Back in 2012, when I first heard about Dropbox, the concept enamored me so much that I was almost obsessed with their service. The simplicity and the sheer volume of third party integrations made me forget the paltry amount of space they offered. The clean and simple android app accompanied by an elegant desktop sync client made Dropbox perfect for my work environment as a student. The desktop sync client still remains the king when it comes to sheer syncing speed and effectiveness. But I couldn’t justify their huge price tag on the premium service and therefore never considered paying for the service. I have 23 GB permanent space on the free version and that has been plenty for my purposes.

Dropbox has gone through many ups and downs throughout these years and I was one of their many satisfied users. But these following facts finally made me drop Dropbox and move on to Google Drive permanently :

That free offering:

With 2 GB, the free version was a huge hit back in 2007 but now it’s almost useless. Every other cloud service has doubled or in some cases quadrupled their free offerings while Dropbox remained silent about this.

The abysmal web version :

The web version of Dropbox haven’t seen much changes since its launch. It looks basic and archaic. As of today in 2017, they don’t offer any grid view for your files, folders or photos. If you defend it by saying this has been done for the sake of simplicity or the desktop client can do those, then you’re fooling no one. The lack of grid view is a real pain in the butt while sorting out photos because the thumbnails are so small, you can’t see shit. There is no place for any kind of customization. The folders can’t be rearranged or files can’t be marked as important or anything. The web version is crippled in so many ways that it’s pointless to put up with this mess when there are better options.

Horrible bandwidth limitation:

I don’t know about you but over the years, often Dropbox banned my links for 24 hours for crossing their ridiculous 20 GB bandwidth per day.

On a free account, the total amount of traffic that all of your links and file requests together can generate without getting banned is 20 GB per day.

When you have lots of shared links, there is no way of knowing who is sharing which link and how that link got blocked. This was understandable back in 2012 but now no other major players in the cloud service has bandwidth limitation in 2017.

Axing off public folders:

Recently Dropbox announced that they are cutting off public folders because they think shared link can be a substitute for that. WTF?? Half of the folders on my Dropbox is shared with various people and those will be unavailable to them in a few months. There is no way I can know who have those folders and warn them about the unavailability of the files. This is plain irresponsible for a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Shared folders occupy space in both ends:

If someone share folders with you, that will be counted against your storage limit even if you aren’t the owner of the file. This can fill up your quota if you receive many shared folders. Google drive doesn’t do that.

Lack of flexible price tiers :

For the sake of simplicity or whatever, Dropbox offers only one price tier for their personal premium service, 1 terabyte space for $9.99/month. That’s a lot of money for a student like me and there is no way I need that amount space for my work. I might pay for the service if they had 100 GB or 200 GB options, albeit at an affordable price. I get it, their desktop client is unbeatable and their syncing is butter-smooth but $10/month for just file syncing is insane.

There are other better players:

5 years ago there was no Google drive and Microsoft’s offering weren’t exciting enough. Then Dropbox swept us off the ground by their ‘it just works’ product. But then the hype and the innovation died down and big players like Google and Microsoft started to catch up. Still when it’s about syncing, Dropbox is the undisputed king but the competitors are really catching up. Both Microsoft and Google are offering similar features for less hassle and money and both of them have a vast environment around them that Dropbox lacks. Other smaller companies are also offering cheaper and reliable options, without the problems Dropbox is suffering from.

Google’s offering is much more appealing :

Flexible as well as affordable price tiers, from 100 GB up to 30 terabytes

15 GB free

Automatic android app data backup

Unlimited bandwidth

More controls over links

Google doc, google slide and google sheets for office works

Beautiful web version

Grid and List view

Better seach option

Options for marking and color coding important files and folders

A whole environment to work inside

Dropbox might not afford to offer massive amount of free space like Google due to resource constraints. Still, from every angle, Dropbox is a massive hit. But the lack of innovation and changes made an unimportant user like me to shift towards Google’s more appealing offer. So far haven’t regretted my decision.