While I would like to have the ability for my wife and I to share a combined account with our own individual logins - it's not worth the extra $80/year, almost doubling the cost for only a limited increase in features. If it came with double the storage I might consider it, but even then I'm not sure I need that much more storage at the moment. Please reconsider the pricing on the family plan as I will never upgrade at anywhere near that price. It makes more sense to just have 2 Plus accounts since it comes with the extra storage. With the amount of competition out there for similar cloud storage, it's getting more difficult to justify the cost of dropbox, so I was really expecting a minimal increase in price, if any at all versus the Plus plan I am currently paying for.

As a Dropbox customer, I would not choose to change to the Dropbox Family plan. Hopefully, if enough loyal customers write in, Dropbox will re-evaluate the pricing model which makes little logical sense. I really like the Dropbox Family concept, but I can't see the justification for an $8 a month increase. If Dropbox took my combined family storage limit from 2 TB to 4 TB, I could justify the increased cost. An additional $8 a month just for the ability to share access to a 2 TB Dropbox account makes no logical sense. That's a 60% increase in cost. Let's compare Dropbox Family to other "family" subscriptions I use. 1Password is $3 a month for a single user and $5 a month for a family plan. With that increased cost, my family members get full use of their own password vaults. In comparison to Dropbox, my family members get no additional benefit in space with my family plan monthly increated costs (Dropbox sells space, not password vaults). Apple Music has a very similar scenario: $10 a month for an individual compared with $15 a month for a family. Again, each family member gets their own music = added benefit. To repeat, my family members on the Dropbox Family plan get no additional benefit with the increased monthly cost.

I completely agree with this statement. The family plan is Plus but much more expensive. If it's going to have same storage as Plus it should be cheaper, as only add is family share features, where as if it's going to be this much money it should have more storage? I really support Dropbox as a business but it feels like the pricing is out of touch. Super expensive already compared to competition (drive, MS 365) for fewer features, and new features (which are great to see) are again more expensive.

I have used Dropbox for over a decade. I love it! My wife and I share my personal account, use it extensively, and plan to keep using it for so long as Dropbox continues to be as fantastic as it is. I've experimented with Box, iCloud, Onedrive, and Google Drive and I like Dropbox much better than any of these 4. Price is the only barrier. But . . . I have rarely paid anything to Dropbox because it is so expensive. Perhaps this more detailed feedback of our situation will give you some ideas for how you could survey your customers to see if it is worth your while to come down on pricing and make up for it with volume. In detail: In December 2009 I signed up for a $50/year 20GB plan. Dropbox discontinued that plan in July 2012. For being such an early, loyal, paying customer, they gave me 19GB free to keep forever in addition to various bonuses I earned. This probably paid off for Dropbox in the long run as I referred a few other customers over the years and I also got a small business to sign up for Dropbox in 2019. The pricing on Dropbox for business is very reasonable and it felt like a minor cost that happened to provide huge value to that business as everyone worked at a different location. They are still using Dropbox. IMHO, the pricing on the personal side remains high relative to the value received, the competition, and what a typical family is able/willing to pay. We would jump into a family plan for $10/month in a heartbeat. It would replace the cumbersome shared Dropbox account with my wife which is chronically on the verge of running out of space. But more importantly, we have a pressing need to backup photos/videos from our teen son's iPhone and we are having discussions between 3 options: 1) backup to one of our Macs - free but time consuming and cumbersome because of how Apple lets you (or doesn't let you) do it. 2) get iCloud for $3/month which will be enough storage for him for at least a year but probably within 2 years he'll go over the 200GB and require the $10/month plan for 2TB. All iCloud plans include family sharing. 3) Get Dropbox at $17/month. If Dropbox for family were $10/month, my wife and I would not be discussing this. We'd already have it. Instead, we are having a hard time figuring out what to do. My wife argues we should avoid iCloud since Apple has a habit of doing funny things with your data (like getting rid of meta data on music from CDs you purchased and imported into iTunes, or making it difficult to get to outside Apple's eco-system. She thinks we should just backup onto iPhotos on a Mac until Dropbox lowers its price on the family plan which she thinks will inevitably happen as that price just seems too high for most families. I have no idea if or when Dropbox will drop their family plan price and I don't like how Apple makes it so complicated to backup photos/videos from an iPhone, so I've been arguing for the simple iCloud route at $3/month (Apple makes everything complicated unless you just use their iCloud). If someone from Dropbox is listening - please just change your price to $10/month on family or at most $12/month. At $17/month, you make this a tough decision for people - and people like us are probably going to pass. At $10/month, it's a no-brainer because it would be the same storage and family sharing as iCloud but a much better product that works seamlessly on many different systems. We are only a data point of 1, but . . . If Dropbox dropped it's price to $120/year or $12/month if you don't pay the whole year in advance, I can tell you for sure that we'd sign up. We'd stop being a free 22.8GB customer and become a paying $10/month customer for many years to come.

