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Comment by malanj | Hacker News Reader

Unless they drop the price soon we're going to move away from them. It sounds silly to argue over $15/user/month, but in comparison to Google Drive it's just started feeling too expensive.

I really like the product, but I don't know if any product in a commoditized space can sustain such a price premium.

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Well, it's $15/user for unlimited storage. Google Apps is $5/user for 30GB for each user, and then you have to start buying additional storage with "licenses"[1] which brings the price a little closer to Dropbox if you have a lot of data. I only use a Google Apps account so I don't know how well the clients work with multiple accounts (private Gmail and Apps). Maybe Dropbox will handle it better?

Obviously, Google Apps gives you much more than just Google Drive so the comparison will greatly depend on what other services you need/use, what your employees and contractors already know, and whether you have Linux clients since Goolge Drive still doesn't support Linux.

[1] https://support.google.com/a/answer/1726914

> Google Apps is $5/user for 30GB for each user

I'd be willing to wager that someone at Google has figured out that 30GB/user covers > N% of users, where N ~ 80-90. This makes Drive more attractive than Dropbox for that N%.

I believe Google pools the storage. Office 365 does the same thing. My org manages many thousands of people each with 10GB of OneDrive space.

We allocate big users as much as 200GB of space without even looking at the allocation ,because most user needs are very light.

Google does not currently pool the storage, but will move to that model in coming quarters.

How do you know this. Have they announced pooled storage?

I think they have the capability already and offer it as a carrot if you're a O365 customer or serious prospect.

for unlimited storage

In the real world you have netowrk congestion and security costs that scall with "unlimited" in this context.

so its more about practical needs.

Remember that Google Drive doesn't have official Linux support nor a Linux cli only client. Dropbox has both. This is very handy if you have any servers, some developers etc.

Dropbox for Business also includes their unlimited backups (older versions of files).

> unlimited backups (older versions of files).

Versions are not backups. I wish I could find a simple web page that I read quite a few years ago. It very starkly explained why some things are commonly confused with, but just are not, backups. The consequences of those confusions are usually bad.

So, to all intents and purposes versions appear to act as backups, but you read a Web site a few years ago that said they aren't so that's what you tell people?

Not really. The concept of version works like backup for full fledge systems (SVN, git), but not what Dropbox exposes.

Dropbox keeps version of _existing_ files. You won't get back the files deleted and synched by mistake/misbehavior of some script. A backup would keep the files.

You'll also have different behaviors if you need to bring back a set of data (i.e. all your files as they were two days ago). You'll be in pain to do it file by file with Dropbox's version system.

Dropbox keeps the history of deleted files just like modified files. Take a look on the web interface and hit the "Show deleted files" trashcan in the icons at the top.

Or for a different view, hit the "Events" link on the left navbar.

A colleague of mine always says that you don't have a backup if a single nuke* can take everything away. So even with soft deletion, versioning in itself would not be a backup solution. OTOH, I'd bet Dropbox has distributed backups.

* An exaggeration for natural disasters, wars, lock-downs, fires and so on.

Fair enough. Thank you for the explanation.

> Dropbox keeps version of _existing_ files. You won't get back the files deleted and synched by mistake/misbehavior of some script

Err, that is exactly what they provide. You do have to use the web interface to see them, and it is trivial to restore directories and files. (A bit painful if you want to only restore some of the files in a directory.)

Thanks for the correction.

Before posting I actually deleted a file and went to the web interface to check but couldn't find anything looking like that feature. I know they basically have a git like file management, but thought they just didn't expose past deleted files (clicking on the events timeline just moves to the folder the file belonged without any further information).

For anyone making the same mistake, the trashcan left to the search box in the action bar, it's not to delete stuff, like it does in the OSX Finder bar. It's to show past deleted files in the current folder (they then appear grayed out in the listing).

Fairly OT, but even knowing what the icon does, the is a thrill going to my spine when clicking this trash icon. But to be fair, the image is not wrong, it's just the habit of the OSX Finder.

BTW they keep old/deleted versions of files for 30 days for all users, and indefinitely for business plans. It also doesn't count against the quota.

Description and video showing accessing old files is at https://www.dropbox.com/help/113/en

We tried to move to Google Drive but are about to go all in for Dropbox for Business. The Google Drive desktop sync client (for Mac at least) is just not reliable enough. Make sure you trial Google Drive first.

The Google Drive sync client is lacking features for business. But third party Google Drive sync clients like Syncdocs http://syncdocs.com make it better than Dropbox.

Not features; reliability. We have fairly modest Enterprise® requirements, but we do shunt around medium-size files quite often and expect them to be synchronized around the office as well as Dropbox manages it.

For Dropbox, it is their core business. For Google, it's a drop in their massive bucket of cash that comes from advertising. If business reliability matters to you, Dropbox seems comparatively better.

I dont think it is fair to equate the fact that Google Drive is less reliable than Dropbox, just based on the fact that Google has more irons in the fire compared to Dropbox. They also have orders of magnitude more employees and resources than Dropbox.

I think there are two kinds of "reliability" getting conflated here. There's reliability as in "this is built on the stable foundation of a big system and has a bunch of engineers ensuring it's Highly Available" -- both Google and Dropbox can give you that. Then there's reliability as in "this product won't blow away in the corporate-political wind" -- and Dropbox is the only one who can truly say that. (Though Google Drive is pretty core to a lot of stuff Google does, e.g. Android, so it's probably not going anywhere either.)

On the other hand, Dropbox is a one-trick pony, providing a service that is easily replicable and becoming increasingly commoditized.

Dropbox don't even own the hardware they store your files on.

Google own the data centre, the hardware, in many cases the device (Android devices, Chromebooks, Chromecast, Google TV etc.) you use to access their services, and increasingly (with Google Fiber) the connection between you and them.

> If business reliability matters to you, Dropbox seems comparatively better.

If you're comparing Drive to the Reader fiasco, keep in mind that Drive for business is a paid offering.

But so is google apps no?

Yes, and google apps for business continues to exist...

No, the free version of Google Apps was not a paid offering. The paid version is, and is still going strong.

How sure are you that Dropbox is more reliable than Google Drive? As sure as you are that Google Drive is just a drop in the bucket for Google?

It sounds more like cost-plus pricing rather than value-based pricing. At the same time, it makes sense for Dropbox to go on the higher end of the pricing spectrum and drop it if things don't go as well as hoped since it's much easier to drop price than ever to raise.

If their business is dependent on charging significantly more than the competition then I disagree that it is reliable.

You really think Google would drop Google Apps for Business and Google Drive? That is really illogical. It's the future, they're not going to drop it.

Dropbox is more likely to go under before Google Drive does.

They already lost me. I had just recently upgraded to their $9/mo 100GB plan and was happy as could be. Then Google dropped their prices and suddenly that same $9 could buy me an entire TB, which allows me to do/store way more. I didn't even hesitate to switch, although I'd much rather be paying Dropbox than Google. If they ever make a similar price drop I'll switch back.

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