Is Dropbox about to follow Photobucket?

[Hawkmoon]

Into oblivion?

Dropbox was great when it came out. I've been using it for years -- not a lot, but I have a couple of friends in Europe and having a shared folder on Dropbox makes it easy to swap files and photos without having to attach large .ZIP files to e-mails.

Last night I tried to add Dropbox to a Samsung tablet. I got an error message telling me that I have to unlink SIX devices before I can add a new one. A bit of Google-fu brought the news that, since March of 2019, Dropbox has limited free clients to three devices. Additional devices linked before that date can stay, which is why I didn't know about it, but no new devices without a paid account.

I'm just one person, living largely on social security plus part-time work. I can't afford to pay $125/year for Dropbox. But I have three desktop computers, four laptops, and three tablets. I obviously don't use them all at once, but on any given day I might take any of the laptops and/or tablets with me and want access to my files. If I'm limited to the devices I had logged on prior to March of last year, that's not helpful.

Plus, the free Dropbox is limited to 2 GB of storage. Other free cloud services are offering 10 or 15 GB of storage.

I like Dropbox and it has done what I needed for several years. It appears that's coming to an end. What other cloud services do y'all recommend? Does anyone use Box or pCloud? (I have a Google Drive account but ... it's Google.)

[fifth_column]

Microsoft Onedrive has 5GB for free.  I don't know if the number of devices is limited.  You could probably find that info here: https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/

[zahc]

Dropbox is already dead. They killed it by relaunching it a while ago, when it didn't need relaunched of course. Now the clients suck and they broke a bunch of workflows. The photo forums are quite ticked about it.

All anyone ever wanted was a cloud-based shared folder, which is what Dropbox was forever, very simply, but they couldn't monetize that enough and instead of just charging money they thought the would reëngineer it with their goals in mind instead of the users'. Soon the managers who were hired to monetize it will realize they killed it in the process but they will leave before it can be pinned on them.

I haven't found a real replacement yet. I use Google Drive somewhat but I know Google is swiping everything I upload there. I also have an actual webserver with unlimited storage which works for big jobs, but I haven't found a convenient mobile client or anything.

[Hawkmoon]

Dropbox is already dead. They killed it by relaunching it a while ago, when it didn't need relaunched of course. Now the clients suck and they broke a bunch of workflows. The photo forums are quite ticked about it.

All anyone ever wanted was a cloud-based shared folder, which is what Dropbox was forever, very simply, but they couldn't monetize that enough and instead of just charging money they thought the would reëngineer it with their goals in mind instead of the users'. Soon the managers who were hired to monetize it will realize they killed it in the process but they will leave before it can be pinned on them.

I haven't found a real replacement yet. I use Google Drive somewhat but I know Google is swiping everything I upload there. I also have an actual webserver with unlimited storage which works for big jobs, but I haven't found a convenient mobile client or anything.

Well, that confirms my impression. The three computer limitation really doesn't work for me. I think I'm okay for now, because I think I have most of the computers I'm likely to use already logged on. However, it's going to be a real cramp in the posterior if I can't add any new devices. (Such as a new-to-me Samsung tablet, which is what set this discussion off.) I have a OneDrive account, so I'm refreshing my faded knowledge of how to map that as a logical drive on my computers. But I'd like to find an alternative that's not owned by Microsoft or Google. That's why I asked about Box and pCloud.

I also need to learn how to access my Western Digital MyCloud remotely.

[Hawkmoon]

Looks like neither Box nor pCloud is available for Android.

[Edit to add] PC Magazine says pCloud is available for Android, as well as both MacOS and iOS.