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Comment by keithpeter | Hacker News Reader

2 gig free, next step up is 50Gb. Anyone else find the big jump means they use the dropbox just for day to day projects? A 10 or 20 Gig price point at $5 a month would be something I could rationally use.

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I pay $49/year for 10GB. Dropbox doesn't advertise but if you request it they'll quote you for other storage amounts and let you sign up.

20GB for $49/year is what I really want. Hopefully they'll do that soon.

Here is what they told in late 2009 - don't know if these links still work:

Thanks for writing to Dropbox. We recently ran a market test for intermediate plans that has ended, but I can still offer you the plans:

- 10GB $4.99/month or $49/year - 20GB $6.99/month or $69/year - 25GB $7.99/month or $79/year

You can use the following links to sign up for one of these plans. You need to be logged into the Dropbox website for them to work:

* 10 GB: https://www.dropbox.com/upgrade?plan=10&v=11396bf * 20 GB: https://www.dropbox.com/upgrade?plan=20&v=e6ad6ff * 25 GB: https://www.dropbox.com/upgrade?plan=25&v=9fb5a23

> Here is what they told in late 2009 - don't know if these links still work:

They don't.

Well, perhaps I should drop the British reserve and send them an e-mail. I could have all my teaching materials in the cloud then. Everything that I've used in 10 years available anywhere...

It is a big jump. And that first 2GB seems (or seemed at the time) very generous for free.

I wonder how many of DropBox's users are 2GB-only? I remember feeling very willing to try it, because it was free, and a lot of space for free. It worked so well for me (I'm still only 58% full) I have no need to upgrade. It's quite a loss-leader for DropBox, but presumably an acceptable one.

But looking at my stuff on disk, I've got:

- text and documents - projects - source files

which fit easily within 2GB, and

- a vast photo library - an enormous music library - a titanic video library

which don't fit easily within anything.

So for me a sensible jump would be from 2GB to, ooh, 2TB... :)

Agreed. I always wished Dropbox had a lower, entry-level tier for around $5/month. I don't need 50gb. I just need 5-10gb.

There's no need to even have tiers - it would be great if they would just charge you $X/GB/month over the free amount.

I'd think it's a deliberate design choice having it this way. If you think about it, paying only for actually used space would mean a lot smaller income for the company.

Maybe it would also erode the magic in it - people would start thinking if they should have this and that files on Dropbox or not. Or accidentally piling up huge bills doing some mistake managing their files...

I don't know about that. Sure, there are some people using 5-10GB of a 50GB account, but I'm sure there are lots of people that are sticking with the free account when they'd gladly pay a little bit $1-$2 for slightly more storage, and people at the other end that are either frustrated by the 100GB limit or haven't even bothered using the service because they know they need to store more than 100GB.

I trust Dropbox has done extensive market research and concluded that having two price tiers, plus the other benefits that come with such simplified pricing, outweigh the flexibility of usage-based pricing.

Actually, you can reach that capacity through referrals. I have 8 GB for free, for example.

This is totally self serving (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3126173). If you're on the free plan, you should be able to max out your referrals at somewhere between 8-10GB of free space for you (they may have lowered it). I got 30 referrals for less than $10....give it a shot, I've had friends try this recently and they didn't end up spending more than $15.

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