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Family plan is too expensive for what it offers

While I would like to have the ability for my wife and I to share a combined account with our own individual logins - it's not worth the extra $80/year, almost doubling the cost for only a limited increase in features. If it came with double the storage I might consider it, but even then I'm not sure I need that much more storage at the moment.

Please reconsider the pricing on the family plan as I will never upgrade at anywhere near that price. It makes more sense to just have 2 Plus accounts since it comes with the extra storage. With the amount of competition out there for similar cloud storage, it's getting more difficult to justify the cost of dropbox, so I was really expecting a minimal increase in price, if any at all versus the Plus plan I am currently paying for.

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Lusil

Hey @Username_1, thanks for dropping by.

I understand how important this is for you, and thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us about our Family plan.

You can also check out this thread, where other users have expressed an interest in having smaller plans.

In the meantime, if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to give us another nudge.

Thanks again!

onewil

I completely agree with this statement. The family plan is Plus but much more expensive. If it's going to have same storage as Plus it should be cheaper, as only add is family share features, where as if it's going to be this much money it should have more storage?

I really support Dropbox as a business but it feels like the pricing is out of touch. Super expensive already compared to competition (drive, MS 365) for fewer features, and new features (which are great to see) are again more expensive.

taricco

As a Dropbox customer, I would not choose to change to the Dropbox Family plan. Hopefully, if enough loyal customers write in, Dropbox will re-evaluate the pricing model which makes little logical sense. I really like the Dropbox Family concept, but I can't see the justification for an $8 a month increase. If Dropbox took my combined family storage limit from 2 TB to 4 TB, I could justify the increased cost. An additional $8 a month just for the ability to share access to a 2 TB Dropbox account makes no logical sense. That's a 60% increase in cost. Let's compare Dropbox Family to other "family" subscriptions I use. 1Password is $3 a month for a single user and $5 a month for a family plan. With that increased cost, my family members get full use of their own password vaults. In comparison to Dropbox, my family members get no additional benefit in space with my family plan monthly increated costs (Dropbox sells space, not password vaults). Apple Music has a very similar scenario: $10 a month for an individual compared with $15 a month for a family. Again, each family member gets their own music = added benefit. To repeat, my family members on the Dropbox Family plan get no additional benefit with the increased monthly cost.

yar1vn

I'm completely confused about what this plan offers besides a shared folder.

What exactly are we paying for if it's not more storage?

Dropbox Support told me on Twitter that a single account can pay for everyone else but why does that cost almost double?

If I'm going to pay double, I'll upgrade each account separately and each will get their own 2TB instead of sharing the same space for more money.

Jay

Hi @taricco, @yar1vn, the Family plan offers 2 TB shared for up to 6 family members, with a shared family folder, and would cost the equivalent of 2 Dropbox Plus plans under one bill.

Upgrading 6 separate accounts to Plus would cost more than one Family plan, although they each would have full access to their own 2 TB of quota, separate from one another.

For families that might not require full usage of the quota, then the Family plan would be useful in this instance to share quota without purchasing individual plans.

We appreciate your feedback on the Dropbox Family plan!

taricco

Jay, I don’t believe you addressed any of the points I made. An $8 premium is way too high for a family plan without additional benefit (benefit = storage) when comparing “family subscription” services like 1Password and Apple Music.

yar1vn

That doesn't explain the price difference.

Being able to share storage isn't worth double the price.

footy

I love dropbox but get the family people in to look at the price, it is way too expensive for a family, who are just trying to pull thing together in a simple file structure and share some photos and videos.

onewil

Just replying to this to say totally doesn't address the complaints of 75% price increase for no storage increase.

dimcguy

I agree. Price is very expensive for individual already, and there are files I can't even open. Moving files is cumbersome. With the amount of space I have, I should have the option to grant some to a family member. Looking for better options from this company as other places are competitive and cheaper.

dimcguy

Jay, the plan is no value for same size to share, and way too expensive for a family, when you could easily have an offer to share with even one or two persons as a perk to keep loyal customers from looking at other company plans that are cheaper.

mooretuba

I absolutely agree with you! It is WAY overpriced in this market. My wife had to get a "plus" account just because she has too much for the free account, but certainly doesn't need 2 TB!! So, I found out DB has a "family plan" similar to the family sharing with iCloud. BUT, you're right- it costs over $200/year. She didn't like having to shell out the already huge amount for the "plus" plan of 2 TB for one person, when say 50GB would have been MORE than enough for her. And now I find out that the same 2 TB, if shared, costs another $80!! That sucks! Dropbox needs some much smaller plans between the free tier and the amount in a large hard drive. A lot more people would opt in for .99/month than would pay these prices. The little extras besides the basic storage are nice, but not worth the money. In fact, I'm one of the people who can do OK with 5 GB, but need to have DB on a 4th device, so now have to delete it on one or pay for 2 TB. Can you see why I'm NOT HAPPY about this setup? I liked DB when it first came out, but now it is not competitive!

