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?
I'm using 6GB now, I would happily pay for 10GB but not 100x it for $99/year. I understand how they lose money temporarily when they drop the price - because of course, if I was paying $99 for 1TB and only using 10GB, I would downgrade too. But there are so many of us for whom the math doesn't work so we never pay. I pay for space with Evernote, Box and icloud yet I've had dropbox longer. They've never made a compelling value proposition for me to pay for the service.
I have one more pricing proposal for Dropbox team review - 200Gb per $49/year. All existing features that are available in free account should remain - only more disc space.
Pros: - the difference in price in only 2x (not 3x-10x). - the difference in space is also reasonable.
- this feature does equal (or even better) end user value than Google with its 100Gb per ~$20/year.
My assumptions: - The existing individual $99/year clients who have used more than 200Gb from their 1Tb should not downgrade (due to loose of data). - The existing individual $99/year clients who have used less than 200Gb will downgrade but still will pay $49/year. - Quite many free users (including myself) will GLADLY move to new account - since Dropbox sync mechanism is really best-in-class and using Dropbox service is very comfortable and fluent.
Really hope that you continue following this thread and will review this idea.