What killed Dropbox for me is that most of the apps I use takes advantage of Cloudkit. Also 1Password dropbox sync was made irrelevant due to 1Password own sync solution. Dropbox cannot be installed on my work too as it is against company policy. Our IT also doesn’t want it on our computer as it sucks resource. He doesn’t want it competing with the company-wide use of Microsoft Teams that also eats up most of our resource. Only one must take that crown.
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Dropbox potentially has access to be admin/root on your computer. this is BAD!
Noting that lots of apps effectively have that kind of permission - and it’s not a problem as long as you trust them.
The thing with Dropbox is that it requests the access despite the fact that it doesn’t need it, and has apparently done quasi-fraudulent things in the past in order to get the access it wants.
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Here is the reason I despise Dropbox. My wife had a Dropbox account. When she died, I didn’t know the password for her account. Now this was a common thing I had to deal with, most companies, you call, explain the situation and they cancel the account and refund the money. Some will ask for a death certificate, which I provided and that’s the end of the account. Not so with Dropbox. It is literally impossible to get in touch with a human. I tried calling the phone number that was on the credit card bill. It’s an inactive number. I tried calling their enterprise phone number, they require you to login to your enterprise account, which I don’t have, so that didn’t work. I filled out their online support form multiple times, no response. I tried their stupid chat bot, no response.
In the end I called my bank and disputed the charge, luckily that was the end of it. But what a POS company to have no way to actually deal with customer issues such as this. Not every situation can be handled by some stupid bot or phone tree. Some things need a human to help out. I hope they go out of business as soon as possible.
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Okay, a really lame question. I’ve been with Dropbox since they began. I’m having issues. What would you all recommend as a replacement? iCloud storage doesn’t cut the mustard. I haven’t ventured into the Devonsphere.
Thanks for all future suggestions!
Best to you,
Nikki
What about iCloud storage isn’t working for you?
I name folders all sorts of things in Dropbox, all the time and NEVER had it rename anything, ever.
Are you sure you’re talking about Dropbox?
devonthink. I’ve been w/ dropbox since inception as well and still use it.
but I’ve recently moved to DT for most of my work. a great decision for me.
It’s iffy and not fast nor efficient. Dropbox syncs lightning fast.
Oh, Ryan, am I expecting or asking for too much?
I guess it would be too much to ask what/how DT changed it for you?
FWIW, I’ve found Google Drive to be rock solid. I’ve been using it for years on both my Gmail and my paid workspace accounts. It syncs immediately and you can find files using full text search of the contents. And the Backup and Sync application installs and uninstalls cleanly on both Mac & PC.
Storage is available at 100GB, 200GB, and 2TB levels.
I use Google Drive, and find it better. I don’t install any app, only use the web interface, and have had zero issues with sharing files. It has features that Dropbox reserves for “pro” tier users even in the basic tier (like preventing downloading of shared videos), which is one of the the reasons I dropped Dropbox.
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Are you taking about using WebDAV? Or DT’s built-in sync engine?
I migrated away about two years ago. I didn’t hate their service but it was more that thanks to five family members using multiple iOS and Mac devices, I was getting nickled and dimed to to death trying to pay for each person a little extra storage. We do need to use cloud storage for our small business and I pay for G-Suite. However, Google Drive’s sync is surprisingly terrible and would stall out frequently for no determinable reason requiring my wife/co-worker and I needing to restart the sync manually several times a day. Last year when iCloud gained the ability to sync folders, it was a no brainer just to switch over full time. Now thanks to some VPN issues that may be thanks to the M1 Mac (long story for another time) iCloud sync does not pick back up immediately when I log out of the VPN we use so using Dropbox may need to happen again. I don’t want to pay for their service when I already use iCloud. I agree with @ChrisUpchurch that the pricing tiers are pretty bad for consumers like myself as I could probably work with 100-500GB of storage.
(Also cc @Rob_Polding )
I’m actually about to start using Google Drive more for some work-related items. I have literally never really used it for much of anything before, so I have some questions that I wondered if you might be able to help with. (Maybe I should have started a new thread, but since we’re already here.)
Most things will be actual files, not “Google Docs” per se but there will be some shared Google Docs as well.
My biggest concern with Google Docs and Google Drive has always been “How do I back this up?”
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Does Google Drive have an option like Dropbox to say “Download all of the files to this computer, regardless of when (or if) I have last opened them.” ? If not, how do you reliably back up Google Drive to something like Backblaze or Time Machine?
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Google Docs don’t actually exist on the disk, right? They’re just, like, bookmarks? So how do you back those up? Or do you just trust Google? (shudder)
The Google is happy. The Google is crazy. The Google will make you happy. This will make you crazy. 
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Like many things, it depends. I keep very few files in Google formats so I’m not an expert on backing up those documents. Yes, *.gsheet files on your local hard drive are just links.
Google has software that allows you to select which normal files that you wish to sync. If you choose to keep data in Google formats you can download them via Google takeout. This is a service that allows you to export your data either on demand or a schedule (ever two months for six months). Google’s “Office” documents will be exported as Word/Excel/Powerpoint files.
And if you have an important document in Google Docs, for example a Google spreadsheet, that you want to backup immediately you can right click on that Google document, select Download, and a copy in Excel format will be downloaded to your computer.
But most of my spreadsheets are xlsx files which were originally created in Numbers or OpenOffice that I just view and edit in Sheets. They remain normal files which immediately sync to my computer when changed. The rest of my data is a folder containing several thousand PDFs. So in my case I sync everything to my local hard and back up with Arqbackup.
Interesting. I have never considered using Drive like this. There’s no trouble opening a Numbers file in Sheets and then Numbers again? At all?
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, Sheets cannot open a Numbers file. The spreadsheets I use in Sheets I first exported from Numbers as excel files. However, Numbers files can reside on Google Drive and be previewed in a browser or in Google’s IOS Drive.app.
And of course they can be opened on a Mac if synced to your local hard drive. But they can also be opened with IOS Numbers through the Files.app if you have Drive.app installed and listed under Locations.
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