The Dropbox Comp(stratechery.com)
stratechery.com
The Dropbox Comp
https://stratechery.com/2018/the-dropbox-comp/
106 comments
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
If Apple iCloud worked as well as Dropbox, I’d switch in a heartbeat.
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.
Can definitely appreciate this, but I’m married to the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, MacBook Air), so its less of a concern for me.
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.
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...
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...
coming in under 1 Billion is the first sign that this doesn't seem to be super lucrative
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.
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.
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.
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/
You might give gocryptfs [1] a try, with it you can keep [part of] your content encrypted in Dropbox.
[1] https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/
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.
It's a little clunky though, the UI parts are not so graceful visually or performance wise.
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.
Oh yeah, I'm a google drive user and I agree, google drive's apps are so clunky and slow
> 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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
It is shocking how bad GSuite is
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For Mac, Transmit app works pretty well for me. Their transmit iOS app was good also but sadly discontinued.
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.
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.
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
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
> 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”.
Donate it to the FSF, or EFF or Wikipedia or something. Otherwise this sounds like “I’m cheap; give me a discount”.
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 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.
Not wanting to pay is fine. Complaining about it in this manner is cheap.
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"?
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"?
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
In “Go” & “To”, what does the “o” stand for? I assume, the “T” is tera & “G” is giga?
GigaOctet and TeraOctet. In French-speaking countries that’s a quite common nomenclature.
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...
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Meanwhile Dropbox has a CLI client for your headless servers.
Is there a reason? I just want to understand.
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
https://github.com/odeke-em/drive
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.
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.
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-...
http://www.syncdocs.com/2011/09/backup-your-files-to-google-...
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.
If you want $/GB, try Backblaze's B2 or Amazon S3.
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
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
[deleted]
G Suite annual plan is $99 and includes unlimited storage.
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.
I want to support them, but not at 5x the price of competitors.
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?
They make great software, service and hire very talented people. Everything costs and you are not will to pay merely $10 a month? It's just silly.
GP does raise a valid point though. Most consumers don't pay for a product with cheaper, comparable alternatives just because they are feeling philanthropic.
The fact of the matter is, if Company A doesn't meet their needs but Company B does, they will pay Company B, and no amount of great software, service, and wages for very talented people will change that.
The fact of the matter is, if Company A doesn't meet their needs but Company B does, they will pay Company B, and no amount of great software, service, and wages for very talented people will change that.
Nitpick: G suite is 1 TB per user for <5 users.
so true, I would instantly pay if they would offer some 2-5$ plan.
I think one of the opportunities Dropbox missed was being unwilling to replace FTP.
I've built dozens of HTML/Flash/Java uploaders on dozens of different infrastructures, and there's always a host of issues that need to be dealt with. When a product's UX doesn't work with FTP, it requires a lot of extra engineering.
But allowing your customers to move files around with their Dropbox account completely eliminates this problem. The HTML5 File API has largely solved this (though it still exists, I still have to occasionally restart YouTube uploads. YouTube!), but Dropbox could have been the solution, and I can't imagine how many startups weren't built on top of Dropbox because they didn't want to be in the replacing-FTP business.
I've built dozens of HTML/Flash/Java uploaders on dozens of different infrastructures, and there's always a host of issues that need to be dealt with. When a product's UX doesn't work with FTP, it requires a lot of extra engineering.
But allowing your customers to move files around with their Dropbox account completely eliminates this problem. The HTML5 File API has largely solved this (though it still exists, I still have to occasionally restart YouTube uploads. YouTube!), but Dropbox could have been the solution, and I can't imagine how many startups weren't built on top of Dropbox because they didn't want to be in the replacing-FTP business.
I wonder if Dropbox has the capability of entering the PIM space like G-Suite. I get the feeling that there's room for another custom domain email provider beyond the monoculture of Gmail. They had Mailbox at one point. Email is definitely a hard space to get into, but I'd certainly move my domain to it if the price is right and it bundled in a calendar.
Paper has been a huge change in the way my team collaborates on documents, between the very easy sharing and super fast interface. I'd love to see what they can do for email and calendars.
Paper has been a huge change in the way my team collaborates on documents, between the very easy sharing and super fast interface. I'd love to see what they can do for email and calendars.
Paper is interesting but boy have they missed the opportunity so far imho. Paper doesn't come close to what Quip has been able to do, and they failed to capitalize on email. My impression, right or wrong, is that they are very slow at development compared to their competitors.
