I was a loyal Dropbox customer early on. At some point, they stopped caring about individuals and put all of their effort (especially marketing) into businesses. As a paid user, it was annoying to see upgrade nags in the app and on the website. I just wanted a damn folder that would sync properly.
That’s still all I really want, but being force fed features I didn’t need pushed me away. After their horrible rebranding, I got sick of looking at the ugly new icon on my iPhone. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I now pay something like $10/mo for iCloud storage which works pretty good. Maybe Dropbox no longer needs (or wants) me as a customer, but it’s something I would’ve happily continued to pay for potentially decades to come.
I recently uninstalled Dropbox after years of use. The upgrade nags were over the top, and the number-of-device limitations on the free plan made it no longer usable for me.
I like the app, and would happily have paid something for it, but as a mostly private user, the lack of a plan between 2 GB / free and 2 TB / $10/month just didn't make sense. $3/month for 5 GB would have been an easy choice.
Now I'm using SyncThing, which I don't love, but gets the job done, is free, and doesn't limit me to a couple devices. I have a folder that syncs to my web server that replaces me sharing things on Dropbox, which works, but is a little cumbersome. (That said, sharing links might be a fun thing to hack into SyncThing.)
What really irritated me was the suddenly imposed three device sync limit. Being forced to pay for 2 TB when I didn't need any more space than I already had just to get my files on all my computers really rubbed me the wrong way. Like you, I wish there was a 5 GB / $3/month plan.
On top of that, they're losing sight of the deep OS integration that made them so appealing to Steve Jobs. When a screenshot is automatically saved to Dropbox I'm no longer presented with the option to "Show in Finder" but instead "Show in Dropbox" which instead of snapping open a Finder window slowly launches their kludgy app that isn't at all visually or functionally harmonious with macOS.
Although I never had more than 3 devices connected to Dropbox at sane time; but Dropbox Camera Upload used to rename all the photos to time & date it uploaded; I will have same photo with it's correct time n date took as name in my phone, & it's copy with a different name in Dropbox. I used other sync apps to connect & sync my Camera folder to Dropbox, like FolderSyncPro. Apps like that can connect from any number of devices.
Same here. I used it to sync my Keepass database, currently 1.6 MB, across a sliding window of about 10 devices (sliding because I like trying new OSes and phones). That ground to a halt with the 3-device limitation, so I migrated to Syncthing.
I would have loved to pay for Dropbox; in fact, in 2008 I did upgrade to 50GB for one year because I liked the company and wanted to help it survive the downturn. But if I had kept that up, I'd have paid $1,200 by now to sync less than 5 MB.
Interesting you mention $3/month. I pay almost exactly that at vultr.com to keep an IPv6 Syncthing instance running so that a copy of my stuff is globally available.
I have a bit over 8 gigabytes of space in my Dropbox. You could get extra space by creating VMs, then inviting your secondary email accounts to Dropbox and installing Dropbox in a VM. I don't know if this still works.
That’s still all I really want, but being force fed features I didn’t need pushed me away. After their horrible rebranding, I got sick of looking at the ugly new icon on my iPhone. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I now pay something like $10/mo for iCloud storage which works pretty good. Maybe Dropbox no longer needs (or wants) me as a customer, but it’s something I would’ve happily continued to pay for potentially decades to come.