Item: Dropbox
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Dropbox to receive files from outside consultants. We do not use it as a "go-to" solution because it does not meet the rigorous client confidential requirements of large business law firms. That said, some of the time clients or third parties have already adopted Dropbox for file sharing so we go along with it. As such, it is not used across the whole organization. Rather it is used by individual lawyers on a bit of an ad hoc basis.

Pros and Cons

Slick interface: anyone can figure it out.
Nice to have the option of both a web interface and then a desktop application.
Variety of price points depending on storage requirements.

Might not meet some of the more rigorous requirements for business law firms.
I have had some issues using the Dropbox desktop app on my personal machine at home. I ran into a bug which was basically unsolvable.

Return on Investment

Positive impact because we try to work within a client's existing software infrastructure, and there is no cost to signing up for a Dropbox account or installing the app.
Positive impact because it furthers document sharing and collaboration.

Alternatives Considered

Box, MS SharePoint and HighQ Collaborate

I find Dropbox and Box pretty similar. I've used both and while I prefer Dropbox's interface, I am overall pretty ambivalent between the two. Sharepoint seems to require more effort for initial set-up, which might be a challenge for small businesses, but I tend to like its feature set a bit more. We have a client that requires us to use it and it is growing on me a lot. HighQ Collaborate is a solution that our firm acquired a few years ago when we need to share files with clients in a secure way. It satisfies the rigorous client confidential requirements of large business law firms.

Support Rating

At work, Dropbox has worked smoothly for me, so I have not had to make use of the support features. The web interface in particular works really really well. I did have a problem using Dropbox at home and ran into basically an incurable bug. Maybe I just got really unlucky.

Key Insights

Do you think Dropbox delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Dropbox's feature set?

Yes

Did Dropbox live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Dropbox go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Dropbox again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Dropbox is well suited if a small business needs to share files with third parties. File size limits in Outlook are generally about 20 megabytes. Sometimes closing books or technical documents can be bigger than this, so it is relatively common to run into the problem of how do you share files with third parties. Dropbox also works well as a way to back-up key files or to put those key files into the cloud so they are available remotely.

Dropbox is good, but not the best software I use

Overall Satisfaction with Dropbox