What I think the article gets right is that Dropbox focused on files - which are being abstracted away. At my current company, we have Dropbox and Google Drive, but it's clear that if we're going to use G-Suite then Dropbox needs to go.
What they could do: with their new-found public status, they could buy Smartsheet to get a solid Google Sheets competitor. I'm sure they can find a calendar provider.
Of course, I'm not confident that they should point their ship into the eye of Office 365 and G-Suite - I just don't see what their other options are.
What I think the article gets right is that Dropbox focused on files - which are being abstracted away. At my current company, we have Dropbox and Google Drive, but it's clear that if we're going to use G-Suite then Dropbox needs to go.
What they could do: with their new-found public status, they could buy Smartsheet to get a solid Google Sheets competitor. I'm sure they can find a calendar provider.
Of course, I'm not confident that they should point their ship into the eye of Office 365 and G-Suite - I just don't see what their other options are.
I can't speak to the business side, but I certainly like Paper much much more than Quip as a product. In general I find integrated multi-function suites to feel janky and half-baked compared to their single-function competitors.
Do you use G-Suite or O365 alongside it? I don't see significant improvement over a Google Doc.
Yes, I use all three. Paper's focus on content vs formatting make Paper feel more elegant and more "meaty" for product development/engineering purposes. Admittedly it's a tough sell over Google Docs for much the same reason that Google Docs was a tough sell of O365 a few years ago—it just doesn't have the functionality to fully replace it. That said, Paper has an elegance about it as a product that reminds me of Facebook vs MySpace ca. 2006, or Slack vs HipChat ca. 2014, where it serves a modern use case in a fundamentally better way, less of a local maximum if you will.
Paper's focus on content vs formatting make Paper feel more elegant and more "meaty" for product development/engineering purposes.
And the support for equations makes it great for sharing research notes as well.
And the support for equations makes it great for sharing research notes as well.
My team has been using https://jupyter.org/ for this purpose.
Agreed on tough sell - I just don't see enough value in Paper to make it worth it. Same is true for Quip by the way.
They've clearly spent a significant amount of product development on building out their enterprise functionality. The functionality there is pretty powerful.
Dropbox has a lot going for it. While the concept of a "file" is constantly being abstracted away by The Powers That Be, its still the most general form of data storage and sharing, and its something every power user will always need. Dropbox has proven that they have unique organizational expertise in this area; competitors have had years to come up with something as powerful as Dropbox Sync, and no one has yet. I'd argue Google is the only company close, and its still not as good.
I might be in the minority, but I am fine with Dropbox's product development speed. They could go out and buy new companies, but I'm afraid they'd start approaching "Atlassian-style" product development; silos of products that only work together through tightly defined integration paths, bad user experiences, promoting a piecemeal "we use Jira but nothing else because they're not the same product" approach instead of a single "Dropbox Experience".
What I'm not fine with is their product direction. Enterprise features are great! But Showcase? Why did they have anyone working on that? They should be focusing on attacking the team collaboration space. Maybe that means building out knowledge base functionality like Quip or Confluence. Maybe that means more Paper-like document types, like powerful spreadsheets or spreadsheet/database hybrids like Airtable. Maybe that means enterprise chat like Slack! Or, maybe foundational PIM tools like email, calendar, contacts, custom domain management, etc. I don't know. But they definitely do feel like they're in a period where they're not sure what direction they should be moving in, and I hope they fix it.
Dropbox has a lot going for it. While the concept of a "file" is constantly being abstracted away by The Powers That Be, its still the most general form of data storage and sharing, and its something every power user will always need. Dropbox has proven that they have unique organizational expertise in this area; competitors have had years to come up with something as powerful as Dropbox Sync, and no one has yet. I'd argue Google is the only company close, and its still not as good.
I might be in the minority, but I am fine with Dropbox's product development speed. They could go out and buy new companies, but I'm afraid they'd start approaching "Atlassian-style" product development; silos of products that only work together through tightly defined integration paths, bad user experiences, promoting a piecemeal "we use Jira but nothing else because they're not the same product" approach instead of a single "Dropbox Experience".
What I'm not fine with is their product direction. Enterprise features are great! But Showcase? Why did they have anyone working on that? They should be focusing on attacking the team collaboration space. Maybe that means building out knowledge base functionality like Quip or Confluence. Maybe that means more Paper-like document types, like powerful spreadsheets or spreadsheet/database hybrids like Airtable. Maybe that means enterprise chat like Slack! Or, maybe foundational PIM tools like email, calendar, contacts, custom domain management, etc. I don't know. But they definitely do feel like they're in a period where they're not sure what direction they should be moving in, and I hope they fix it.
