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Why we are leaving Dropbox
- kfk 11y agoThe worst thing for me is not being able to sync only 1 folder instead of the whole thing. When you are syncing a mobile phone, you don't want to be downloading GBs of stuff, maybe only 1 folder with your resized pictures...
- acdha 11y agoThe mobile app has never downloaded everything. The desktop app allows you to select a subset of folders to sync: https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/175 https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/175
- cephaslr 11y agoOk, well. Where are you going and why? That would be more interesting to me :)
- fredley 11y agoWhat are you now/planning on using instead of Dropbox? Google Drive?
- orenbarzilai 11y agoI'm using dropbox + google drive (due to google docs) both home and for work and I get all of your claims. But what's the alternative? Besides google drive that has it's own issues all other solutions are less than dropbox or same with something missing (proper mobile app etc)... So what are you switching to?
- thegreatpeter 11y ago> But what's the alternative? Sounds like an opportunity.
- lstyls 11y agoI don't think there's a great opportunity there. Cloud storage is at this point a commodity product, so a new business would be differentiating entirely based on user experience and would be at a competitive disadvantage in storage costs compared to the big hitters.
- baldfat 11y agoPersonally I think BitTorrent Sync has something I really like. I am in the middle of evaluating SyncThing (Open Source project that is similar) I really like BTSync for th following: 1) Like git the copies are on local machines 2) I control the servers and I control the folders that are shared 3) Super fast in a local network 4) You can use whatever encryption you want and it works perfectly 5) You can selectively sync individual folders and files 6) Easy to share things that are Read Only or Read/Write
- vivab0rg 11y agoHave you already upgraded to the "PRO" version? I've been using it on Linux for about a year and just recently a "7 days left" appeared on the Web UI.
- baldfat 11y agoThat is the reason why I am thinking of syncthing for myself. I need to look at syncthing's mobile apps. https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net I believe you can downgrade to a btsync 1.X and keep it forever.
- pjc50 11y ago> But what's the alternative? https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/secure-clouds.md https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/secure-... : my own notes on sync/cloud storage services. I have my own prejudices as to what I want, but that may align well with the prejudices of HN.
- tshannon 11y agoThere are several different options to roll your own. like: http://tshannon.bitbucket.org/freehold/ http://tshannon.bitbucket.org/freehold/
- willyyr 11y agoI expected to read the alternative solution you plan to use. Did i miss something?
- brianwawok 11y agoLast 2 lines made it sound like google drive?
- mw67 11y agoI see only 3 alternatives anyway: 1/ Google Drive 2/ Box 3/ USB keys
- slantyyz 11y ago4/ OneDrive? 5/ OneDrive for Business? (which not the same as OneDrive)
- ben_pr 11y ago6/ Amazon Cloud 7/ Younited (use this if you care about security)
- perakojotgenije 11y agowww.copy.com gives you 20gb on free account. Has clients for windows, linux and mac. With this refferal [1] you get another 5gb. https://copy.com?r=WV7J4N https://copy.com?r=WV7J4N
- dandare 11y agoAm I the only one who expected 5. Condoleezza Rice?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- inthewoods 11y agoWe use Google Drive internally - but I've been thinking about trying out Box. Integrated file editing makes a big difference.
- azurelogic 11y agoThis should be 5 reasons, and #1 should be their lackluster history with security. Spideroak FTW! If you keep an eye open for promos and stuff, it's not hard to rival a free Dropbox account. (For things I don't care about or need to use in collaborative settings, I still use Google Drive and OneDrive)
- vlucas 11y agoThree of these issues are minor UI/UX gripes. What's the better alternative? What more "innovation" do you expect from a file syncing app that already works really well? Have you even reported the file list bug you are experiencing to Dropbox so they can fix it?
- scolfax 11y agoI love Dropbox. Use it all the time without any problems.
