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Comment by Wintamute | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive.

Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the free accounts and the accounts that max out their paid storage.

I don't know why people put up with it?

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Dropbox works.

Put aside all the concerns over War Crimes or Spying, or Security, Dropbox simply works. Every mobile platform is supported. Every desktop platform is supported. Sharing, Teams, direct links, all the core features are there. Anyone can safely recommend and share Dropbox files with their Grandma (with a PC still running XP), or their Mac loving parents, or their weird hipster friend running Gentoo GNU/Linux, and Dropbox will still work.

A lot of HN prioritizes things like data security or political signaling over frictionless implementations. Sure you can get secure file synchronization with rsync and ssh keys, but the average consumer has never even seen a terminal. I'm sure security and politics are important when selling to other tech users, but Dropbox is general consumer facing, and they have succeeded at their task, making flash drives obsolete.

Agreed, it's just got to work.

We're working on an alternative: https://www.sync.com/your-privacy/

Dunno why you're getting down voted. Sounds like great news to me!

Will you have a Linux client? (I'm sure that's the least favorite question new services like this get.)

I ripped Dropbox out by the roots on all of my systems some time back because of the contempt they display for their users. New, more privacy- and security-conscious services are nice (as are ones that don't break their users' machines and then go weaselly when caught). But I really want the option to use my own infrastructure for apps that want to store data somewhere remote.

Especially for file-based services, the only argument for Dropbox is "because they're big and probably already installed"[2]. I'd deeply appreciate it if these sorts of apps would add a preference-pane for scp, at least. I have no idea if the crusty-folks-like-me market is big enough to constitute a noticeable bump in app store sales or not, but I promise, given two competing apps, I'll forgive a lot of other warts in and pay more for the one that lets me own my own data.

[1] I know cloud is king, but there are a lot of us out here that want to own our own data, rather than having the cloud-overlords rent it back to us. The Omnigroup's apps are great examples of this - you can use their sync servers, but you can also (and I do) run your own WebDAV server for it. Works great, and I have paid the Omnigroup substantially more than any other single mobile app vendor for their apps.

[2] Synchronization is difficult enough in some contexts that I completely get writing something more complicated there, but then we're not talking about Dropbox or their competitors anymore.

We hope to get to a Linux client at some point, however, the demand for our Windows, Mac and mobile apps has been keeping us really busy. Our primary focus right now is on the platform, as the cloud is only king when it's stable, reliable and fast.

Any plans for an API?

We're in the planning stages.

No Linux unfortunately.

I understand what you mean by "zero knowledge", but it bothers me when companies say things like "we can't access your data because it's encrypted client-side".

If the service provider controls the code in the client (as you do), the fact is the service provider definitely can access the data, you're just choosing not to.

I don't think there is much difference between encrypting client-side when you control the client, and encrypting server-side before storage. Either way you have encryption-at-rest.

There is a difference, and its about how the data is going to leak out. If the access can only happen via a key stored on the client, the client somehow has to supply that to the attacker (whether an official attacker or not). If every user's key and data are stored on the server then a compromise of every (or any) user becomes much more feasible. There isn't really a problem of data at rest being stolen (except for laptops/cell phones/usb sticks), it is stolen while live.

Overall though I would agree that you can't trust it much, because some code is downloaded from the server and then you trust that code (which can communicate with the server) with the key... Perhaps if it was in a local sandbox whose policies were enforced in a browser pref, or there was taint analysis applied to sensitive local data.

In years to come people will snicker at how wide open and insecure things were back in 201x.

If you store the keys, sure, that's less secure for sure.

But just because you encrypt server side doesn't mean you store keys.

What's the difference between:

  1. Get key from user on client
  2. Encrypt on client
  3. Discard key
  4. Discard unencrypted data
  5. Send encrypted data to server
  6. Store encrypted data

and:

  1. Get key from user on client
  2. Send key and data to server over SSL
  3. Encrypt on server in response handler
  4. Discard key
  5. Discard unencrypted data
  6. Store encrypted data

There are some differences, but I don't think it's clear which one is "better". I think it would depend on the details.

Big picture: either way the developer sees the key and the unencrypted data. Either way, you are completely trusting the competence of the developer at implementing this scheme, and their trustworthiness with the key and unencrypted data.

There is no such thing as "host-proof" encryption as long as the client is provided by the host.

Do you find Dropbox to work any better than Google drive? If so how/when/where?

I'm pretty firmly in the if-can't-self-host-i-don't-care camp (which rules out Dropbox and drive alike) - but I've recently had reason to share documents at work, without any in-house infrastructure. And the combination of "good enough" Google docs and sheets along with easy to use drive on laptop/desktop/mobile is hard to beat - especially with a pretty easy learning curve.

