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Family plan is too expensive for what it offers

Family plan is too expensive for what it offers

Username_1
Explorer | Level 3

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. 

32 Replies 32

dimcguy
Helpful | Level 5

I agree. Price is very expensive for individual already, and there are files I can't even open. Moving files is cumbersome. With the amount of space I have, I should have the option to grant some to a family member. Looking for better options from this company as other places are competitive and cheaper.

dimcguy
Helpful | Level 5

Jay, the plan is no value for same size to share, and way too expensive for a family, when you could easily have an offer to share with even one or two persons as a perk to keep loyal customers from looking at other company plans that are cheaper.

mooretuba
New member | Level 2

I absolutely agree with you!  It is WAY overpriced in this market.  My wife had to get a "plus" account just because she has too much for the free account, but certainly doesn't need 2 TB!!  So, I found out DB has a "family plan" similar to the family sharing with iCloud. BUT, you're right- it costs over $200/year.  She didn't like having to shell out the already huge amount for the "plus" plan of 2 TB for one person, when say 50GB would have been MORE than enough for her.  And now I find out that the same 2 TB, if shared, costs another $80!!  That sucks!  Dropbox needs some much smaller plans between the free tier and the amount in a large hard drive. A lot more people would opt in for .99/month than would pay these prices.  The little extras besides the basic storage are nice, but not worth the money. In fact, I'm one of the people who can do OK with 5 GB, but need to have DB on a 4th device, so now have to delete it on one or pay for 2 TB.  Can you see why I'm NOT HAPPY about this setup?  I liked DB when it first came out, but now it is not competitive!

Badjer
Collaborator | Level 9
I agree w poster that is does not offer enough to make worth while. In my case I am the opposite where I don't want it to be smaller is storage but rather larger.

I am on the plus plan where I have 2tb of storage & would love to share a plan with family but not if it means my 2tb storage has to now be shared with everyone on the plan. I would love to see a family plan that offers more storage than before "upgrading" to family. If I add 2 members account should not have same storage it should now be increased IMO. IE every member added should be 2tb added. Might not be same number but pt is there should be an increase vs staying the same.

TMPDB
New member | Level 2

I checked back in to Dropbox to see if the price had dropped since launch. It has not and is stopping me using this for the family. I can get ÂŁ6.99 2 TB plan on iCloud.  Such a shame, as would rather use DB and have been with them from very early on. 

JoeG
Helpful | Level 5

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.

 

 

 

JoeG
Helpful | Level 5

We made our decision: $2.99/month for iCloud. Would have preferred Dropbox family plan at $10/month as it would solve not only my son's iPhone video/photo backup issue, but also several other issues for us - but as I detailed in my post last week, $17/month is too much.

 

May revisit this decision a couple years from now if our son's videos generated from his iPhone exceed 200GB, which would mean we'd need to go up to the $9.99/month iCloud plan.

 

I'm bummed that Dropbox has such high pricing. Would prefer the simplicity of centralizing my family of three's data on a $10/month family Dropbox plan.

Chq
Helpful | Level 6

Dropbox Family has a crazy price for a shared folder in combination with no additional space.

Even with additional two TB it would be overpriced compared to the competitors, sorry.

 

Waiting for the pricedrop that will come.

 

Greetz Chq

atiliomalave
New member | Level 2

Agreed with all comments.  I have been tempted to get Dropbox Family Plan but it is simply too costly for what it offers compared with Dropbox Plus.  Same space, just different users sharing it and little else.  In a family, it is normal that the parent shares his/her 2TB account so added value for Dropbox Family is currently low.  If you want to get customers you should consider an increase of +2 USD/m for 2TB (same space) - 4 users; or +4 USD/m for 3 TB - 5 users; or +6 USD/m for 4TB - 6 users with a 20% reduction on yearly payment.

 

My 2 cents!

AM

nizzle27
New member | Level 2

Great description about the issue. I have had DropBox, Google Drive, iCloud, and OneDrive accounts for a while now. My wife and  I currently pay for Apple Cloud ($3) and I pay for an individual Dropbox account ($10), but I'd like for us to consolidate and combine our cloud storage into a one stop shop. I would stay with DropBox if the family plan wasn't so expensive. Google Drive offers the same exact deal for $10, no mark up for additional users. I am not sure why there is this extra premium on Dropbox's end. Is it really more costly for them to link accounts in this way? We may as well just have two separate individual accounts and just link shared folders when needed. 

 

The point of the story is I will plan to switch to Google Drive soon and migrate all of my data (iPhone photos can be backed up through Google Photos as well). I can't help but feel that DropBox is trying to pull a fast one on people who don't shop around, but is it worth ostracizing and possibly losing those who do? 

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