Badjer

I agree w poster that is does not offer enough to make worth while. In my case I am the opposite where I don't want it to be smaller is storage but rather larger.

I am on the plus plan where I have 2tb of storage & would love to share a plan with family but not if it means my 2tb storage has to now be shared with everyone on the plan. I would love to see a family plan that offers more storage than before "upgrading" to family. If I add 2 members account should not have same storage it should now be increased IMO. IE every member added should be 2tb added. Might not be same number but pt is there should be an increase vs staying the same.

TMPDB

I checked back in to Dropbox to see if the price had dropped since launch. It has not and is stopping me using this for the family. I can get £6.99 2 TB plan on iCloud. Such a shame, as would rather use DB and have been with them from very early on.

JoeG

I have used Dropbox for over a decade. I love it! My wife and I share my personal account, use it extensively, and plan to keep using it for so long as Dropbox continues to be as fantastic as it is. I've experimented with Box, iCloud, Onedrive, and Google Drive and I like Dropbox much better than any of these 4. Price is the only barrier. But . . .

I have rarely paid anything to Dropbox because it is so expensive. Perhaps this more detailed feedback of our situation will give you some ideas for how you could survey your customers to see if it is worth your while to come down on pricing and make up for it with volume. In detail:

In December 2009 I signed up for a $50/year 20GB plan. Dropbox discontinued that plan in July 2012. For being such an early, loyal, paying customer, they gave me 19GB free to keep forever in addition to various bonuses I earned. This probably paid off for Dropbox in the long run as I referred a few other customers over the years and I also got a small business to sign up for Dropbox in 2019.

The pricing on Dropbox for business is very reasonable and it felt like a minor cost that happened to provide huge value to that business as everyone worked at a different location. They are still using Dropbox.

IMHO, the pricing on the personal side remains high relative to the value received, the competition, and what a typical family is able/willing to pay. We would jump into a family plan for $10/month in a heartbeat. It would replace the cumbersome shared Dropbox account with my wife which is chronically on the verge of running out of space. But more importantly, we have a pressing need to backup photos/videos from our teen son's iPhone and we are having discussions between 3 options:

1) backup to one of our Macs - free but time consuming and cumbersome because of how Apple lets you (or doesn't let you) do it.

2) get iCloud for $3/month which will be enough storage for him for at least a year but probably within 2 years he'll go over the 200GB and require the $10/month plan for 2TB. All iCloud plans include family sharing.

3) Get Dropbox at $17/month.

If Dropbox for family were $10/month, my wife and I would not be discussing this. We'd already have it. Instead, we are having a hard time figuring out what to do.

My wife argues we should avoid iCloud since Apple has a habit of doing funny things with your data (like getting rid of meta data on music from CDs you purchased and imported into iTunes, or making it difficult to get to outside Apple's eco-system. She thinks we should just backup onto iPhotos on a Mac until Dropbox lowers its price on the family plan which she thinks will inevitably happen as that price just seems too high for most families.

I have no idea if or when Dropbox will drop their family plan price and I don't like how Apple makes it so complicated to backup photos/videos from an iPhone, so I've been arguing for the simple iCloud route at $3/month (Apple makes everything complicated unless you just use their iCloud).

If someone from Dropbox is listening - please just change your price to $10/month on family or at most $12/month. At $17/month, you make this a tough decision for people - and people like us are probably going to pass. At $10/month, it's a no-brainer because it would be the same storage and family sharing as iCloud but a much better product that works seamlessly on many different systems.

We are only a data point of 1, but . . .

If Dropbox dropped it's price to $120/year or $12/month if you don't pay the whole year in advance, I can tell you for sure that we'd sign up. We'd stop being a free 22.8GB customer and become a paying $10/month customer for many years to come.

JoeG

We made our decision: $2.99/month for iCloud. Would have preferred Dropbox family plan at $10/month as it would solve not only my son's iPhone video/photo backup issue, but also several other issues for us - but as I detailed in my post last week, $17/month is too much.

May revisit this decision a couple years from now if our son's videos generated from his iPhone exceed 200GB, which would mean we'd need to go up to the $9.99/month iCloud plan.

I'm bummed that Dropbox has such high pricing. Would prefer the simplicity of centralizing my family of three's data on a $10/month family Dropbox plan.

Chq

Dropbox Family has a crazy price for a shared folder in combination with no additional space.

Even with additional two TB it would be overpriced compared to the competitors, sorry.

Waiting for the pricedrop that will come.

Greetz Chq

atiliomalave

Agreed with all comments. I have been tempted to get Dropbox Family Plan but it is simply too costly for what it offers compared with Dropbox Plus. Same space, just different users sharing it and little else. In a family, it is normal that the parent shares his/her 2TB account so added value for Dropbox Family is currently low. If you want to get customers you should consider an increase of +2 USD/m for 2TB (same space) - 4 users; or +4 USD/m for 3 TB - 5 users; or +6 USD/m for 4TB - 6 users with a 20% reduction on yearly payment.