I only whish drive had the ability to mark a "folder" as available offline, as the fiction of 4g everywhere gets a bit tiresome when you find yourself on a mountain and need to pull up your list of students to make sure you haven't left someone to bleed out on the way up (ok, for that you practice the buddy system and have a paper backup. But it's still nice to work on notes offline wherever you are and have them sync, without offline-first being something special).

> If so how/when/where?

Linux. I'd love to use Google Drive since I have more space available there, but all the Linux clients for Drive suck since none of them is official and don't have as much features as the Dropbox client.

> Every desktop platform is supported.

Not every. Dropbox doesn't work on FreeBSD. But mobile client probably the best.

On occasion I am forced to use toPDF on my ios devices, plus some gymnastics to save documents to Dropbox.

This might have been obviated by some share nonsense I did with iPhotos. Dropbox seems to be working better and better.

Available offline is the killer feature of both Dropbox and Drive. You still cannot depend on connectivity, and have to plan ahead with critical documents. It becomes part of your travel routine.

The key issue for me is that I don't currently need 1 TB, which is why I use Google Drive's 100 GB option. If Dropbox added a 250 GB option or something, I'd switch immediately.

rsync isn't enough. Bidirectional sync with nodes that can drop offline is a pain to handle.

You're right. It's been years since I carried around a flash drive, only to lose it, or not know which flash drive has...

Yea, I agree. We were just saved by their unlimited versioning and now I only recommend Dropbox. If your business account files ever become encrypted make sure you call support immediately.

Because it's the only cloud provider that has reliable cross-platform syncing solution and works extremely well?

As soon as you try their competitors (Drive, Box, iCloud) you find out just how utterly crappy they are as soon as you need to share files with other people. Dropbox does it seamlessly. Bankrolling free accounts so students can have their thesis backed up is a small price to pay for that.

I don't understand your comparison. iCloud is only $0.99 for the 50GB option. I have over 300GB (and growing) worth of pictures and videos that I've been collecting since my first kid was born 6 years ago. It would be $9.99 on iCloud just as it is on Dropbox. Even cheaper on Dropbox, actually, because I buy by the year (and full disclosure, I get 2TB for the price of 1TB because I'm a long term customer, but I only use about half a TB overall so it's no difference to me).

Aside from the price, Dropbox just works. Android, iPhone, my Macbook Pros, my wife's Windows 10 laptop -- no problems, it just does what we expect it to.

I've looked at other solutions, even signed up for the trial of OneDrive (got burned on their filename length limit, oddly enough), and decided Dropbox works well enough to keep. I reevaluate every year and I'm perfectly willing to move when someone comes along that is conclusively better. They all match each other pretty quickly on pricing, so it's reliability (first) and features (second) that get my wallet to open.

if you dont care about the best usability, and you dont collaborate, Amazon Cloud Drive is 60/year for unlimited storage. not that youll hit 2tb soon, but for someone looking for cheap and easy cloud storage, dropbox is kind of expensive. you pay for the featureset not the storage size.

And if you're only storing still images, Amazon Cloud Drive has a $12/year plan (or, an exact clone of the same tier included with Prime right now) for unlimited photo storage, which is practically a steal if you take a lot of pictures and not a lot of video.

It's cheap enough that I can use it as a cloud copy or a second cloud copy, and I never have to worry about losing photos again.

Amazon Cloud drive is great for the price (I use it) but they also have filesize limits (anything over 5GB seems to simply error out without warning), so I end up RARing my larger drive backups. Also the software backing it is severely lacking, besides the auto-upload of photos from my iPhone.

They probably changed the limit cause I do have 20gb files on it. It did fail on a 60gb .tar.gz site backup file though.

I store my photos on Amazon cloud drive as a 2nd backup, already using OneDrive for the same purpose that came with office 365. The benefit of ACD is that it doesn't automatically sync, which is a plus in the age of ransomware (there's unofficial tools for automatic sync)

Storing those photos and videos on Google Photos [0] would be free though. Just last week I migrated my photos away from iCloud and to Google Photos, since I don't really want to spend money for storage. And I got sick of the notification in Mac OS X to upgrade my iCloud storage.

For people who value privacy a lot, maybe Google Photos might not be a nice option. I should note that one can choose whether to share photos with other people or not on Google Photos.

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[0]: https://photos.google.com

Google Photos storage is unlimited at a reduced/optimized resolution. If you want to maintain the original raw resolution, it uses your Google Drive Storage for that. If you decide to get a Google Pixel phone, they give you the unlimited raw format storage.

A combination of name recognition, customer satisfaction or customer inertia, a decent product, and data compartmentalization.

For example, it irks me that Google Drive is a catch-all storage space for Google products; sometimes all you want is a dumb folder that just syncs up and down whatever you put into it and Dropbox (and Box) give that to you without any mandatory integrations that benefit the companies that bankroll the storage (Google Drive, OneDrive), but not necessarily you.