I’m a big fan of Paper, personally. I wish they would make it into a Docusign/Ecosign replacement.
They have all of the tools needed to do it well.
They have all of the tools needed to do it well.
I think with Paper, Dropbox is going more for a collaboration tool than a full suite replacement. When they were trying to do more with Carousel & Mailbox is when things began to feel like they were losing site.
I haven't used Paper, but based on the video it appears to be much more straight forward in team approach than Quip or GDocs. To me Gdocs feels like it's a more full featured replacement to Office and Quip is too simplistic of an approach. Paper seems to perfectly hit the middle ground.
I haven't used Paper, but based on the video it appears to be much more straight forward in team approach than Quip or GDocs. To me Gdocs feels like it's a more full featured replacement to Office and Quip is too simplistic of an approach. Paper seems to perfectly hit the middle ground.
GDocs is definitely a full office suite replacement. It could capture the same use case of Paper, but it tends to be too heavy and focuses too much on formatting.
Quip is a definite competitor. It tends to do better for knowledge base style collaborations, whereas Paper is better for ephemeral collaboration. But it is lightweight and focused enough to be useful for both.
As a sidenote, I really think Google is missing an opportunity here. Drive could really use a Paper-style competitor. Start with the collaboration foundations of Docs, but remove all the cruft. No font changing, no formatting beyond what's in markdown, remove all the menus, streamline the interface, add some integrations like embedding Sheets-style spreadsheets. They'd capture a lot of marketshare that has G-Suite domains, but reaches out to other tools to manage ephemeral collaborations and knowledge bases.
Quip is a definite competitor. It tends to do better for knowledge base style collaborations, whereas Paper is better for ephemeral collaboration. But it is lightweight and focused enough to be useful for both.
As a sidenote, I really think Google is missing an opportunity here. Drive could really use a Paper-style competitor. Start with the collaboration foundations of Docs, but remove all the cruft. No font changing, no formatting beyond what's in markdown, remove all the menus, streamline the interface, add some integrations like embedding Sheets-style spreadsheets. They'd capture a lot of marketshare that has G-Suite domains, but reaches out to other tools to manage ephemeral collaborations and knowledge bases.
When they were trying to do more with Carousel & Mailbox is when things began to feel like they were losing site.
But Carousel was really consumer-focused, whereas Paper is clearly (presented as) a business tool. I think that they realized with Carousel that most Pro users use Dropbox for work, so that is where the money is.
As someone who also uses Dropbox for work, I think that they could make Dropbox even more attractive by adding some services. They should not try to compete heads-on with full office suite, but I can imagine that Paper + Calendaring + Chat could really be awesome for work.
But Carousel was really consumer-focused, whereas Paper is clearly (presented as) a business tool. I think that they realized with Carousel that most Pro users use Dropbox for work, so that is where the money is.
As someone who also uses Dropbox for work, I think that they could make Dropbox even more attractive by adding some services. They should not try to compete heads-on with full office suite, but I can imagine that Paper + Calendaring + Chat could really be awesome for work.
I love dropbox but one of their biggest problems is their refusal to support more than 300,000 files in their sync clients. I have considered moving to google but I need local copies since I often don’t have internet connection but I still need my files. Either way, they have a useful product even if they won’t dominate the enterprise or consumer market.
Oh wow I didn't know about that limitation. Doing `find . -type f | wc -l` I have ~270000 so I am about to hit it. It would be great if they can implement a .dropboxignore so I can get it to stop syncing node_modules folders.
I really wish I could agree with the others saying "It just works" for dropbox sync. I have ran into many other issues around filename casing, file permissions, symlinks, etc in the past.
I really wish I could agree with the others saying "It just works" for dropbox sync. I have ran into many other issues around filename casing, file permissions, symlinks, etc in the past.
shouldn't you be putting your code repositories in something like c:/www folder, and using purely git to track it?
There's lots of 3rd party solutions for .dropboxignore personally I've used many of them and am not a fan of it (perl scripts, 3rd party apps, etc). I wish dropbox would natively implement .dropboxignore, but its probably never going to happen since only a small % of users voice their concerns for it. Average dropbox user probably doesn't care or doesn't know what a .dropboxignore is.
