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Dropbox's Free Storage Plan Now Limited to Three Devices

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Dropbox users who have a free Dropbox account are now limited to using that account on a total of three devices, according to new information added to the Dropbox website and spotted on Twitter (via The Verge).

Dropbox says that as of March 2019, "Basic" users, which is the free tier, can add their account to three devices. Dropbox users who already have their account attached to more than three devices can keep them linked, but there will be no way to link additional devices when over the three device limit.

dropbox.jpg

There has long been a free tier for Dropbox users, with no restrictions other than available storage space. The new three device limit will make Dropbox's free service less appealing to users, though it could spur upgrades.

To get unlimited device syncing, Dropbox users will now have to upgrade to a "Plus" or "Professional" Dropbox account. Plus is priced at $9.99 per month for 1TB of storage, while Professional costs $19.99 per month for 2TB of storage. There are discounts available when purchasing a yearly plan, however.

Article Link: Dropbox's Free Storage Plan Now Limited to Three Devices
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/14/dropbox-free-storage-plan-three-devices/
fawntugboat said:
Drop box is over priced compared to other services like OneDrive and Google Drive. This just makes it easier for me to not go with DropBox.
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one drive and google drive are both associated with particular software vendors with their own interests at heart. Dropbox is independent. I think I will pay a little bit more for that assurance. I also like the feature set of dropbox, but I see your point.
 
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Love(d) Dropbox, but considering I am currently at 4 linked devices and I would assume that if I were to get rid of one device and replace it with another that that would "reset" my limit down to 3 devices. I already pay for iCloud storage, so I might as well utilize it to the max.
 
Given I have iCloud for iOS devices and Microsoft One Drive from my 365 subscription, I couldn't care less. Since 1Password went cloud based I really no longer have a need for it. I'm not sure who would.
 
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ajfahey said:
Given I have iCloud for iOS devices and Microsoft One Drive from my 365 subscription, I couldn't care less. Since 1Password went cloud based I really no longer have a need for it. I'm not sure who would.
Click to expand...

What’s wrong with 1Password being cloud based?
 
Considering Office 365 Home is the same $99/year as the cheapest Dropbox plan, but offers 1TB for 6 people instead of 1, plus Office apps for those 6 people and a bunch of other things, including smart syncing (they call it files on demand) which dropbox doesn't offer unless you double up to the pro plan at $199/year, guess it's time to move on from Dropbox.
 
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It's not for everyone, but I setup a share with NextCloudPi and have been very happy with it. When I ditched Dropbox I initially went for iCloud Drive as it was the obvious choice, but the features are very basic.
 
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$9.99/ month for storage is very expensive. Might as well get a free FTP server and spend 15 minutes learning how to use it. Drop box is designed for being lazy.
 
I get that they gotta keep profitable and that may mean protecting against abusers but they’re eliminating themselves as an option entirely for a lot of people. Having more than 3 devices is pretty common in this day and age. I have an iPhone, 2 Macs, and juggle 2 different iPad sizes depending on where I’m taking them.

If you can’t access your data on all your devices, then Dropbox loses a lot of its appeal.

Luckily for iOS users iCloud Drive has not only been incredibly stable and reliable, it is starting to fill in the features that were missing from Dropbox, like sending a file via a link. Automatically mirroring all the data on all your devices is also very appealing.

I’ve been thinking of removing my last remaining files from DropBox and now I have a good reason to.
 
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The free users are costing Dropbox money, so all the users saying they won't use Dropbox now because of this actually help Dropbox provide a better service. But agreed, $9.99 is very expensive. $99 a year with Office 365 gives me 5? 6? accounts with 1TB and each an Office Suite install. OneDrive is feature packed and works great (Google Drive like collaboration for Word documents).

That said, I pay for iCloud and Office 365 so I can't justify Dropbox. I used to use it for years back in the day and really liked it. Like others say, there is little reason to go out of my way to pay for it.

Biggest gripe I have with iCloud - no selective syncing, no shared folders... several others.
OneDrive is not bad but few people I know use it.

My wife uses Dropbox because a lot of colleges still use it / require it. Sucks when professors share large folders because it counts against her storage. Not a fan of how Dropbox counts that storage.

