I'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.
One 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.
6. 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.
> 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.
I'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 ;-))
There 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.
Three 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?
It 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."
I'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?
This 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)
I expected to read the alternative solution you plan to use. Did i miss something?
I 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
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 .....
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
Cheers.
Am I the only one who expected 5. Condoleezza Rice?
The 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-...
Ok, well. Where are you going and why? That would be more interesting to me :)
Maybe 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.
Their actual reason is probably related to the arguments presented at http://www.drop-dropbox.com/
Unsure why "they" would not come out and say that.
I 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?
What are you now/planning on using instead of Dropbox? Google Drive?
I'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.
I love Dropbox. Use it all the time without any problems.
Complaint #1 - They aren't releasing new features, and are spending too much time on bug fixing and performance.
Complaint #2 - It's buggy.
Oooooooooooooooook.
We use Google Drive internally - but I've been thinking about trying out Box. Integrated file editing makes a big difference.
And 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
I 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.
Interesting opinions. I just reinvested myself in Dropbox now that CloudApp has hampered their free usage and raised their first tier pricing.
Dropbox's screenshot sharing is working really well and perfect replacement.
I 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...
I agree that on Mac it can be pretty frustrating to use. On Windows, not so much.
A good evaluation of current cloud storage options would actually be useful. "Why we're switching from Dropbox to X" wouldn't waste our time.
I'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.
I'll file this one under "cool story bro"
I use Dropbox for notes and documents using terminal, VIM and markdown format. Beats Google docs every day if you don't need live collaboration.
Seems a bit anecdotal. I've had none of these issues. What if you just need to restart your computer?
The 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...
The 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?
What exactly does Dropbox do that WebDAV can't do?
I 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.