There's lots of 3rd party solutions for .dropboxignore personally I've used many of them and am not a fan of it (perl scripts, 3rd party apps, etc). I wish dropbox would natively implement .dropboxignore, but its probably never going to happen since only a small % of users voice their concerns for it. Average dropbox user probably doesn't care or doesn't know what a .dropboxignore is.
I do use git too. But it's nice to be able to jump between multiple computers without needing to push an incomplete commit to remote (when I get tired from sitting in front of desktop I switch to laptop to code in bed).
Also dropbox's 30 day version history did save me a couple times when I accidentally deleted something before committing. And not having to worry about losing the day's work even if your computer fails is good for peace of mind.
That said this hits a lot of edge cases with dropbox syncing since it's not built for this kind of workflow. Every time you do npm install it will cause thousands of files to sync. I have had the .git folder get corrupted when I start using it before it has fully synced. Or git would handle syncing internal symlinks/permissions/casing differently and I would need to rely on git to restore.
Also dropbox's 30 day version history did save me a couple times when I accidentally deleted something before committing. And not having to worry about losing the day's work even if your computer fails is good for peace of mind.
That said this hits a lot of edge cases with dropbox syncing since it's not built for this kind of workflow. Every time you do npm install it will cause thousands of files to sync. I have had the .git folder get corrupted when I start using it before it has fully synced. Or git would handle syncing internal symlinks/permissions/casing differently and I would need to rely on git to restore.
The only problem with using dropbox in this case, is if you accidentally dump node_modules inside of there, it really makes your file history revisions in dropbox messy.
That and if you have to sync with another PC at home makes your computer sluggish for like half an hour while its syncing
My solution to you is to have your code repos in another storage solution (not dropbox). Unfortunately you would have to pay for that too
Or, you could use a built in IDE that has a autosave local revision history. I know most of the brainstorm products have this feature, such as PHPstorm. This would prevent accidentally deleting something before committing
For incomplete commits / switching computers, I can't really think of any workarounds for this unfortunately. Dropbox is very convenient here. The only solution is to use something like teamViewer and remote into your desktop PC from your laptop
That and if you have to sync with another PC at home makes your computer sluggish for like half an hour while its syncing
My solution to you is to have your code repos in another storage solution (not dropbox). Unfortunately you would have to pay for that too
Or, you could use a built in IDE that has a autosave local revision history. I know most of the brainstorm products have this feature, such as PHPstorm. This would prevent accidentally deleting something before committing
For incomplete commits / switching computers, I can't really think of any workarounds for this unfortunately. Dropbox is very convenient here. The only solution is to use something like teamViewer and remote into your desktop PC from your laptop
This is a great idea. The only current ability I've found to hide files is by entire folders and per machine. Its also less of an ignore as a don't download here. Its really limiting and creates weird folder abstractions I don't need just because I want something to be able to be excluded on a specific computer.
node_modules will muck up jall the big filesync applocations. It's not cloud based, but Resilio Sync supports an IgnoreList file that I use for all my dev folders (whcih are also typically backed up with Git).
Syncthing might be an option for you. Someone is rocking 17 million files in a sync'd folder (https://data.syncthing.net/).
I really want for this to work, but it is so not comparable to Dropbox; Syncthing takes forever to synchronize between machines (all on 1 Gbps LAN) unlike Dropbox, which can saturate my link. It is the best of the Dropbox alternatives I've tried though (having tried almost all) and if it performed better I'd be able to forgive the lack of an iOS client. I'm still evaluating it though (3 hosts, 329GB in 1.3M files).
I have about 750,000 files and 38,000 folders (I compile a lot of stuff). Are you putting everything in just one folder or splitting the folders up? I'm on really old hardware with mechanical drives and 100Mbps LAN so my observations are going to be different than yours.
I started out with just one folder syncing everything in '/home/kindone', that takes 30 minutes just to scan every time I started syncthing. Syncing over the LAN would not saturate my network unless it was a large file. That took about five hours to get everything synced when you have 700,000+ 4 - 400KiB c/c++ files. (It seems to send about 4 - 5 files at a time, someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
I removed '/home/kindone' and creating separate folders in syncthing for things like '/home/kindone/build/linux-4.14', /home/kindone/build/wine', and '/home/kindone/Dropbox'. Created about 65 different folder for various things, added them to my other machine on the LAN (that was annoying). Once they started syncing my 100Mbps LAN was saturated. Starting syncthing now takes 5 minutes to scan everything.