It's also nice that Dropbox treats every platform as a first-class citizen. It's pretty obvious that some storage products are a just pieces of a larger puzzle that you happen to be able to use as a cloud drive, while some other companies make it clear that offering a cloud drive is their primary business.

Even though I have 3 Apple devices, I cannot use iCloud because I also use non-Apple devices, like Linux, Windows and Android. Yes, all of them. Dropbox has support for all, including Linux, which is a big deal.

Dropbox also does file versioning. You get an addon and it does versioning for a year. You cannot speak of having backups without this feature and iCloud doesn't. Get a ransomeware on your computer and you'll see what I'm talking about ;-)

And also, once you get in the habit of saving stuff, 1 TB is really not that much. My personal photo/video archive is 90 GB. I have another 20 GB of online presentations I gave to colleagues, archived just in case, about 10 GB of music, 30 GB of movies (mostly for my son, as he'd be really upset without his favorites), recovery stuff, project backups, all in all I exceed 200 GB. Actually at the rate I'm growing, 1 TB might soon be insufficient.

I also understand the reluctance to pay for stuff, but personally I think my data deserves the price of 2-3 coffees per month. My personal email deserves another coffee or two.

Dropbox's pricing is indeed frustrating, on both ends of the spectrum. Small time users pay a lot more than competitors so they can store a reasonable amount, and if you want to store a lot of stuff you're shit out of luck as the only option is to get their "team" storage which has more stuff than a single user needs. I don't even really need sharing, I can send stuff via email or other methods for that - I want personal file syncing.

I've been using iCloud Drive recently, and it works pretty well. Maybe if Apple ever gets around to releasing new Macs they'll bump the default storage level and cover more people because as it stands it's at 5GB which isn't competitive anymore.

iCloud is close to useless if you need platform-agnostic storage. I only use it for iOS backups and of course the apps that sync their data via iCloud. Does the service even offer a file browser?

Whenever I deal with data I want to access on a file level and not through apps, like documents, photos, etc. I use Dropbox. And since I have to backup my music library (500 GB) somewhere anyway, I'll gladly use Dropbox Pro tier. Yes, I could save 3 bucks by using Amazon Cloud Drive or other services, but Dropbox' user experience and thoughtful design is second to none.

Will echo what others said. Dropbox works - and it works cross-platform. I have linux, mac & windows desktops/laptops and iphones/ipads... dropbox has a complete cross-platform solution which integrates well with the native file browsing mechanism. I won't even consider icloud.

My use of dropbox has grown - but I primarily used it to store and retrieve a lot of data that I was analyzing when did my PhD. The data were several 100 GB in size. The 1 TB solution came quite handy. I also moved between my mac & linux during that time. I just had my files when I needed them.

It depends on what you're doing. If you're in the Apple ecosystem with a Mac and iPhone/iPad, the iCloud photo storage is really awesome. For us, it took away the hassle of managing iOS storage.

But... the iCloud Drive function is immature and unreliable.

Right now, I subscribe to Dropbox Pro and iCloud. I'll probably drop Dropbox as their photo story sucks, and they don't make key features available to "Pro" users like full text search.

Dropbox just works. Go on vacation, my itinerary, all my travel docs, critical material, it's in Dropbox, and often available offline, since wifi can be spotty. Now its in my phone and my Ipad as well. It just works. And if you're cheap like me, you manage Dropbox, not waste it.

But iCloud is the sleeper. In particular, Notes seems to be open on my desktop and all my devices. A terrific application.

> I don't know why people put up with it?

Lock-in? Once you have a few gigs up on Dropbox, it's a bit of a challenge transferring it elsewhere.

I disagree. As a long time paying Dropbox customer, I reevaluate each year, including copying all my data over to a competing provider to see how it shakes out. For all the big providers it's drag and drop. So far what keeps me coming back to Dropbox is that the other solutions have sync reliability issues on one or more of the platforms I use (we're a diverse family, with everything from a Linux server to OSX to Windows 10 to Android and iOS mobile devices sharing the same Dropbox account).

Have you tried Seafile? (https://seafile.de/)

That has been the only cloud storage provider good enough (but not as good as) Dropbox to wean me away from DB. I've been using it for a couple of months now.

Not really. I stay with Dropbox because, as others have said, it just works, and it does so across pretty much every major platform, both desktop and mobile. Cloud storage is their core product, and it shows. And the pricing really isn't that different from other similar solutions from what I've seen.

The few times I tried to use Drive, it was considerably more hassle to work with (and slow), iCloud was right out because it's Apple-platforms only, and my experiences with OneNote's sync issues makes me wary of trying OneDrive. Haven't looked at Box since I was under the impression it was aimed at businesses/enterprise more than individuals.

I've lost files on iCloud. It's also harder to use.

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