What are the new Dropbox Business plans?

[Ed]

We're replacing our existing Dropbox Business and Dropbox Enterprise plans with three new plans:

• Standard—for teams needing powerful storage, sharing, and collaboration tools
• Advanced—for teams and businesses seeking more sophisticated admin, audit, and integration features
• Enterprise—for larger businesses requiring scalable custom solutions with individualized support

Learn more about the features and pricing of each Dropbox Business plan.

If you have questions or comments about the new plans, please add on the comments below.

[Vicker]

On the other side, Dropbox is doing pretty good in 2016, with many great features released over the year. I can understand that they need to restructure their subscription plans to gain enough capital to go even further. I guess what they need is just some adjustments to the new plans to keep the impact to existing customers minimal.

[DD1]

---

Sarah93 wrote: 

however this does get rid of the ‘tiered admin’ abilities, would this then mean we’d only be able to have one admin for the account? In which case, what would the other members not be able to do?  

---

On the Advanced plan, there are three admin levels (from high to low: Team level, Member level, Support level). On the Standard plan, we simplified this to only one (the highest) admin permission level. However, this does not mean that you can only have one admin! In fact, we encourage everyone to have several admins for redundancy in case an admin is on PTO, for example.

More info here: https://www.dropbox.com/help/9056

I understand the accounts do not get upgraded in terms of price till next year, can you confirm this? 

---

Correct, existing customers were given access to Advanced features at no extra charge. You’ll have access to these features at your original pricing plan until your first renewal date in 2018. If you want to downgrade to Standard, you’ll have until your first renewal date in 2018 to do so and will keep all Advanced features at no extra cost until you downgrade.

---

 Also I’ve seen you are moving from unlimited version history to 120 days for all your higher accounts, as a business we would need unlimited version control and so we have ‘opted in’ for now, would this then revert to 120 days in January 2018 or would we keep unlimited version control from now on?

---

We offer existing customers to opt out of this change and therefore keep unlimited version history within 90 days. Whatever you choose, unlimited or extended version history, is what you'll get going foward. Your renewal in 2018 does not affect that change and if you chose to keep unlimited version history, you will keep unlimited version history in 2018 and beyond.

Hope this helps!

[JPach]

It's tru Vicker L.!!
Dropbox made good improvements last years, but generally, Dropbox is too slow implementing improvements.
Doing good things, offering good functions and service at a reasonable price, is the reason that Dropbox is the leader. If one tech company want to maintain their clients and win more, there are 2 strategies, offer more functions and a better service at the same price (high market price) or reduce price offering an average service and functions, but never raising prices 50% and reducing functions!!
So... Maybe Dropbox pretends to force or induce market to put higher prices??

[MrCoBalt]

These are some really disappointing changes –and extremely heavy-handed price increases– from a company we've previously championed.

Dropbox Business has been our go-to file sync & share recommendation for small- to medium-size business clients but from the price increase but subsequent feature reduction it's become apparent that this market is either not really Dropbox's focus, or it's one that they think they can milk for all its worth… (but I'm not sure the feature set even with SmartSync is that compelling to justify the extreme price premium…)

It's all just a bit disheartening to be honest, and in many ways has a whiff of bait 'n switch. For example a lot of the AdminX features now being touted for the Advanced tier have been in Early Access for months, and in fact the features they offered were inducements for some of our clients to finally get onboard with Dropbox.

At no point were there even rumblings that upon general release those new features would be locked behind higher-priced tiers, let alone this much higher.

Yet by offering those features in early access and soliciting feedback and testing from paying customers Dropbox ends up to be treating those (presumably valued) customers as simple dumb guinea pigs, so they can turn around and stick them with a higher bill to continue to use the features they helped Dropbox develop.

It definitely doesn’t engender loyalty or any warm feelings toward the company, and I suspect come 2018 Dropbox will see a fair number of businesses leaving for sync 'n share competitors who can now jump under the price umbrella Dropbox has left wide open.

[DB0]

https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2016/03/500-million/

In this article they talk about 44% of their new accounts created from existing users introducing people to Dropbox. The cost for our plan would triple so we are moving away from Dropbox and certainly won't be introducing anyone to it in future, quite the opposite.

[JPach]

Very illustrative explanation MrCoBalt!!

[Frontier2]

Our current plan. 

£8/user/month.  Unlimited storage and unlimited back up.

Standard Plan

£10/user/month.  2 tb storage and limited back up. 

Advanced Plan

£15/user/month. Unlimited storage and unlimited back up. 

So if our business decided to take the standard plan it will cost us more for less features.   To have the same features we need to pay almost a 100% increase. 

Well done dropbox you really dropped the ball on this one. We are now looking for alternatives. 

[JPach]

Hi Frontier2,
When you say "back up" are you talking about Version History?
I think in both new Business Plans, Standard & Advanced, the Version History is only 120 days when in the current Businesses plan is Unlimited!! And the no sense... Pro Plan, designed for people, not for companies, can pay 39$/€ for a Extended Version History of 1 year!!

Now, with the limited Version History it's very important to know how it works... it considers the "Last Modified Date" to decide if the file will be saved or deleted, then, if you save a file and then edit and save the file 4 month later, you lose the first version and you will only have the last version!! Dropbox deletes the previous version becouse it's modified date is more than 120days!! This is not a good Version History method!!

[Frontier2]

I do mean version history.

I spend 3 hours on the phone to dropbox yesterday trying to get some answers to some pretty basic questions.

1. Do the prices include or exclude VAT. Had to speak to 3 people to work this out.
2. Am I paying more for less. The 4th person admitted this was the case.

I believe the second person told me the Advanced plan had unlimited version history which I pointed out was different to the e-mail, she was adamant she was correct but I do doubt that.

[MrCoBalt]

@Frontier2 regarding your #2 point: definitely paying more for less retention if you're just now signing up on the Standard/Advanced plan, since regardless of plan picked it's only 120 days.

If you're planning to continue with Dropbox then, as per an email you may have received ("Important changes to your Dropbox Business plan") it states "The new plans offer 120-day version history and deletion recovery. Because you’re already a Dropbox customer, you can opt in through the Admin Console before April 30, 2017 to keep unlimited version history and deletion recovery."

My understanding is that once opted-in the unlimited retention will continue to be a feature of your Business plan for as long as you maintain that plan.

But in other words, new customers don't get as much while Dropbox back-handedly acknowledges that unlimited retention was an important selling point for the Dropbox experience… but it apparently won’t be for any customers going forward…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