- ccvannorman 11y agoWhat are you using it for? Are you part of a company that shares everything on Dropbox, and how often do you use it? I'm also a "happy" Dropbox customer -- but I'm part of a 3-person startup and we only share relatively small files and folders. This post (and numerous others) make me think it's time to move on when we grow the team.
- vetinari 11y agoI always wondered, why do small companies use Dropbox at all? A 1 TB NAS in RAID-1 by Synology or QNAP will cost you about 400 EUR (including VAT). That's about 9% of what the author of the article paid for some 700 GB in Dropbox. It will do everything that Dropbox does, except you can use standard protocols (SMB, AFS, WebDAV, whatever) and the data will not leave your company.
- gvb 11y ago> and the data will not leave your company. That is a two-edged sword. The data is also inaccessible outside of your company. There are ways to make it accessible outside the company (VPN, WebDAV over https), but they tend to be complex, fragile, and sometimes unworkable (see next). > standard protocols (SMB, AFS, WebDAV, whatever) Support for the standard file sharing protocols (SMB, NFS, I presume AFS, and WebDAV) sucks or doesn't exist on mobile devices.
- vetinari 11y agoWell, every single NAS box offers VPN solution that can be enabled by few clicks (usually OpenVPN). Also, most NAS vendors provide mobile applications, so you can access the data. They realize, that the standard protocols on mobile devices are lacking. Anyway, to pay someone to get you such a NAS and configure everything for you is still a fraction of cost, that you would pay for cloud providers.
- pppp 11y ago6. No client-side encryption 7. Deceptive advertising. Telling their customers that they encrypt data enroute and at rest without telling them that they use a single common password for every customer.
- eevilspock 11y ago8. Condoleezza Rice on the board. 9. Mailbox app has server-side access to your email (Gmail or iCloud). This is totally unnecessary for a mail client. They claim they need it to support Snooze functionality, but that is not true. It can be implemented entirely in the client, storing snooze meta-data (with a reference to, not a copy of, the email) only on their servers for cross-device sync purposes.
- fennecfoxen 11y agoI like that this new thing where we declare our political enemies anathema and refuse to do business with anything they're affiliated with. I think we need to escalate a little, though, and start boycotting every business that uses Dropbox, too. Also, Stanford. It's the only way to effect justice in this crazy messed-up world.
- eevilspock 11y agoIt's not about political enemies. It's about what choosing her says to me and many other people about Dropbox, their ethics and their priorities. Iraq war aside, the attitude of a board member about government power and the NSA's ability to snoop on any and all your data, in secret, protected by gag orders, is extremely relevant for a cloud service and for anyone who thinks what the NSA is doing is wrong. Are you saying that it is wrong for people such as I to not trust or feel morally off using a business based upon the ethics or philosophy of its leadership?
- fennecfoxen 11y agoNo, I'm saying I'm cynical about everyone's motives in this space, and suspect that there's a reason you lead with naming a bogeyman instead of just accusing the company of being NSA stooges.
- codingdave 11y agoIt may be time to explain the "So What?" test of writing again. You should ask yourself that question any time you write an article. (Or give a talk, teach a lesson...) If you gave enough information, that should sound like a stupid question. But if it sounds like something that might reasonably be asked, you forgot to communicate something important. In this case, the big missing piece of data is what they will be using instead of dropbox. Because without that critical piece of data, this entire article can be summed up as "Dropbox sucks."
- jachwe 11y agoThe title of the article was "4 reasons why we are leaving Dropbox" and not "10 alternatives to Dropbox", which would be an interesting, but totally different article on it's own. It is good to read about these issues, as these days many people think about moving from A to B in cloud storage. Personally i moved all my storage, contacts and calendars over to a self-hosted owncloud instance, which i did not regret so far. But i'm not going to write an article about it ...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArgyle 11y agoIt's important to voice concerns with wildly popular software but not very thought-provoking. You don't get the call-to-action feel without a discussion of solutions.
- csbrooks 11y ago"Dropbox sucks", with specific reasons why, is informative to me as a potential user. Not sure "so what?" is a reasonable test anyway. If you're snarky enough, couldn't you ask that about any article at all?
