The war to dominate the cloud industry is only just heating up, with established Internet brands such as Google and Microsoft introducing aggressive pricing. But six-year-old startup Dropbox is not giving up its stronghold.
Dropbox has already proven itself capable of producing technologies that allow for quick and seamless file syncing across devices, but the little company isn't stopping there. This time, Dropbox is consolidating all three of Dropbox Pro packages into a single plan that offers up to a whopping 1TB of cloud storage for only $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year.
This puts Dropbox pricing at par with Google Drive, which offers the same amount of storage for the same price but without the yearly payment option. Microsoft, however, still offers the most low-cost option, charging its Office 365 Personal users an additional $6.99 a month for 1TB of storage and $2.50 a month per user for users of OneDrive for Business.
Dropbox isn't just competing on the price front, though. With an additional $350 million raised in new funding in February, Dropbox has more resources to ensure that its paying customers get the flexibility they are seeking in a cloud storage device. The new pricing for the Pro package, which is designed for freelancers, contractors and professionals not content with the 2GB of storage that comes with the free Dropbox plan but find Dropbox for Business too overwhelming for their needs, also comes with new features to enhance the existing Dropbox experience.
"Simple collaboration is one of the reasons people choose Dropbox Pro, but we've heard you ask for more ways to protect the stuff you share," says Dropbox in a blog post. "That's why we're bringing new sharing controls in Dropbox Pro."
Among these new features is the inclusion of view-only permissions. View-only is already offered by Google and Microsoft and allows users to share files for others to view but not to edit. Also included are more security features, namely password protection for files so that only users who have the password will be able to view the file, and expiration dates for shared links.
The default expirations are set to one day and one week, but Dropbox also provides the option to set specific dates for the link to expire. Dropbox also now offers a remote wipe feature that lets users delete Dropbox files on a lost or stolen device. With remote wipe turned on, Dropbox automatically deletes the files and un-syncs the device once it is connected to the Internet.
Users currently subscribed to one of the older Pro plans, which charge $9.99 for 100GB, $19.99 for 200GB and $49.99 for 500GB will have their accounts upgraded to the cheaper, newer pricing plan.
