at least back when I tried it out) did not have "instant" file synchronization. Meaning, it took the Google Drive app a minute or two or recognize that files have changed and to upload/download them. Dropbox always recognized changes within a second or two.

Dropbox's web UI was also far better than Google Drive's. When you select multiple files to download on Dropbox's website, it starts instantly. Google Drive makes you wait and even offers to email you when the file are ready to download. Several times, I never actually got those emails.

I've been using Google Drive for years. Since when has it supported local folder syncing? <researching...> oh it looks like Google uses Linux for Android, Linux for Chromebooks, many of their developers run Linux. Lots of their data centres run Linux. But the Google Drive doesn't have a daemon for Linux. The product manager is a shitforbrains and should be fired.

https://www.google.com/drive/download/

It still is, it doesn't sync chunks, but only full files. Moreover, it does not have LAN (peer to peer) sync, which Dropbox does have.

Dropbox's web UI was also far better than Google Drive's. When you select multiple files to download on Dropbox's website, it starts instantly. Google Drive makes you wait

And Dropbox has basic functionality like getting an overview of shared folders/files, which is for some unfathomable reason not possible in Google Drive (instead you have to rely on 3rd party scripts that scan all files).

My university has "unlimited" google drive space, but it is a sad joke. While it is fine for a few google sheets/doc, it can't handle a few GB reliably. The client itself crashes on three different windows versions constantly and is a MAJOR resource hog. Google itself states it is not made to handle things like backups. Some of my folders are not synced correctly, don't know what is going on there. Once it followed a link to a network drive and started copying everything from there to the hard drive until it was full, that was fun. It is also not possible to unsync subfolders (if the app ever loads all folers), which is ridiculous, because my hardrive is not "unlimited" and now I have to make different first level folder for everything that I don't want on my laptop. Talk about usability.

OneDrive is an okay user experience on windows. They tried to partially sync but show all files, which definitely causes confusion. At least they try to innovate here. When they cut down the free tier I moved, because it is not as good as the Dropbox client. It also does some things with synced word files, which I don't fully understand and to be honest my trust is just gone after the privacy turd of Windows 10 (which I use and find OK otherwise). Copy.com was very promising but was shut down for small time users.

I used Box.com only shortly, wasn't even close to Dropbox at that time. Probably still doesn't have a Linux client.

TLDR: I started paying for Dropbox and am rather happy. Small innovations like the scanning features eliminate friction even more, so they are working on things that I actually use. Dropbox is miles ahead of its competition.

Google Drive on Mac though... Complete and total Hell of an experience. Really wanted to use it because Google/Gmail. But, we always had:

* Syncing issues with the team,

* CPU resources were insane,

* Freezing when closing the app,

* Tying to upload a relatively large file (~8gb) would just trash our home network.

Maybe it was just our setup though. I would go back to them in a heartbeat if they worked on anything. :/

Many things do some of that. Few do it all.

I'm curious why you think their competitors are superior?

Having tried all the major solutions, Dropbox is by far my favorite. It just works—I don't have to manually control files, I don't have to worry about being forced into a janky web editor, and I don't have to think.

- Better integration with Google Apps. - Better integration with various Android apps. - More free space.

Perhaps not as easy as Dropbox but can't see it being a winning USP.

I read somewhere that Google Drive has a Linux client used by Google enployees internally—so if it were significant, it would probably only be a matter of time before this client would be released for public use.

I don't think it is significant though.

> It's not difficult to mount Box on Linux

It is, I've been there.

> Google Drive integration comes built into Nautilus IIRC

All available Google Drive "integrations" for Linux are complete shit. The only one that works is Insync.com, a commercial solution that implies you have to give the access to all of your data to yet another third-party.

> I read somewhere that Google Drive has a Linux client used by Google enployees internally

This just adds salt to injury. In other words they don't give a crap about their customers, preferring instead to just sit on that big pile of money they make from advertising and intruding on their users' lives.

> I don't think it is significant though.

But of course it is. Anything having to do with file storage also has to do with servers and Linux is the most popular server operating system, successfully used as a home server as well. For cheap you can setup a Raspberry Pi, with an external hard-drive and you could sync all of your files, as a private backup. Heck, all sorts of projects could use Google Drive for online storage.

The actual significance is that they don't want people to do this, plus the Linux desktop competes with both Android and Chrome OS, being a conflict of interest. And like any other company that wants to control the underlying platform, for lock-in purposes, they only develop apps on a need-to-do basis, only for really popular platforms and they aren't doing a good job on non-Google OSes. For example their iOS apps are inferior and with less features than the Android ones. Microsoft has taught them well.

Sure, compared to buying a physical drive it is expensive, or compared to setting up your own VPS, but there are clear downsides to those options.

I recently looked into moving form our current (really shitty yet fascinatingly expensive) cloud storage solution, and even though I still have a grudge against them for shutting down Mailbox...Dropbox was by far the best solution for us.

I can have a linux box running and connected to all those dropbox accounts giving us local physical backups of all that dropbox stuff.

I don't see how I can easily do that with apple or google. Maybe there are other newer services that can do that, but I don't want to take the time to figure it all out.

My NAS has coherent open source alternatives to heaps of cloud stuff including Dropbox:

https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing

https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2015/10/sync-performance/

You might be surprised how much that actually matters.

Disclaimer: I used to work at Dropbox, so I'm biased.