- normloman 11y agoIt doesn't matter how snarky you are. You're not asking whether it matters to you, but whether it matters to your audience. Unless you're writing to an audience of nihilists, the test is still a helpful judge of newsworthiness.
- brotoss 11y agoI'll file this one under "cool story bro"
- xomateix 11y agoI've been using copy.com for a while and I'm quite happy with it. The main reason I chose it (at the time) was 20GB for free accounts, fair storage in shared folders and pricing (I have the 250GB account). (Disclaimer: this is a referral link that will give us 5gb https://copy.com?r=b2yUAQ https://copy.com?r=b2yUAQ ;-))
- mdk754 11y agoI too have been using Copy for years. Let's not forget they have a working Linux client. Maybe things have changed since I last looked, but they were one of the few supporting Linux (both cli and gui).
- Lunatic666 11y agoI just recently found it moved over from Dropbox, too. - Quick and competent support - Linux sync client - Apps with Photo sync (Since yesterday also for iOS) I can even use the photo sync from multiple devices because it creates folders per phone
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- eevilspock 11y agoI can't figure out whether they have client-side encryption with a user-specific encryption key that they do not have access to.
- Freaky 11y agoDoesn't look like it. They have an API you could throw encrypted blobs at with a bit of work at least.
- pivo 11y agoI use both and one thing that really bothers me about both services is that they don't work well with proxies and laptops. My company forces me to use a proxy so I must manually configure Dropbox and Copy with that proxy info even though I've already configured OS X to use the proxy. Why can't they obtain the system-wide OS X proxy info that all other (non command line) apps use? When I'm not at work the proxy isn't available and neither Dropbox nor Copy will recognize that fact and bypass it. Instead they just hang, even though all other GUI apps are fine. I have to manually turn proxying off in each app in order to get syncing to work. It's not only a pain to do this but it's also easy to forget, and then you wind up with files you need that haven't been synced.
- itsdrewmiller 11y agoComplaint #1 - They aren't releasing new features, and are spending too much time on bug fixing and performance. Complaint #2 - It's buggy. Oooooooooooooooook.
- commentzorro 11y agoHe's saying that the _core_ part isn't adding any new features and that the _desktop_ is too buggy.
- pXMzR2A 11y agoTheir actual reason is probably related to the arguments presented at http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ Unsure why "they" would not come out and say that.
- csbrooks 11y agoWhat makes you assume that?
- dheera 11y agoI use Dropbox because they don't try to innovate on the UI side. I use it mainly to sync certain directories (like fonts, desktop backgrounds, themes, dotfiles, certain /etc files, code workspaces, and other configuration files) across my Linux machines. It's also a billion times more easy to use Dropbox with people from China than Google Drive because you can set up an EC2 server in Japan, install the command line version of Dropbox, and have it serve a synced directory over HTTPS from a non-blocked IP address. Can't do that easily with Google Drive or anything that tries to be too much.
- jayvanguard 11y agoSame. Innovation is not what I want out of Dropbox. I want stability, speed, and continued bug fixes. The one point I agree with him on though is that the web interface could use some work.
- xasos 11y agoThis is what happened with Google. The innovated on the UI front multiple times, and I'm really starting to dislike their new design changes on Drive, GMail (by way of Inbox), etc.
- mreiland 11y agoI haven't been happy with GMails UI in a very long time. I've moved onto fastmail in part because of how much I started to dislike their UI. I've been on fastmail for 11 months now and couldn't be happier.
- seanp2k2 11y agoBut a big blue + button in the bottom-right corner totally makes sense as "file -> new" on a desktop interface! What's not to like?!
- xauronx 11y agoGoogle drive is almost unusable to me now. Always takes like 5 minutes to figure out where my stuff is.