I'm completely confused about what this plan offers besides a shared folder.What exactly are we paying for if it's not more storage?Dropbox Support told me on Twitter that a single account can pay for everyone else but why does that cost almost double? If I'm going to pay double, I'll upgrade each account separately and each will get their own 2TB instead of sharing the same space for more money.

Just replying to this to say totally doesn't address the complaints of 75% price increase for no storage increase.

Family plan is too expensive for what it offers

32 Replies

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yar1vn
Helpful | Level 5
4 years ago
Who said we’re not using that space? And why do you think that a solution that works for you fits everybody else?
taricco
Helpful | Level 6
4 years ago
isdoo, I think you are seeing it from the standpoint that you and your family don't use that much Dropbox space. Going from one user up to 6 users trying to share the same storage space as one user would normally have just won't work for most situations. What Dropbox is doing is charging you $7/mo for the privilege of allowing multiple people to access the same Dropbox. It's really pure additional profit for Dropbox because they aren't adding any additional monthly expenses by allowing additional users.
tyardeni
New member | Level 2
3 years ago
Is the cost based on storage or users? Seems that the family plan should offer the same total storage as the standard plan.

Otherwise it is more money for less.
Rich
Super User II
3 years ago
tyardeni wrote:

Seems that the family plan should offer the same total storage as the standard plan.

It offers the same space and features as the Plus plan, but adds the ability to invite up to 5 additional people to share the account (6 total) and gives them all access to a shared Family Room folder.
taricco
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago
To clarify what the Dropbox Family Plan means as of October 13, 2023.
When purchasing by the year, the Dropbox Family Plan costs $16.99/mo = $203.88/yr.
Up to 6 separate users have access to a total of 2 TBs of storage. It's not 2 TBs per person, it's 2 TBs total.
The Dropbox Family Plan charges a $7/mo "premium" to allow 5 additional users to access 2 TBs of storage, which is the same amount of storage offered for a single user on the Dropbox Plus* plan.
*The Dropbox "Plus" plan offers 2 TBs of storage for $9.99/mo = $119.88/yr with access only for a single person.
The subject of this post, "Family plan is too expensive for what it offers," is still relevant as of October 13, 2023.
kristofmulier
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago
We are a family of five and would love to subscribe on the Dropbox Family plan. The bill would be around 204€/year, which is quite okay. Google Drive is a bit cheaper, but Dropbox has a more intuitive user interface.

However, we fear to hit the 2TB limit at some point. The Dropbox Family plan has no way to increase that limit. The closest plan I could find would then be "Dropbox Standard for Teams", clocking off at 720€/year for five team members (actually 871.20€/year in Belgium because of 21% VAT tax). That is just way too expensive.

So, what can we do in case we hit the 2TB limit (except for shelling out close to 1000€ per year)?
Thanks for your help.

Kind regards,
Kristof Mulier
kristofmulier
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago
The Dropbox Family plan is just perfect to store and share family pictures and videos. However, 2TB is a bit on the narrow side - especially when storing lots of videos.

It should be possible to buy extra storage in this plan.
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago
Hi kristofmulier, I hope you're doing well!

Your feedback regarding our Family plan has been very valuable and I will endeavor to make sure your voice is heard.

I will pass on your comments to the relevant departments. If you need anything else, let me know!
kristofmulier
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago
Hi @Megan,

Thank you very much for your reply. I'd love to have some feedback once this topic has been discussed internally. I'll wait for your feedback before making my purchase decision.
I hope to buy the Dropbox Family plan. If there's absolutely no way to increase the 2TB upper limit (be it now or perhaps next year), then I have no choice but to look at cloud storage from competitors. It would be a bummer, because I love the Dropbox user interface.

Kind regards,
Kristof Mulier
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago
Hey kristofmulier, thanks for your reply here!

While there are no plans for the storage of the Family plan to change/increase in the near future, if such a change does happen, it will be announced so that all of our users will know.

Thanks for your preference, though, we really appreciate it! 🙂

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Family plan is too expensive for what it offers

32 Replies

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