My 2 cents!

nizzle27

Great description about the issue. I have had DropBox, Google Drive, iCloud, and OneDrive accounts for a while now. My wife and I currently pay for Apple Cloud ($3) and I pay for an individual Dropbox account ($10), but I'd like for us to consolidate and combine our cloud storage into a one stop shop. I would stay with DropBox if the family plan wasn't so expensive. Google Drive offers the same exact deal for $10, no mark up for additional users. I am not sure why there is this extra premium on Dropbox's end. Is it really more costly for them to link accounts in this way? We may as well just have two separate individual accounts and just link shared folders when needed.

The point of the story is I will plan to switch to Google Drive soon and migrate all of my data (iPhone photos can be backed up through Google Photos as well). I can't help but feel that DropBox is trying to pull a fast one on people who don't shop around, but is it worth ostracizing and possibly losing those who do?

isdoo

Not sure why people think this is expensive.

Currently I have a 2TB plan and my wife has a 2TB plan - after all why would you share a login? This just creates issues.

If I opt for a family plan, I save money.

Sure, we lose 2TB between us, but as I am nowhere close to that it isn't a problem. Should it be, then we can always split again.

This way I can also invite my children to have their account if they want.

Struggling to see the downside.

Would be great if they offered 4TB on the plan, but if you are not using 2TB now, why would you even want 4TB?

yar1vn

Who said we’re not using that space? And why do you think that a solution that works for you fits everybody else?

taricco

@isdoo, I think you are seeing it from the standpoint that you and your family don't use that much Dropbox space. Going from one user up to 6 users trying to share the same storage space as one user would normally have just won't work for most situations. What Dropbox is doing is charging you $7/mo for the privilege of allowing multiple people to access the same Dropbox. It's really pure additional profit for Dropbox because they aren't adding any additional monthly expenses by allowing additional users.

tyardeni

Is the cost based on storage or users? Seems that the family plan should offer the same total storage as the standard plan.

Otherwise it is more money for less.

Rich

@tyardeni wrote:
Seems that the family plan should offer the same total storage as the standard plan.

It offers the same space and features as the Plus plan, but adds the ability to invite up to 5 additional people to share the account (6 total) and gives them all access to a shared Family Room folder.

taricco

To clarify what the Dropbox Family Plan means as of October 13, 2023.

When purchasing by the year, the Dropbox Family Plan costs $16.99/mo = $203.88/yr.
Up to 6 separate users have access to a total of 2 TBs of storage. It's not 2 TBs per person, it's 2 TBs total.
The Dropbox Family Plan charges a $7/mo "premium" to allow 5 additional users to access 2 TBs of storage, which is the same amount of storage offered for a single user on the Dropbox Plus* plan.

*The Dropbox "Plus" plan offers 2 TBs of storage for $9.99/mo = $119.88/yr with access only for a single person.

The subject of this post, "Family plan is too expensive for what it offers," is still relevant as of October 13, 2023.

kristofmulier

We are a family of five and would love to subscribe on the Dropbox Family plan. The bill would be around 204€/year, which is quite okay. Google Drive is a bit cheaper, but Dropbox has a more intuitive user interface.

However, we fear to hit the 2TB limit at some point. The Dropbox Family plan has no way to increase that limit. The closest plan I could find would then be "Dropbox Standard for Teams", clocking off at 720€/year for five team members (actually 871.20€/year in Belgium because of 21% VAT tax). That is just way too expensive.

So, what can we do in case we hit the 2TB limit (except for shelling out close to 1000€ per year)?

Thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

Kristof Mulier

kristofmulier

The Dropbox Family plan is just perfect to store and share family pictures and videos. However, 2TB is a bit on the narrow side - especially when storing lots of videos.

It should be possible to buy extra storage in this plan.

Megan

Hi @kristofmulier, I hope you're doing well!

Your feedback regarding our Family plan has been very valuable and I will endeavor to make sure your voice is heard.

I will pass on your comments to the relevant departments. If you need anything else, let me know!

kristofmulier

Hi @Megan,

Thank you very much for your reply. I'd love to have some feedback once this topic has been discussed internally. I'll wait for your feedback before making my purchase decision.

I hope to buy the Dropbox Family plan. If there's absolutely no way to increase the 2TB upper limit (be it now or perhaps next year), then I have no choice but to look at cloud storage from competitors. It would be a bummer, because I love the Dropbox user interface.

Kind regards,

Kristof Mulier

Hannah

Hey @kristofmulier, thanks for your reply here!

While there are no plans for the storage of the Family plan to change/increase in the near future, if such a change does happen, it will be announced so that all of our users will know.

Thanks for your preference, though, we really appreciate it! 🙂