I started out with just one folder syncing everything in '/home/kindone', that takes 30 minutes just to scan every time I started syncthing. Syncing over the LAN would not saturate my network unless it was a large file. That took about five hours to get everything synced when you have 700,000+ 4 - 400KiB c/c++ files. (It seems to send about 4 - 5 files at a time, someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
I removed '/home/kindone' and creating separate folders in syncthing for things like '/home/kindone/build/linux-4.14', /home/kindone/build/wine', and '/home/kindone/Dropbox'. Created about 65 different folder for various things, added them to my other machine on the LAN (that was annoying). Once they started syncing my 100Mbps LAN was saturated. Starting syncthing now takes 5 minutes to scan everything.
With the risk of getting down-voted for being too off-topic, here is my setup and observations:
- the three host range from pretty fast (Coffeelake @ 5 GHz, 32 GiB, Samsung 950 Pro) to just ok fast (some i5 @ 3 GHz, 8 GiB, files from a fast NAS on 10 Gibps)
- I two syncthing folders, with a 90/10 split. Some 155k directories between them. The smaller one is scanned every 6 seconds, the other every hour.
- I have disabled relaying etc. so traffic is only p2p and LAN-only, static IPs.
Observations: Scanning is slow, which is expected. However, even when the scanning is done and Out of Date files are found, nothing happens. Zero bytes are transfered. The syncthing process is running, but at a fairly low rate. Sometimes pausing and resuming seems to start things going, but not always. Even when data is traveling, it's pretty slow, at most 70 MB/s, and usually way under this rate.
Another frustration with Syncthing is that there are entirely too many knobs to frob. I like how setting up Dropbox is stupidly simple and to set up a new host is 1) install Dropbox and 2) add my userid/password, done.
As I have honestly looked for a Dropbox alternative for what must be a decade (primarily because Dropbox, Inc. can read my files) it's truly astonishing to me that nothing else works as well. Of course I have considered writing my own clone, but there are other projects to work on and I don't discount how difficult the problem really is.
EDIT: rewording
EDIT2: FWIW, another "solution" I'm evaluating is to endorse Dropbox but run gocryptfs on top for sensitive files.
- the three host range from pretty fast (Coffeelake @ 5 GHz, 32 GiB, Samsung 950 Pro) to just ok fast (some i5 @ 3 GHz, 8 GiB, files from a fast NAS on 10 Gibps)
- I two syncthing folders, with a 90/10 split. Some 155k directories between them. The smaller one is scanned every 6 seconds, the other every hour.
- I have disabled relaying etc. so traffic is only p2p and LAN-only, static IPs.
Observations: Scanning is slow, which is expected. However, even when the scanning is done and Out of Date files are found, nothing happens. Zero bytes are transfered. The syncthing process is running, but at a fairly low rate. Sometimes pausing and resuming seems to start things going, but not always. Even when data is traveling, it's pretty slow, at most 70 MB/s, and usually way under this rate.
Another frustration with Syncthing is that there are entirely too many knobs to frob. I like how setting up Dropbox is stupidly simple and to set up a new host is 1) install Dropbox and 2) add my userid/password, done.
As I have honestly looked for a Dropbox alternative for what must be a decade (primarily because Dropbox, Inc. can read my files) it's truly astonishing to me that nothing else works as well. Of course I have considered writing my own clone, but there are other projects to work on and I don't discount how difficult the problem really is.
EDIT: rewording
EDIT2: FWIW, another "solution" I'm evaluating is to endorse Dropbox but run gocryptfs on top for sensitive files.
Never heard of gocryptfs, tried it for an hour or two and its rather interesting.
I guess you could ask on the forums, https://forum.syncthing.net about your issues and see what they say.
I guess you could ask on the forums, https://forum.syncthing.net about your issues and see what they say.
Is that info up-to-date? Their new client features should have made that limit meaninglessness a year or so ago!?
Think back to about 2009... there was a company called drop.io that was purchased by Facebook and their product summarily executed. It was a simply and elegantly executed Dropbox, Slack, Box, Discord-ish all-in-one solution. It was about 5-10 years ahead of its time.
There is room for Dropbox to expand and grow revenue beyond file storage/syncing. One hopes the billions they will raise after IPO will be applied to a more drop.io-ish offering.
There is room for Dropbox to expand and grow revenue beyond file storage/syncing. One hopes the billions they will raise after IPO will be applied to a more drop.io-ish offering.
