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Who is moving away from Dropbox? Where are you planning on putting your data?

over 9 years ago from

I'm not sure whether this question has already been asked, but I'm wondering whether many people are actually moving away from Dropbox? Where are you moving to?

I set up OwnCloud on a Digital Ocean droplet this morning, it seems pretty nifty. There were a couple of other options, but I opted for this because: - It's nice to be able to control all of my data - There's an iPhone app - It has quite a large user base - It's only $5 a month

I'm all ears if there's anything better out there!

60 comments

  • Pierre GouthéraudPierre Gouthéraud, over 9 years ago

    --> https://drive.google.com

    16 points
    • Clay MacTavishClay MacTavish, over 9 years ago

      I moved off Dropbox six months ago. I enjoy everything being centralized. Especially since I bought a Nexus 7 recently.

      It's kind of scary, but Google is so deeply engrained into my life. Drive is perfect. My stuff just feels more organized and less scattered. I used the 1TB bucket.

      1 point
    • Jim SilvermanJim Silverman, over 9 years ago

      cannot beat the price per gb of google drive. $1.99/mo for 100gb is utter insanity, great choice for that alone.

      haven't had an issue with syncing, works as seamlessly as dropbox. also the auto-backup works ridiculously well if you're on android.

      4 points
    • Tierney CyrenTierney Cyren, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

      Never using a Google product again if I can help it because of this and this. Mainly the first.

      2 points
      • Kevin RabinovichKevin Rabinovich, over 9 years ago

        Sorry, I'm not catching on… can you explain what those posts mean?

        1 point
        • Tierney CyrenTierney Cyren, over 9 years ago

          In the W3C link, a Google employee who works on blink and is apparently important essentially says that Blink (Google's fork of WebKit that they use to build Chrome) will ship a feature with the browser without going through the standards process. The Google employee, representing Google, essentially gives the middle finger to the W3C and other browsers.

          On top of that, they say they will "freeze" the feature, which means it won't change. This has an extremely high chance of fragmenting browser support of the Shadow DOM. With trends going the way they are (with developers bending over backward to support Chrome, to the point of comparison with the old "Works best in IE" badges), all the other browsers would have to develop their Shadow DOM implementations to fit Google; this is against the standards process and "Don't be evil" attitude that Google says they respect.

          Finally, they intentionally lie about Mozilla supporting them in adding their implementation of the Shadow DOM. It's despicable.

          With the second link, I linked to the same one as the first. My mistake--I meant to link to this. Sorry about that. I've fixed it in my original post.

          4 points
          • Eliot SlevinEliot Slevin, over 9 years ago

            Remember that google trying to apear and act like one unified thing, it really isn't. One engineer from chrome isn't going to taint every google product.

            Google is made up of a huge amount of people, and considering it's size, it actually has a pretty good track record.

            That being said I don't like what the engineer did at all.

            1 point
            • Tierney CyrenTierney Cyren, over 9 years ago

              I think it's more than one engineer, though. One engineer doesn't decide what goes into Blink--there's a whole team that works on it, and, whether or not there were objections within the group, it was decided to take that action.

              I agree that Google must have good parts, but they have done some really negative things (also read about the Google recruiter, the other link I posted). I'd like to support them as little as possible because of those things.

              1 point
          • Kevin RabinovichKevin Rabinovich, over 9 years ago

            Thanks for the explanation.

            0 points
    • Aaron SagrayAaron Sagray, over 9 years ago

      Does Drive corrupt Sketch files like Dropbox does?

      1 point
      • Odrija HeinrihsoneOdrija Heinrihsone, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

        Sketch files seem to be working fine for me with Google Drive!

        0 points
      • John FlynnJohn Flynn, over 9 years ago

        Where/how have you had problems with Sketch files in Dropbox?

        1 point
        • David ÖhlinDavid Öhlin, over 9 years ago

          Not OP, but I've had the same problem. Uploaded .sketch-file to dropbox at work, get home and try to open it, and it says the document is unreadable. Sketch was in same version on both computers.

          0 points
        • Aaron SagrayAaron Sagray, over 9 years ago

          Sketch files are stored as bundles of files, so if dropbox syncs a file in the bundle while it is open and in use, then entire bundle becomes corrupt.

