Professional cloud-based file sharing
Updated August 23, 2021
Professional cloud-based file sharing
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Dropbox
The primary uses of Dropbox in our organization were (1) to have a cloud-based repository of all the files for current projects so they could collaborated on by multiple users, or by single users in multiple locations, (2) to have cloud-based backups of those same projects, and (3) to allow easy sharing of large files with people within and outside our organization.
- It is a fast and reliable cloud file sharing system.
- It integrates well with macOS, making it easy to share files, control whether files are in the cloud or local, see the current sync status for each file, and more, right from the Finder. It also supports macOS file meta (keywords, color tags, etc.).
- It's web-based file previews work very well and support a wide selection of file types.
- It has useful and intuitive annotation / commenting features for files.
- For large teams or large file sizes, it can become expensive.
- Annotation features may be too basic for some types of jobs.
- It's hard to answer this question in a nonprofit context. Dropbox made our staff more productive and allowed us to perform essential functions that we could not do as well, or at all, with other cloud file sharing platforms.
Of all the options we tried, Dropbox was at the top in terms of performance, reliability, and features.
Nextcloud is a self-hosted solution, and is the system preferred by our IT department — mainly because it is free or has no annual subscription cost. However, it's UI is clunky compared to Dropbox's. It didn't sync files as well, couldn't preview some file types, and had other technical problems. Even though it was locally hosted, it was slower than Dropbox.
Google Drive is another service we used in tandem with the others. It is great for collaborative documents and spreadsheets, and does OK with some other types of projects. But for file sharing it didn't work as well, and our plan didn't allow for enough storage space compared to the other options.
For my personal home use, I use pCloud. It works great, and has an optional lifetime purchase plan: You have perpetual use for a one-time payment. I like that you can sync specific subfolders to a computer, but it is more tedious or technical to set up compared to Dropbox.
Nextcloud is a self-hosted solution, and is the system preferred by our IT department — mainly because it is free or has no annual subscription cost. However, it's UI is clunky compared to Dropbox's. It didn't sync files as well, couldn't preview some file types, and had other technical problems. Even though it was locally hosted, it was slower than Dropbox.
Google Drive is another service we used in tandem with the others. It is great for collaborative documents and spreadsheets, and does OK with some other types of projects. But for file sharing it didn't work as well, and our plan didn't allow for enough storage space compared to the other options.
For my personal home use, I use pCloud. It works great, and has an optional lifetime purchase plan: You have perpetual use for a one-time payment. I like that you can sync specific subfolders to a computer, but it is more tedious or technical to set up compared to Dropbox.
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?
Yes
Did implementation of Dropbox go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Dropbox again?
Yes