Dropbox keeps getting compared to atlassian, which confuses me. I portend it's VCs lying to themselves about Dropbox's price-to-earnings ratio to justify their $10B fantasy as pricing Dropbox with box's P/E would value it around $7B, a whole 30% lesser than they'd like
Consistently amazed at how many words he can write without saying much of anything.
That's interesting. I got a lot out of it:
- He seems to believe Dropbox is superior technically.
- Box is Dropbox's closest competitor.
- Fundamentally there are two ways of making money from storage, enterprise direct-sales and consumer self-service.
- Box has self-service as a loss-leader for direct-sold enterprise accounts, and accounts for the operating costs of its self-service accounts as a marketing expense.
- Dropbox doesn't; we don't really know Dropbox's cost of customer acquisition, which is a big deal for a consumer product.
- A much greater percentage of Box's accounts are paying customers
- Box can put together customized offerings for enterprise customers in ways Dropbox can't and so Box has negative churn.
- On the other hand, running the business this way means that the early investors in Dropbox (including Drew Houston) kept a far larger part of the company for themselves.
- Box is outperforming Dropbox in the market.
- Atlassian is outperforming both of them.
- File storage is probably not the strategic high ground for enterprise computing, something Thompson used to think.
Dropbox is about to go public. An analysis that suggests they're a niche company is a big deal. Dropbox's investors will be betting that they're not.
- He seems to believe Dropbox is superior technically.
- Box is Dropbox's closest competitor.
- Fundamentally there are two ways of making money from storage, enterprise direct-sales and consumer self-service.
- Box has self-service as a loss-leader for direct-sold enterprise accounts, and accounts for the operating costs of its self-service accounts as a marketing expense.
- Dropbox doesn't; we don't really know Dropbox's cost of customer acquisition, which is a big deal for a consumer product.
- A much greater percentage of Box's accounts are paying customers
- Box can put together customized offerings for enterprise customers in ways Dropbox can't and so Box has negative churn.
- On the other hand, running the business this way means that the early investors in Dropbox (including Drew Houston) kept a far larger part of the company for themselves.
- Box is outperforming Dropbox in the market.
- Atlassian is outperforming both of them.
- File storage is probably not the strategic high ground for enterprise computing, something Thompson used to think.
Dropbox is about to go public. An analysis that suggests they're a niche company is a big deal. Dropbox's investors will be betting that they're not.
I found the article very insightful. I spent the weekend reviewing Dropbox's S1 and had the same issue - they are not being completely honest about their cohort retention numbers. They have created some new metrics/charts that show increasing value but doesn't show the real metrics - what is specific cohort churn etc. This article mentions that very clearly.
Don't get me wrong - Box's initial S1 also had some very abstract cohort metrics. They took some very early cohorts and extrapolated from that. I think they are more open now as there is more stability in those metrics and they are moving in the right direction.
Don't get me wrong - Box's initial S1 also had some very abstract cohort metrics. They took some very early cohorts and extrapolated from that. I think they are more open now as there is more stability in those metrics and they are moving in the right direction.
I think it’s unfocused but there’s a lot of interesting ideas/lessons in here imo.
writing about high level tech and strategy is an art form. you probably want to see deeper detail, more in depth examples? me too. but although he isn't saying much of anything to you, (and sometimes I struggle to understand it too), be careful of dismissing things you don't understand that have gained a lot of validation. The crowd may not always be wrong and I like the challenge of understanding a different mindset from my day to day level of thought.
I'd move back to them if they could implement something similar to Spider Oak, where I can choose where to sync individual folders on the machine. (IE, preserve my /home/username/<documents/pictures/downloads>)
This article is about the low-touch versus high-touch tension of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16421438, illustrated by Dropbox versus Box.
it is a dying business in all means. The brand name might worth something though.
I had dropbox for awhile and I answered a good question which they gave me ~300GB. It was convienent for a few years but I slowly started to not use the service. Collaboration with friends moved to other services. Now, I plan on moving my files off of it to Amazon. I only paid for the pro version for version history. I think its nice as a free service but now since I have so many Apple products and Airdrop I don't really have a need for the product at all. Also, if I want to share larger files or work documents I would always use google docs (now moving to aws work docs). I hope to be off of both Google services and dropbox soon as I really only use Dropbox for archiving stuff I don't want to lose.
I think my answer is biased due to the 300GB unlimited account I have though.
I think my answer is biased due to the 300GB unlimited account I have though.
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.