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Another limitation of Dropbox's free tier, compared to similar applications, is that you can only install the app on three devices. Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud, IDrive, and Sync all offer 5GB while Google Drive comes with 15GB of storage, although it's shared with Gmail.
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You can earn up to 16GB of free storage space by referring people to Dropbox, but this takes work, as you only get 500MB per person you refer.Įither way, the amount you get for free is less generous than what you get from much of the competition. How Much Does Dropbox Cost?ĭropbox offers a free version, called Dropbox Basic, which offers 2GB of storage space. For the corporate audience, PCMag has a separate review of Dropbox for Business. This review focuses on Dropbox for personal use. So while Dropbox remains a solid online cloud storage service, you can easily pay less and get more space from competitors such as Google, Microsoft, and IDrive.
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Another issue is that as Dropbox has become a bigger and more complex service, competitors are comfortably establishing themselves in the niche Dropbox created, and at a lower price.
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On the other hand, a product that was once known for its simplicity is increasingly convoluted, which can make it harder to recommend, especially to anyone who isn't tech savvy. On one hand, having more features is a boon, and Dropbox offers some potentially valuable ones. Dropbox can still work this way, if you want, but the company offers a whole lot more, including a backup service, tools for taking screenshots and recording video of your screen, an e-signature service, and an online document editor. With it, you'd drag files into a magic Dropbox folder and the files would sync to the cloud and to all your other devices. Dropbox, once upon a time, was a surprisingly simple cloud storage and file-sharing service.
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