          A guess– The changes in the bundle are being tracked separately from Sketch by Dropbox and thus it creates a disparity that doesn't match Sketch's bundle manifest. Therefore when Sketch reopens the file, it's all like, "WTF LOL GTFO!"

          0 points
  • Ryan Hicks, over 9 years ago

    Who cares... &_& - this has already been covered in big thread on DN anyways. No need to bring it back up. https://news.layervault.com/stories/20074-drop-dropbox

    I'd put money on it that you're using a service, or buying goods from a store, or eating food from a restaurant that is some way connected to someone you disapprove of morally yet you still do it. Bunch of babies complaining over nothing.

    Most of my stuff is in gDrive anyways because it just makes sense when I use google services to have it mostly there as well. However nothing can beat dropbox's incredibly fast syncing and service. gDrive has a long way to go before it can match it even though I wish that wasn't the case.

    11 points
  • Adam T.Adam T., over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    I find it laughable that people are switching from Dropbox to Google. Trust me, I know they could have found a less polarizing figure to put on their board of directors, but Google is already a hell of a lot more evil than Dropbox can ever think of becoming.

    6 points
    • John FlynnJohn Flynn, over 9 years ago

      I think this is a perfect comment that really illustrates how meaningless the term "evil" has become. Is buying services and shutting them down "evil"? Is snooping on your communications? What about being complicit in the death and torture of hundreds of thousands of people?

      "Evil" isn't a line anymore, it's a ten-mile-wide grey area that gets applied to any person or product that ticks somebody off. This is why companies like EA and Comcast win the "Worst Company in America" award simply for inconveniencing customers. The word is dead.

      2 points
  • Shrihari SankaranShrihari Sankaran, over 9 years ago

    I've been using Copy alongside Dropbox for about a year now. Mainly because I didn't want to pay for Dropbox. Doesn't have all the features of Dropbox, but comes close. The sync works as sweet. And there's a mobile app too.

    Shameless referral link plug: https://copy.com/?r=1nT8Sl (you get extra 5GB if you sign up through this)

    5 points
    • João FaracoJoão Faraco, over 9 years ago

      Same here. Copy has had no hiccups so far, and the virtually limitless free space (I'm at 227Gb) is just great. The fair storage and company files are bonus features I also value on Copy.

      0 points
  • Roy AbbinkRoy Abbink, over 9 years ago

    Why would you move away from Dropbox?

    5 points
  • John LeschinskiJohn Leschinski, over 9 years ago

    Dropbox.

    4 points
  • Shawn BorskyShawn Borsky, over 9 years ago

    I still like Dropbox best out of competitors from a functionality and API standpoint. Its saved me more times than I can count and it makes moving between workstations seamless. I prefer to leave politics out of my day to day product choices, especially when the choice is between one of many companies in which I know very little about their leadership. For all we know, the leadership of Box, Google, etc. has just as many issues as Dropbox.

    2 points
  • Daniel SieradskiDaniel Sieradski, over 9 years ago

    I'm using Sync.com, which I've been pretty happy with. I'm also trying out Bitcasa right now.

    2 points
  • Catalin CimpanuCatalin Cimpanu, over 9 years ago

    Dropbox. I referred it to all my friends and completed all those silly steps so I have the maximum space for a free account. Around 20GB or so... barely using 2 of them...so....

    1 point
  • Nathan NNathan N, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    Personally I'm staying on Dropbox - don't much care for boycotting - however Tarsnap seems to be the darling over on HN at the moment.

    It's run by one guy which makes me a bit nervous about it - what happens if he gets hit by a bus? The other negative is that it's too technical for me to use on a daily basis.

    edit: Aside from that the pricing is very flexible and they even accept bitcoin which is pretty cool.

    1 point
  • James LaneJames Lane, over 9 years ago

    I will always keep Dropbox, simply because of it's widely used API. Saying that, I will only use it for certain things that require it (such as Marvelapp) since I too switched to Google because of the price!

    1 point
  • Art VandelayArt Vandelay, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    Might be smart to check out some of the terms around privacy and use for things like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

    Especially since gDrive flatout states that they own your content, while in use and even after you leave the product.

    As nice as $2/month is, its not nice enough for them to own any of my personal files/projects.

    http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/how-far-do-google-drives-terms-go-in-owning-your-files/75228

    Edit: I do understand the likely hood of Google using our data for whatever they want is probably not a realistic issue, but the fact that lawyers felt the need to cover those bases anyways is a bit unsettling. And I'd prefer they don't have all of my data, just most of it.

