News - Dropbox drops prices and ups storage to hold off competition

[HEXUS]

It hopes user friendly features and services can keep it popular with users.

Read more.

[crossy]

The company has combined its three Pro account options into a single plan, Dropbox Pro, priced at $9.99 (£7.99) a month for 1TB of storage. This new plan replaces previous Pro plans which offered 100GB, 200GB and 500GB of storage, priced respectively at $9.99, $19.99 and $49.99 per month.

Actually that's one of the objections I had to upgrading my complimentary access (thanks Samsung!) to a paid-for "Pro" setup - that there was little flexibility in the pricing structure. I would have been quite happy to have a mere 100GB but couldn't see anyway of justifying paying £90+/year for the privilege.

£79 for 1TB is probably pretty good value for money, but if they'd offered smaller packages (e.g. 500GB for £45, 100GB for £10) then I would have been a lot more interested. Actually, if they'd done the £10 package then I would sign up now. As it stands I can't see a justification for 1TB of space - if anyone from Dropbox is a Hexus reader then any chance of being able to share that allocation with other members of the family?

Unfortunately, Dropbox is one of those systems that integrates near-seamlessly on my setup of Windows, Linux and Android, and other systems are a lot more work, e.g. no Google Drive client for Linux for example.

[SciFi]

Agree with crossy, I don't need 1TB 100GB would be more than enough

[[DW]Cougho]

I moved over to HubiC once my temporary 50GB Dropbox access expired and I've been very happy, as others say 1TB is far too much for my needs - 100GB for 1 Euro a month is perfect for my needs. It isn't the fastest but as I use my cloud storage purely to backup files I absolutely cannot lose (pictures etc) then I have no issue.

I've also just checked the website - a linux client is in Beta too.

[ET3D]

Office 365 looks like a really good deal if you want 1TB of cloud storage, especially if you have several users at home and take the $9.99 plan.

Actually, if they'd done the £10 package then I would sign up now.

Things are moving forward for OneDrive and Google Drive, which have cheaper plans. Googling showed me that there's a way to install OneDrive on Linux, and that 'grive' allows syncing folders with Google Drive (though it's early software and is missing features).

[crossy]

Office 365 looks like a really good deal if you want 1TB of cloud storage, especially if you have several users at home and take the $9.99 plan.

Things are moving forward for OneDrive and Google Drive, which have cheaper plans. Googling showed me that there's a way to install OneDrive on Linux, and that 'grive' allows syncing folders with Google Drive (though it's early software and is missing features).

Thanks I'll take a look at OneDrive, but others have remarked that Google - a company that uses Linux itself - seems to be dragging their feet over Linux support. EDIT: actually just checked out Office365 and £80 for 1TB per user plus full house Office looks like a pretty reasonable deal.

The other one that took my interest was Wuala. The initial 5GB is a bit miserly, but 10.98EUR for 105GB per month seems okay to me. And that's about £9, is cross-platform and encrypts locally (NSA resistant?)

If Hexus are short of article fodder then one comparing these cloud-storage systems might be handy.

[cheesemp]

Good to hear. I've been wanting to upgrade my gdrive storage but google only take payment in USD which is a killer with foreign transaction fees (and this is despite lots of people requests on the support forums for some more options). Might have to consider dropbox instead...

[TheAnimus]

Given their security faux pas, who is still using it?

They are expensive and not the people to be trusted to not mess up and accidentally let other people read your files.

[crossy]

They are expensive and not the people to be trusted to not mess up and accidentally let other people read your files.

Doesn't that pretty much apply to most of the cloud storage systems - e.g. Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, etc?

If I'd got anything sensitive in my c.s. systems then I'd want it encrypted at my end - either Truecrypt (or similar) or some kind of native client-side encryption scheme (Wuala). I actually do store sensitive info on my Dropbox account - but that's stored in AES-256, so hopefully a little resistant to NSA/CIA probing.

I was actually looking at hosted-OwnCloud (one of the main benefits to me of cloud storage is offsite, so normal [self-hosted] OwnCloud is a non-starter) and came across this: (my underline)

The Encryption app

The goal of the Encryption app is to protect data on external storage. All files sent there will be encrypted by the ownCloud server, and upon retrieval, decrypted before serving them to you (or those you shared them with). The key to decrypt the data never leaves the ownCloud server. This makes the ownCloud Encryption app a great tool to benefit from cloud storage offered by services like Dropbox or Google Drive while ensuring security and privacy of your data!

[TheAnimus]

AFAIK neither google drive, onedrive or box have had anything like the security mess ups that dropbox have had.