The one app I use that ONLY syncs with Dropbox is Scrivener. At this point, I am willing to take the hit on that app and move all of my writing to Ulysses.
The betas of iOS and macOS let me specify a folder to stay downloaded, and allows for folder sharing, so that frees up a lot of what I used Dropbox for.
Now, if I could script uploading a file from my Mac to the Dropbox web site, that would let me use DB for archival purposes.
You can pump your free Dropbox account up to about 20GB with the referral program. I’ve been operating this way for years.
The gotcha is, they changed the free to only work on 3 devices. You are grandfathered in for more devices, but if you rebuild one of those devices it sets the clock back.
I did it with a $25 Google AdWords credit plus an extra $15 of my own money. That might be against Google’s terms of service now, though.
I signed up a bunch of times in freshly recreated VMs with different email addresses, got up to 25GB or so.
This may come as a surprise, but I have my scumbaggery side.
I took it as a challenge, honestly, as they made it quite difficult to fool.
I use both DropBox and OneDrive — DropBox for personal stuff and OneDrive for work items. I mostly use DropBox via the website and on iPad app and OneDrive built in to Windows or on the iPad app. So this is a bit of an Apples vs. Oranges comparison.
DropBox has always worked well for me. I drop stuff on their website and it shows up on my other computers on the website and on the iPad.
OneDrive tends to have a lot more synch problems. It’s quite common for me to open a OneDrive file on Windows and to have things hang. After a while it gives me a message which IIRC is something about a semaphore problem. This happens in spite of the fact that on the exact same network I’m able to access the file just fine on the iPad via the OneDrive app. In spite of the name of the message it doesn’t appear to be caused by my having the document open on multiple computers. I suspect it’s related to backend issues (maybe the server drive my files are on is temporarily down or is slow?). Generally if one of my files has a problem, they all do and my entire OneDrive is inaccessible via Windows, although it’s fine on my iPad. Then once one of those files finally transfers, from that point on, it’s smooth sailing for all the files.
I’ve learned that OneDrive is not reliable to guarantee access to files at specific times (if I don’t remember to download a file from OneDrive before I teach class, I could get screwed by OneDrive deciding that the file is simply unavailable even if I have a very good Internet connection).
Also OneDrive is very, very unhappy with large numbers of files. I’ve got some Android projects with ~20K very small files and OneDrive just flips out on these (not sure how DropBox would handle them).
I received OneDrive for free with my Microsoft Office 365 subscription. So price-wise for me OneDrive is a big win. Also OneDrive has been improving by leaps and bounds and is much, much better than it was just a year or two ago. So hopefully the synch problems will be fixed soon.
I also have a huge free onedrive account, but I never use it. Google Drive started off with similar problems but these days works fine. Google Drive File Stream is particularly great, with its placeholders for files that aren’t synced locally.
Also Google Drive (now Google One) has a sane pricing structure. $20/year gets 100GB, $30/year for 200GB.
Or you can pay $10/month and get unlimited storage with GSuite for Business.
I have a huge one drive personal account as well and similarly don’t use it because it just can’t sync reliably. I have to use it for work as well and it’s gotten better but starts sucking with large numbers of small files.
I have tried most solutions and other than Dropbox the only thing that works consistently and fast is Seafile. Which used to be a pain to run yourself but they put some work into their docker containers so it’s been running reliably for me.
Same boat here. I use both Dropbox and Google Drive Stream here at work, and Dropbox just WORKS. Google has lost more than one file I thought was saved locally as well as on the cloud. Lost hours of work.
I’ve been a fan of Dropbox for a really long time, but I’m not interested in any way in the features they’ve been adding.
But I don’t find that it’s slowing my PC down in any meaningful way. I’m happy to give it 500MB when I’ve got so much RAM already.
Yeah, I saw a lot of complaints about this. I have 16gb of RAM, and even my 8gb Air isn’t screaming. That said, a lot of the features/changes strike me as a company desperate to increase revenue. That said, putting Smart Sync on Plus and away from Business is a nice touch.
I am probably not switching fully away from Dropbox over the next year. However, I will likely move a lot of my day-to-day files to iCloud when 10.15 and iOS 13 ship. The only app I use that requires Dropbox right now is Scrivener.
I just checked and Dropbox is taking up 140.5MB of RAM. It’s the second-highest user on my system (Chrome takes nearly 1.5GB), but whatever. Have at it, Dropbox!
The three device limitation has me weening myself off of Dropbox. I’ve been switching to iCloud since I already pay for it. I hear Apple is adding (has already added?) selective folders and sharing, so I think it will do everything I need.
I was using Dropbox with 1Password and have switched to paid subscription instead. Couldn’t avoid it any longer. It simplifies 1Password install/setup, and I no longer have to purchase app upgrades, so there’s a couple benefits at least.
I’m also a big Dropbox fan. My life has me frequently at different machines needing access to the same files. Dropbox has been solid as a central working directory for me. Never had a problem so while I don’t like the price increase, I was already subscribed and loving it so I’m sticking with it.
@stusser you’re always talking about gsuite for business giving unlimited storage for $12/month and something about user limits. Google’s website says “Unlimited cloud storage (or 1TB per user if fewer than 5 users)”. Does this solution still work? My buddy wants to store like 20TB and is looking for something.
Yes, it still works with only 1 user.
Are you saying Google is lying and it’s really unlimited with only 1 user? The rascals!
Yes, that is correct.
Note Google will only allow you to upload 750GB/day, so it’ll take a couple weeks to get his 20TB up there.
Awesome. Do you use anything to encrypt your data en route to there? Do you only use it for backup? I’m using my edu gsuite google drive to backup from my PC via Duplicati, but my buddy’s need is slightly different.
My buddy wants to mount it like a network drive and not use it like a backup/sync option. I like the look and chatter about Mountain Duck for that, but do you have any experience with that sort of software?