DropEverything! DropBox DropsDocs to DropStocks DropBox today formally filed for its IPO – its initial public offering, its stock-market debut, whatever you want to call it. The cloud storage and collab upstart picked the Friday news dump window to unseal its S-1 paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission: it previously submitted its plan to the regulator …
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As 1 of 11 million paying Dropbox users and reading the above points about risks to profitability, i really can’t see how they can survive mid to long term against the giants.
Don’t get me wrong, Dropbox is a slicker tool than OneDrive or GDrive but there’s only so much that people will pay for cloud storage.
I guess the 489 million free users will need to stump up some cash, but with the minimum outlay a hundred quid a year and a way too big a gap between the free 2GB and paid 1000GB, i fear that their pricing policy aint gonna save them.
As 1 of 489 million free users I can confirm that the gap between free and paid is too stonking huge. I sync/backup about half my stuff through my free dropbox, the rest onto (don't laugh) a USB stick. Dropbox really needs to pick up on (see what I did there? >groan<) an intermediate personal/pro service for say 100G and affordable pocket money. Might just tilt the playing field towards profitability.
My fear is that now, IPO > Corporate takeover > no time for the small fry. So no entry-level account without bloods strings attached, while the best support desk I have ever had the pleasure to call on will be starved of its lifeblood in the name of cost-cutting. This IPO stinks of the traditional dot-come-buyout megabuck disaster.
>> (don't laugh) a USB stick.
I to own my hardware too.
In addition to many USB sticks, I have several external drives and a DNS-343.
And for the cloud, I think there are too many free alternatives to DropBox (for personal use).
I did find DropBox to be practical for an ERP consulting firm I once worked for.
The group was made up of remote users and had no physical offices.
DropBox was a convenient way to share a lot of information.
As with a few other cases, this is a bit of a blind spot in the IT services companies. The jump from the basic free version to the paid version doesn't seem to take into account the users for whom the free is "not quite enough". Instead of giving a bit of extra space/slightly better service for a small cost there is this enormous jump into a big package subscription, paid annually. i.e from paying nothing a year,every year to paying a chunk a year every year. It's not just the cost- it's also that it's a subscription paid in full every year. 10 years ( say) of the free Dropbox service is 10x0=0. ten years of the 1TB service is £80 a year 10x£80 is £800.
Avast AV is free. The cheapest paid package is £50, every year. Over ten years that's £500. If it was £50 to buy and say a tenner a year to renew it'd be worth it.
Donkeys years ago you bought your AV programme and then you got regular definition updates for as long as you used it. But the beancounters don't want sales, they want cash streams. Stuff 'em.
Now I use spideroak. I pay 120$ a year for unlimited zero-knowledge encrypted storage. Currently using 9 TB. :)
I can't see that plan here: https://spideroak.com/one/ $279 for 5TB seems to be the top of the range. I do hope that zero knowledge is not simply a prescient comment on your future data availability.
Also, why is this needed for a zero knowledge data storage silo: https://spideroak.com/dmca-takedown-notice-submission/ ?
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