- DenisM 11y agoOne problem we have witnessed with Dropbox is that low-tech users tends to delete files they don't personally need. Often times this causes deletion of the files for the entire company. Resultingly admins are afraid to share file access with users, and users are afraid to cause problems, so they ask admins to email the files instead, which sort of puts you back at the square one. We might be approaching a point where different different kinds of users and maybe different verticals will be able to justify separate file sharing apps. Or even all other apps, for that matter.
- mattlutze 11y agoIt used to be a big pile of something-or-other, but the newest iteration of SharePoint is really quite a solid product, particularly for some of the trickier tasks around document management and distribution. And with the Office 365 versions, smaller businesses don't need to worry about building out the physical resources (or hiring the admin personnel) to run an instance. It might be something to ask your IT folks if they've considered recently.
- DenisM 11y agoThat's a good point. Sharepoint might have solved some of these problems, but I have made my bet in the opposite direction - my startup is making and selling a vertically-tailored content distribution system; it distributes the structured data via vertical-specific "apps", and the (as of yet) unstructured data as generic "documents" - a simplified,'locked down "dropbox" functionality . So, while Sharepoint is good for everyone, our system is great for the select few it's aimed at. There are two large trends making it possible: 1) It gets cheaper to make software. 2) Technology becomes cheaper and more prevalent in the hands of the end users, especially mobile tech, thus increasing the addressable market size. Resultingly, it becomes viable to create distinct software for separate user groups. This is a trend reversal from the previous 20 years, when different groups of users were trying to use the same piece of software. As the "universal" software gets more complex, it requires more customization, so its the usability is eroding (see: dropbox file deletion problem). A tailored solution is inherently more user-friendly. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it! :)
- galago 11y agoA good evaluation of current cloud storage options would actually be useful. "Why we're switching from Dropbox to X" wouldn't waste our time.
- leojfc 11y agoI like Cubby.com because I can sync arbitrary folders. That said, development does seem to have slowed there too. This seems to be a pattern with other services I’ve used (Copy, Wuala, Dropbox) – hook you with a good free tier and one or two differentiating features, and then stop innovating...
- blfr 11y agoThere is no visual indication of progress. No clue about any ETA. No system logs. No detailed activity window. Not returning any meaningful information when problems arise is the most annoying aspect of modern apps, especially on phones. Even Windows cryptic error numbers were better than this.
- tomtoise 11y agoI instinctively shied away from using Dropbox and have instead found a cheap alternative. I have a dedicated Linux server from Kimsufi which runs any testing I need to do for my work and also has a BitTorrent Sync client installed. I have Sync installed on my phone, laptop and work computer, so anything I need to share I can, easily and quickly.
- neals 11y agoI agree that on Mac it can be pretty frustrating to use. On Windows, not so much.
- fideloper 11y agoSeems a bit anecdotal. I've had none of these issues. What if you just need to restart your computer?
- shiggerino 11y agoWhat exactly does Dropbox do that WebDAV can't do?
- kolencherry 11y agoBe so easy to install and use that my mother can use it on her own. That's the big advantage that Dropbox had and still has over something like WebDAV.
- shiggerino 11y agoHow is something being easy to install an advantage over something that works without an install?
- leetrout 11y agoInteresting opinions. I just reinvested myself in Dropbox now that CloudApp has hampered their free usage and raised their first tier pricing. http://getcloudapp.com/plans/ http://getcloudapp.com/plans/ Dropbox's screenshot sharing is working really well and perfect replacement.
- rickyc091 11y agoTake a look at https://minbox.com/ https://minbox.com/. I use it as a replacement for cloudapp.
- fit2rule 11y agoThe most frustrating thing for me, while watching a new generation of users grow up on Dropbox and similar functionality, is that this sort of thing should really be in the Operating System by now, as a standard feature. But it seems the OS vendors have lost their way and are chasing shiny colors and new hardware, as usual. Wasn't so long ago you kind of expected a new filesharing technology to be built-in to the operating system. But it does seem like those days are over - the line keeps getting redrawn, which defines what an "OS" is, to most people. At this point, at least in the case of Dropbox, the Web seems to have driven us all mad. Store your stuff outside your house, on someone elses hardware? Really?
