Superuser Mark said Dropbox tried plans smaller than 1 TB and lost money. This does not make sense because: - Technolgy has changed. Dropbox is a leader in technology. It should be able to devise a system where smaller plans add to its bottom line. Other cloud systems have done so.
- Customer conversion (going from a one-time users to a long-time user) are usually the highest cost in sales. Dropbox could add subscription-length discounts to its smaller plans, allowing big savings when someone signs up for say, three or five years.
- The public relations value of Dropbox instituting smaller-space plans would be enormous!
Elizabeth R.10 wrote: Other cloud systems have done so.
Other cloud systems are subsidized by the other services provided by those companies. They operate them as loss-leaders to get people in the door. Dropbox offers no other service but its cloud offerings.
They operate them as loss-leaders to get people in the door.
Rich, please help me and explain this situation:
After a long battle with Dropbox, me and my girlfriend had to sign up for something else. It's so weird, because we really wanted to become a paying dropbox customer. But we were simply forced to go away, as 2 x $99 is way too much.
So we went for Office Home. We both get 1Tb cloud, and we both get Office. How can Microsoft do that and not loose money?? We will never-ever buy anything else from Microsoft (being an apple family), so your argument doesn't make sense: what door and loss-leaders are you referring to? Please, don't tell me that Microsoft is loosing on this deal, and waiting silently for us to step further into their world.
Our money could have gone to Dropbox. Simply weird.
I wrote earlier: Dropbox could come up with a creative package that will prevent people from downgrading, while attracting newbies. For example, include Smart Sync in your $99 plan and offer faster upload speeds compared to "low fee" packages: you could throttle the upload speed (reasonably) for $3.99 / 50Gb users.
But hey, I guess Dropbox doesn't care about loosing people like us.
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PS.:I know that OneDrive doesn't have encryption for non business users, but with some free third party encryption tools, even that is solved.
Riko99 suggested 100GB for $25 US a year. That's a great idea! I'd bet that 70-plus percent of non-business users would see that as a reasonable solution to their storage problem, and they would jump on the Dropbox bandwagon.
Dropbox could then create a graduated upward limit and pricing system as people save more photos and large files that begin to fill up their space. This would probably garner a great deal of positive (and valuable) attention in the media. It would also set the stage for emerging companies to begin using Dropbox and continue using it at a business level and beyond as they grow.
After all, Mark Zukerberg probably once used less than 100 gigs.
No, they will not IF the offering for $99 is so much better. I wrote this idea above multiple times, yet everyone just ignores it. What Dropbox should do is:
1) For $99
- Smart Sync
- faster upload speed
- no file limit
- 1TB
- and maybe, just maybe, develop an additional service, for example an app silimar to Evernote or a Password Manager..
2) For $ 25 or $39 or similar:
- no file versioning(!)
- a bit slower speed
- slightly limited number of file upload per month
- 100Gb or 50Gb
- no additional service
And voila, you will not loose old $99 customers and you will gain a lot of new ones, who otherwise go to iCloud, OneDrive etc. Is that such a difficult concept to grasp?