I use iCloud for personal data storage and OneDrive for work.
My wife uses iCloud for personal / work and Dropbox for work.

Love iCloud's 2TB for $9.99/mo.
 
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Senseotech said:
Considering Office 365 Home is the same $99/year as the cheapest Dropbox plan, but offers 1TB for 6 people instead of 1, plus Office apps for those 6 people and a bunch of other things, including smart syncing (they call it files on demand) which dropbox doesn't offer unless you double up to the pro plan at $199/year, guess it's time to move on from Dropbox.
Click to expand...

I used to love Office 365 for that same reason. BUT I found that when using it across many devices / OSs, it would constantly zero out my files :( ... I had to switch back to dropbox unfortunately.
 
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Six months ago I switched from Dropbox.com to Sync.com and I've been very happy with the change. Sync uses end-to-end encryption on everything they store (Dropbox doesn't) and Sync has no knowledge of what they're storing for you (Dropbox does). Their free plan is 5GB with unlimited devices. Plus all Sync's servers are in Canada so they're beyond the reach of US government snooping. To be clear I'm just a casual user and I'm not storing anything bad, but companies are either serious about protecting the privacy of their customers or they're not. Sync definitely is.
 
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ipedro said:
I get that they gotta keep profitable and that may mean protecting against abusers but they’re eliminating themselves as an option entirely for a lot of people. Having more than 3 devices is pretty common in this day and age. I have an iPhone, 2 Macs, and juggle 2 different iPad sizes depending on where I’m taking them.

If you can’t access your data on all your devices, then Dropbox loses a lot of its appeal.

Luckily for iOS users iCloud Drive has not only been incredibly stable and reliable, it is starting to fill in the features that were missing from Dropbox, like sending a file via a link. Automatically mirroring all the data on all your devices is also very appealing.

I’ve been thinking of removing my last remaining files from DropBox and now I have a good reason to.
Click to expand...

I have been using DropBox for years but have slowly removed most of the stuff I keep stored there. Only things left are a couple of folders that I share with other people. Everything else I have on iCloud. I'm still holding out hope that we get the ability to share whole folders in iCloud Drive so I can stop using DropBox completely.
 
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eRondeau said:
Six months ago I switched from Dropbox.com to Sync.com and I've been very happy with the change. Sync uses end-to-end encryption on everything they store (Dropbox doesn't) and Sync has no knowledge of what they're storing for you (Dropbox does). Their free plan is 5GB with unlimited devices. Plus all Sync's servers are in Canada so they're beyond the reach of US government snooping. To be clear I'm just a casual user and I'm not storing anything bad, but companies are either serious about protecting the privacy of their customers or they're not. Sync definitely is.
Click to expand...

Thanks, useful advice on MR! Faint. I read a lot of vague comments about others have better security or others are cheaper..without being specific. This tempted me to look into sync.
 
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G5isAlive said:
Thanks, useful advice on MR! Faint. I read a lot of vague comments about others have better security or others are cheaper..without being specific. This tempted me to look into sync.
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Am I the only one a little freaked out how Sync.com looks identical to dropbox.com? lol. The line is almost in the exact place.

That said, sync.com looks good - at least from the website itself and what it claims to do. A lot cheaper than Dropbox too. Definitely a small company though. https://www.sync.com/about/
 
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Senseotech said:
Considering Office 365 Home is the same $99/year as the cheapest Dropbox plan, but offers 1TB for 6 people instead of 1, plus Office apps for those 6 people and a bunch of other things, including smart syncing (they call it files on demand) which dropbox doesn't offer unless you double up to the pro plan at $199/year, guess it's time to move on from Dropbox.
Click to expand...
As a loyal Dropbox Plus subscriber I never, ever realized this until you posted it. Office 365 all of a sudden sounds incredibly enticing. It'll no more per month for me and yet I'll have the always up-to-date Office suite on all of my devices. Thanks for the epiphany!
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SigEp265 said:
I used to love Office 365 for that same reason. BUT I found that when using it across many devices / OSs, it would constantly zero out my files :( ... I had to switch back to dropbox unfortunately.
Click to expand...
What do you mean it would zero out your files?
 
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