Need to upgrade Dropbox account to get more space for a small artist critique group. Help!

[awpouch]

I am part of an online art critique group that meets weekly.  Our instructor has set up a free Dropbox account and then shares the folder for the class, we go in and create a folder for ourself and upload images of our weeks work.  We all have access to it but now we are running out of room and he needs help deciding what plan to upgrade to.  There are 18 people in the group, he sends out a share folder invite and we create our own accounts and we are able to upload our work weekly, see other work and edit our files.  So the need is to be able to get more space that the current 2Gig free account.  The students he shares the folder with aren't considered users are they?  We all need to be able to upload to the shared folder, edit, move, create our own folders on the shared folder, etc.  The students aren't controlling the account just the folders we are given shared privelidges to.  We just need more space.  I am thinking The Business Individual account would give him 1T?

Any thoughts?  Suggestions?  Clarification?

Thanks!

Anne

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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@awpouch wrote:

I am thinking The Business Individual account would give him 1T?

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A Business account has a minimum of three licenses (users), so there is no Business Individual account. Each person invited to join a Business team would use a license. A Business account in this scenario would need 18 licenses. Business accounts start at $15/user/month.

A personal paid account (Plus, Professional) would give him plenty of storage, but it wouldn't benefit anyone else. When you're invited to a shared folder, you need enough space in your own account to hold the entire content of that folder. Meaning if you have a 2GB account and are invited to a folder that's 5GB, you'd need at least 5GB of free space in your account. Even if the owner has a 2TB account, you would still need 5GB of space in your own account to hold the folder.

The only other option would be for the instructor to use a FIle Request, which allows people to send files to his account, without them needing a Dropbox account of their own. They wouldn't have access to anything uploaded, including their own files, as it's just for submitting files. There's no sharing involved.

• https/help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/create-file-request

[awpouch]

Rich,

Thank you so much!  So let me see if this makes sense to you.

If he gets the Plus account and has 1T of storage, creates a folder that is for this crit group - sends them a share folder invite - as long as the crit group folder is smaller than 2G there is no problem for those who have the Basic Dropbox account.  He can have other folders in his dropbox that have for example around 5G of data, this would not impact the people sharing just that one crit folder correct?  

Having more storage for him would enable him to move stuff in and out of the crit folder as needed to keep the size under 2G.  Those sharing the folder can also move stuff out of their folder to make room if necessary.

Thanks!

Anne