- toxican 11y agoCan't say I'm surprised considering every single major OS has its own cloud service. Why would Apple, MS, Google help people not use iCloud, OneDrive, and Google Drive?
- jinushaun 11y agoOr, more likely... monopoly concerns. You are seeing the fall out of the MS anti-trust case. The kinds of innovation you talk about pretty much stopped after that. You will soon see the fall out of the Google anti-trust case.
- fit2rule 11y ago>You are seeing the fall out of the MS anti-trust case. Good point, and actually I'll start to accommodate this in my considerations of the topic in the future.
- lazerwalker 11y agoI've moved away from Dropbox purely because the desktop (OS X) app has gotten so terrible. Besides the lack of responsiveness mentioned in the article, Dropbox routinely takes up > 90% of my CPU resources while running. If I'm working at a coffee shop without power, having Dropbox running literally halves my battery life. This is new as of the last six months, and happens consistently across multiple Macs. I've asked Dropbox employees about this, and they've just shrugged. I don't care if they innovate or not. I care that the experience of using Dropbox is measurably worse than it was a year ago.
- benologist 11y agoThat happens to me too, it's also getting a bit silly that you still can't exclude directories easily, and the "share" menu only seems to work in the root dropbox folder these days.
- ejdyksen 11y agoIn my experience, Dropbox responds to all file system I/O, even those outside of the Dropbox folders, strangely. If I'm running, say, npm install or bundle install or installing Xcode (or doing anything else I/O heavy), Dropbox starts using a bunch of CPU, proportional to the amount of I/O going on at the time. Note that none of these operations are inside my Dropbox folder. I do believe the FSEvents infrastructure allows you to just watch an individual folder [1], so it shouldn't have to be this way... [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/FSEvents_ProgGuide/UsingtheFSEventsFramework/UsingtheFSEventsFramework.html https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...
- hashmymustache 11y agoSame. I'll run npm install on my desktop and suddenly dropbox is at 110% CPU doing nothing. I end up having to force quit it and forget to restart it. It's VERY frustrating.
- wordbank 11y agoOh yes, I wrote to their support and forums many times but it was futile. I'm using Mac Mini with HDD and Dropbox takes 90% of disk I/O when there are more than 20-30 files updating. I used to keep my projects in Dropbox folder before but now it literally slows my work.
- xtrumanx 11y agoMaybe its because I'm not a Dropbox user (or a cloud storage user for that matter) that what I found most interesting was that Google tried calling someone up for a support ticket on Google Drive. Google doing actual customer support? I thought the internet said that never happened.
- johnchristopher 11y ago> If you have to execute bulk operations, your only option is to first sync everything to a local machine, then move stuff around there (or delete it) and wait for the low performance desktop client to shovel everything back up upstream. > It’s such a flawed design. > One major advantage of cloud storage and selective sync is that I conveniently want to be able to re-organise files and folders through my Browser, without actually being forced to download everything first. Hmm. The way I see it the Web UI is a bonus and a fall back when you are not near the computer where it's much easier to move files and folders around. Dropbox was sold and still sell as `files on your devices synced everywhere´ not `central mainline repo that downloads to your devices´. I am old school, I still think that file management in the browser doesn't work well. But I agree the desktop client (win and mac) got slower and slower (UI wise). My debian installation runs a previous version that is much faster. I am glad they aren't packing it with new features that would disturb the dropbox mental model every layman has.
- derefr 11y agoWhat I've really always wanted, and still never seen, is "Hierarchical Storage Management with the canonical copies of everything in the cloud, and a bounded-size MRU cache on all my local devices, but where updates to the cached files are taken as updates to the canonical version." This way, you'd be able to have petabytes of stuff seemingly "synced" to your local disk; stuff would just be (much) slower to access the first time, or if you hadn't used it in a while. (Sort of like Apple's "fusion drives", but with the spinning disk very, very far away.) It's almost like a FUSE-mounted WebDAV share or somesuch, but where you interact with it through its local cache on your real filesystem, rather than by your OS making its read/write requests to the server itself.
