Allow a personal account to have more than 3 TB

[Lisa Douglas]

Hello,

I'm a graphic designer with over 15 years of workload. This obviously equates to extreme files sizes. I was disappointed to learn Dropbox don't offer a package for single users over 3TB. I work solely and require more cloud space and don't want to have to upgrade to a 'per user' plan as this isn't cost effective. This option has to become available soon.

[Sam DBX]

The Dropbox team is currently reviewing this idea. We will share any updates with you.

Thank you for your insights so far.

[Benjamin Gordon]

DROPBOX could you pls reply?

Customer service / support has always seemed quite useless to me in the past so I know there isnt any point emailing them.

Anyone else know how we could escalate this?

[Chappell]

Yes, it would be nice if they could/would reply to this community chat. However, my experience with Dropbox customer service has always been positive. Whenever I have emailed them, their responses have always been prompt, professional and very friendly. 

[Sam DBX]

The Dropbox team is currently reviewing this idea. We will share any updates with you.

Thank you for your insights so far.

[shinbeth]

12-09-2022 The idea is open.

12-02-2024 The Dropbox team is currently reviewing this idea.

XX-XX-XXXX?? Official release 🙂

Thanks @Sam DBX for reviewing this!

[ColbyN]

Please let us upgrade our individual plans beyond 3TB! This forces me to have two separate cloud storage plans at once.

[jameslanius]

Hey All,

I've seen many posts here asking for a way to add more storage to individual plan. Right now, after hitting the 4TB limit, the only way to get more space is to buy a 3-user plan, effectively tripling the cost you're paying per TB of storage space. I have been trying to figure out why this is for years. Before I leave Dropbox entirely, I wanted to see if anyone has any idea why this policy is this way? It'd be great to hear anything from Dropbox (other then "we'll pass it along"). 

Possible reasons:

- They have a moralistic view that if you have more then 4TB of data, you need a teammate. 

- They just want to arbitrarily triple the price / TB. 

- They believe their product is "More then just storage", which it is - and which they're using to make more money off "collaboration tools" that have low front end cost and high profit margins. In doing so they're forgetting to also be "just storage", which is what we all signed up for in the first place. 

 - Some other profit driven reason I can't think of. 

- Sometime to do with security and not wanting to do too much web hosting. 

I'd love any insight on this from DB or anyone else. 
Until then, I'm open to suggestions for alternative tools that have some collaboration features, but don't limit your data to 4TB. 

Thanks!

[shinbeth]

@jameslanius this has been a mystery for me as well. Especially since Google Drive offers up to 30TB!!!

Why would Dropbox limit itself to 10 times less capacity???

[hunter111]

its honestly absurd you can't get more space.. huge fail for dropbox, I think I have to switch services because of the file limitations. Sometimes I need to send a full 2TB.. not only can't it fit on my DB but there is now bandwidth limitations too. 

[shinbeth]

@hunter111 

So here's my temporary workaround.

I'm on the Pro Dropbox 3TB (+ you can purchase the extra 1TB in Settings), that's 4TB total. Not enough for my 8TB Macbook Pro.

So since last month I went for Google Drive 5TB plan as well, on top of Dropbox. Google Drive used to lag behind but now it's much better and faster. To my great surprise, Google Drive decided to remove their file number limits - initially 400'000 files in March 2023, shortly removed in April:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/google-drive-cancels-its-surprise-file-cap-promises-to-commu...

And there's no longer such things as file size limits:

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en

 

So now I have no issues with size limits, I can sync my huge files on it, same as with Dropbox.

So not as fast to sync than Dropbox (due to Dropbox best-in-class by performing sync method), but still quite fast.

And all file types are supported, I've had no issues syncing 5TB.

So what I do is I've managed to put all my daily stuff (things I use the most, coding projects, music projects, plus photos and music library) on Dropbox, and larger files (like archives, app installers, video courses collections, 4k videos, huge AI/ML datasets/disk images, etc.) on Google Drive. 

The only minor thing is, if using a Macbook, when putting files on Google Drive it automatically creates .DS_store files in it. These files are nothing they're like empty, automatically created by macOS in Finder for indexing each folder and sub-folder. Just type .DS_store on Google Drive search in the end, select them all and send them to the bin. They're automatically recreated by macOS whenever you move the files back in a macOS env.

So until Dropbox fixes the 3TB size limit with Pro I'll stick to that hybrid option:

• Dropbox Pro 4TB (about 25 eur a month) + Google Drive 5TB (25 eur a month).

The only drawback for me is not being able to have EVERYTHING on a SINGLE CLOUD (particularly painful when I'm away from home on my iPhone, I have to use Dropbox and Google Drive apps separately - I know there are multi-cloud iOS apps but I don't like them, they're not as good as the native apps).

Of course if and when Dropbox fixes the size limit, I'll move everything on Dropbox Pro 10TB plan (or even more TB one day if needs be - Google Drive actually offers up to 30TB plan).

So yeah it's a good thing Google Drive keep improving their product, just one more step and can finally get rid of Dropbox if they decide to never upgrade the 3TB limit. It will be one or the other in the end, and I feel like Google will be more powerful eventually, because they are bigger with larger servers worldwide and have better and quicker development teams presently catching up.

[maxpantani]

@shinbeth Your solution is very interesting, and I also agree on the possible developments of the problem. Thank you!
It remains a shame that Dropbox - so far ahead in many aspects - is in the Paleolithic age when it comes to the space available to customers... 3TB nowadays is a truly minimal size for anyone who has a business on the web...
I suppose that they have serious infrastructure problems (they don't have such large servers, I think), because - from a commercial point of view - this policy of theirs is otherwise inexplicable...