“If you use an unpaid dropbox account, be very careful,” Alec reports for foliovision. “The support demands currently exceed supply and you are unlikely to get any help.”
“No support for non-paid users happened with Gmail,” Alec reports. “Fortunately Google woke up and started to provide paid support to paid accounts.”
Alec writes, “What concerns me about Dropbox is that the company pricing is ridiculous. It’s not based on total storage but on number of users. I don’t want to buy my staff 100 GB accounts. They can get by on the same 10 GB or so of free storage but I’d like to have the ability to manage their accounts. The business unit at Dropbox is very small business unfriendly and inveterate spammers. Instead of creating clients, they are pushing us away from Dropbox.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
i have a free 11GB dropbox account but i’ve never called for support. or emailed.
not surprised dropbox is doing this. the storage is cheap for them. and historically the freetards have always demanded the most support and resources from a company
In terms of the desktop client, the Dropbox team has been extremely passionate, responding to even the smallest requests and suggestions from users. But their offering does seem to be aging in light of the explosion of competitive offerings.
I think the biggest thing that’s negatively affecting Dropbox is the sense of entitlement that too many people have when it comes to cloud-based services, and Dropbox encourages this unfortunate weakness to flourish with their free offering. People want more, more more, and that’s having a negative impact. Something’s gotta give. But why should they paid for support staff for users choosing not to pay them for their service? I agree… they should sell a support package to those that are willing to pay.
Looks like an opportunity for someone else.
for what? lose money on non-paying customers?
there is google, microsoft, box and one or two others i’m missing, but i still use dropbox. and that’s because of their API. i have lots of apps on my iphone with dropbox integration. i upload my receipts for FSA claims to dropbox and then put in the claim with no more printing. i have lots of documents stored in my dropbox because they are safe there and dropbox offers easy access through lots of applications
You want control over your peons’ files, set up your own server. Then you can manage them to your heart’s content. Of course, that means paying a sysop and buying an actual computer. You want it all for free? Sure, and I want a free Ferrari.
Just deleted my DB account. Went with SugarSync.
OMG, talk about spammers! I’ve never once received an email from Dropbox, but I dropped sugarsync because they were sending me weekly emails begging me to upgrade to a paid service. I never even used their iPhone app except for the first launch, but after that I was on their mailing list and spammed nonstop.
Who cares if Dropbox isn’t providing tech support non-paying users? I never expected that anyway.
Word.
Weekly? Seriously? Send it to your spam folder and move on.
SugarSync relies on Java. have a nice time with that.
Dropbox has been nothing short of great for me.
Not worried about Java like DHS.
I would be glad to pay $5 a year for the basic account that is now free. With 100 million users that would provide enough revenue to provide a hell of a lot of support. Good customer relations is very important, ignore your clients at your peril, free or not.
I totally agree. The gap between free and the first tier of paid ($9.99/month or $99.99/year) is too big. I’d very curious to know why they don’t create a low cost first tier ($5 or $10 per year) to generate some revenue. I love dropbox and I’d love to support them, but there’s no way I’m paying $100/year for it.
This seems like something that could be resolved with an online forum like Apple Communities (in place of the current run-of-the-mill FAQ section). This would permit more assistance provided to users and a smaller amount of resources needed by Dropbox. Providing an “I have this problem/question also” checkbox would help in prioritizing troubleshooting. I imagine some of the issues with Dropbox are common to many users. The ability to help a large number of people with a single resolution needs to be exploited. That said, the article seems to say Dropbox will lower support priority for unpaid users, but not drop it completely.
Move to Box. I’ve got 50 gigs of free storage with them! Their web interface is decent too.
The problem with Box, and others for now, is that they aren’t as integrated into other apps as Dropbox.
not sure of all the apps you use but for me, I don’t have a single app that isn’t compatible with Dropbox and Box. I’m sure there are some out there but it’s pretty close in usage if you ask me.
Here is my solutions: Evernote and Pogoplug.
In my office we have a Pogoplug device that at present have two drives are attached. Purchase the Pogoplug device, external drives, manage it all from my computer or iPhone. Having my own in office Cloud works for me. In addition Pogoplug provides 5 GB free, and unlimited for $29 a year. Bite that Dropbox.
Also, in Evernote we store and share documents. Evernote yearly cost is $45.00.
So, for us we have unlimited storage backups, sharing ability instant updating. Cost wise it beats all the cloud based services.