    1 point
  • Tierney CyrenTierney Cyren, over 9 years ago

    I've switched to Box temporarily. I got 50GB with them for free with because I signed up when they were doing a promo, so that's nice. I saw this the other day, and it's pretty interesting. I'm a fan of open/decentralized data storage, so it's right up my alley.

    1 point
  • Mars El-BougriniMars El-Bougrini, over 9 years ago

    I discovered sync.com when looking for an alternative, and they have been good so far. Still in beta, so the mobile apps aren't ready, but apart from that I've been happy. 5gb free, or 500gb for $50 per year, and they are a zero-knowledge fully encrypted service.

    1 point
  • Tim GauthierTim Gauthier, over 9 years ago

    I only use dropbox to sync content, most of which is directly on the web at a later date anyhow. So for my dropbox is fine because i have limited my exposure to any possible privacy concerns I have with a cloud service. Regardless of it being dropbox or otherwise.

    Honestly it isn't like Dropbox is necessarily wanting to give away my information, they legally have no choice, and neither does any other service that operates in the US, including amazon etc.

    1 point
  • Jonathan YapJonathan Yap, over 9 years ago

    If you don't need a cloud service, you can try http://www.bittorrent.com/sync for syncing with multiple devices. Best part is it's free.

    1 point
    • Joel LJoel L, over 9 years ago

      You can also install Bittorrent Sync on a Linux server, effectively creating a "Cloud storage" thing. This means that you don't need to have a computer running to — for example — access your files from the mobile app.

      3 points
  • Jerome PerrinJerome Perrin, 9 years ago

    Moved over to copy.com and self hosted OwnCloud.

    0 points
    • C___ F_____C___ F_____, 9 years ago (edited 9 years ago )

      I had issues with OwnCloud's CPU usage at first but that's been fixed.

      Unfortunately I've found that I can't use some services without Dropbox (i.e. YNAB), so I've had to set up an account with them again, albeit a free one.

      0 points
  • Millie LinMillie Lin, over 9 years ago

    I am now using Copy. It has much more free spaces, 15GB+

    0 points
  • Taurean BryantTaurean Bryant, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    Switching to Google Drive personally.

    I don't find condoleezza's ties to the war in Iraq trivial by any means, but it doesn't directly result in google business. I am more worried about her ties and opinion on gov't monitoring civilians w/o warrants. I can't knowingly save my files, and my businesses files with a company that could eventually support that too.

    In many ways, google does a worse job living up to the "don't be evil" mantra, but in the end its where I feel that my private files are most private.

    0 points
  • Diego LafuenteDiego Lafuente, over 9 years ago

    Google Drive.

    0 points
  • David BarkerDavid Barker, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    I just signed up for Sync.com. I like the look of it so far:

    • Encrypted on the client-side
    • Unlimited revision history included in Pro plans
    • 500 GB for $49.50 per year, if you sign up now.
    0 points
  • Bardan Gauchan, over 9 years ago

    Recently moved most of my files (mainly photos) to Google Drive for the $2/month 100GB storage. I'm keeping Dropbox for commonly used files and sharing stuff since I feel like they're the best out of all. Google Drive is more of a backup drive + Flickr for another backup of my pictures. Of course, there's always a copy of them in my Drobo.

    0 points
  • Zander MartineauZander Martineau, over 9 years ago

    Since reading this Wired article I think I'm going to give Tonido a try. Its a NAS solution for a 'private' cloud.. and yes, I understand the implications of not having an off-site backup, so that's why I'm also looking at one from this list.

    0 points
  • Kris JoeselKris Joesel, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

    I am using Kabuto. It is a great way save and share files. You can check it out here - http://www.kabuto.com/

    0 points
  • Benjamin ChristineBenjamin Christine, over 9 years ago

    I have moved to google drive and will be giving that a good test run. like the sound of your OwnCloud. Smart

    0 points
  • Andrew Nascimento, over 9 years ago

    Spacemonkey

    Its like if an external hard-drive, dropbox, and bittorrent had a baby. Has apps for both android and ios and has mac and pc clients. 1 TB for $50 a month, cant beat that. My only problem is that it doesn't have versioning (though they say its coming soon).

    https://www.spacemonkey.com/

    0 points