Item: Dropbox
Rating: 7
Author: Ben Lachman

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Dropbox allows file syncing with native/uncommon file types across multiple platforms (Mac/Mobile/Web/PC). We use it for shared administrative storage for projects including team information, contracts, requirements, and any additional project files. These files are often in types that aren't supported as well by primarily web services like Google Drive. Dropbox is a native first service and excels in areas where OS integration is strongest.

Pros and Cons

Native operating system integration.
Fast file syncing (with local network sync).
Shared folder flexibility.
Version history on all files.

Recent moves to push into some sort of document management experience. I'm not interested in having a Dropbox dashboard pushed in my face all the time.
Dropbox has overreached on default OS-level privileges, it should not ask for full disk access or desktop control.
Many of its add-on services do not bring much-added value, they add complexity and are sometimes poorly executed (looking at you, Dropbox dot)

Return on Investment

Dropbox has been a key part of the growth of our company to working with major industry players like Twitter and Honeywell.
Recently, productivity has decreased some as Dropbox adds more "value-added" features when we really only want their rock-solid syncing and filesystem integration.
As a customer for close to a decade, I've seen value in the platform on a continued basis for many years despite using and evaluating multiple competing services.

Alternatives Considered

Google Drive

Drives poor ability to integrate shared folders and documents with your own documents, as well as its terrible starring feature, make Dropbox immediately superior from a basic file management standpoint. Dropbox sticks with the well-known filesystem representation of data, while Drive only half implements it. Also, Dropbox's storage limits are more generous than low tiers on Google docs.

Key Insights

Do you think Dropbox delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Dropbox's feature set?

Did Dropbox live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Dropbox go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Dropbox again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Figma, Google Drive, Linode, Jupyter Notebook, Craft, Discord

Likelihood to Recommend

Dropbox is great for small teams and teams that need to share data on a daily basis. Dropbox's ease of sharing and good sharing management easily outstrips Google Drive's lackluster data layout, sharing interfaces, and integration of shared data in a productive and easy-to-use manner. Additionally, its traditional treatment of its service as an extension of the OS is far more usable than other services like Box and GDrive. In particular, GDrive performs poorly representing its custom data types (Sheets/Docs/etc) while Dropbox generally assumes that the user will pick their own document types and interact with them in a native format.

Dropbox: a solid and valuable foundation with questionable value-added feature

Overall Satisfaction with Dropbox