- Synergyse 11y agoThe Google Drive sync client had a major problem in that it used all your bandwidth when doing large syncs, they finally fixed that problem by introducing bandwidth settings. It is much more reliable now. https://www.synergyse.com/blog/prevent-google-drive-for-mac-pc-from-slowing-down-your-internet-connection/ https://www.synergyse.com/blog/prevent-google-drive-for-mac-...
- drikerf 11y agoI use Dropbox for notes and documents using terminal, VIM and markdown format. Beats Google docs every day if you don't need live collaboration.
- snowwindwaves 11y agoI use google docs to share works in progress with coworkers for their review and comments. I am considering mark down with git for revision control and then i can use pandoc to publish in latex. How does Dropbox make this better than google docs or different from the network drive we all access on the company server by VPN?
- nhayden 11y agoI'm surprised there are not more people on HN who don't use Dropbox due to NSA/privacy concerns. Do you really want to worry about all your files, which are probably your most valuable ones, being out in the open to any Dropbox, NSA, or other law enforcement employee? Do you really trust Dropbox to not have a repeat of accidentally allowing your files to be publicly viewable by anyone? When there are encrypted alternatives that are as easy to use, there is seemingly no point of using Dropbox.
- therealdrag0 11y agoI'm leaving Dropbox, because I don't want to pay for 1TB of data when I only use 50gb. Other services offer smaller increments of payment plans.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Sir_Substance 11y agoI know no one likes me doing this, but... I use bittorrent sync (stay with 1.3.109 until they stop messing it up or syncthing gets a bit more mature). I've never paid for it, it Just Works (no install, just binary, takes literally 30 seconds to get two machines syncing, I've used it to send files to my mum because it's easier than teaching her to use mediafire), it's not storage limited, it end-to-end encrypts and because it's peer to peer, it is way faster because it doesn't upload to a server first. Remind me again why you lot insist on using third party providers for this stuff?
- achyfxgi 11y agoI changed to Hubic and I am happy, Created account, run referral links and I’m at 55GB as I speak. You can sign up to get extra space beyond the space offered on their website https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO OK, 55GB that’s way more than most of storage services offer. Plus - here is the deal - Hubic offers true folder syncing (not like Dropbox or Onedrive, just one folder), plus they offer backup option only. The mobile device apps are pretty good. One thing I like about Hubic is it give expiry dates on shared links. SugarSync doesn’t provide free space. Cubby has limited storage and you have to do a lot of work to get some space. Copy is not interesting anymore since they cut the referral program. Dropbox sucks because you have to do 30 referrals to get just a few Gig space. I find HubiC is pretty good and it now pretty fast, I am averaging 2-3 GB upload per hour which is pretty decent. Here is a sign up link to get you extra 5GB in addition to 25GB plus you can get 25 GB additional space for a total of 55GB of space easily on HubiC: https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO ..... Just sign up with this link and you get the bonus space instead of the regular 25GB if you go directly through Hubic website. And you can have peace of mind HubiC is owned by OVH, they are pretty big internet hosting company, hosting is in Europe. Right now they have 500,000 accounts, which is pretty impressive for a service that just started a couple of months ago. If you decide to subscribe to their service, it’s starts at 80 cents per month, pretty good price, so no need to prepay chunk of money and you can cancel anytime. Here is the link again: https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO Cheers.
- achyfxgi 11y ago:)
- achyfxgi 11y agoAnd if you are looking for Copy referral .. more simple than Hubic, looks more like Dropbox.. then please use my COPY.com referral and we can both earn 5 Gig of space.. You can achieve in total 40 Gig of space with referrals. Thanks… https://copy.com?r=D8xVPr https://copy.com?r=D8xVPr