I didn’t know Dropbox launched a password manager in 2020. This is their product page as of this writing
I used to be an ardent user of Dropbox, with my entire Documents folder stored and synced in the service. I had referred so many people to Dropbox that my initial free 2GB had ballooned to 16GB through rewards. That changed with Dropbox limited the number of devices that you could use with its free plan to three. That made it untenable for me, since I use a variety of computers, tablets and phones and want my data to just be there when I want it. So I haven’t followed Dropbox for a while.
On their most recent earnings call, the CEO talked about “evolving the core Dropbox experience to become the organizational layer across all of our users’ content”.
The CEO described other products:
“We also introduced Vault, an additional layer of security for our customers’ most valuable content, where that content is accessible with a unique PIN code. Users can also grant emergency access to their Vault to trusted friends or family, so they can access the protected content when needed. And finally, we introduced computer backup, which automatically backs up users’ local desktop, documents, and downloads folders to Dropbox for secure access on the go”
This is interesting, because it’s clear now that Dropbox sees itself as another full-featured cloud for people, families and businesses, alongside Microsoft 365 and Google Workplace aka G Suite aka Google Apps.
Nearly a decade ago, they were questioned about being “a feature, not a product“. Since then they seems to have diversified their product from storage and grown enough to become a publicly traded company.
But Dropbox’s weakest proposition might be that its competition has ‘office’ apps – Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Docs, Sheets and Slides (Dropbox’s Paper is interesting but doesn’t hold a candle to office apps). Both Microsoft and Google also offer the sort of storage organisation and sharing features that Dropbox does.
Their pricing also starts at USD 12 per user per month, just like Dropbox’s Business/Standard plan.
For that price, businesses get not just storage and storage management, not just office apps but also mail infra, email clients (Outlook and Gmail) and video conferencing (Teams, and an integrated Meet/Chat/Gmail).
If businesses are paying one of these two companies for their office apps, what’s the case for Dropbox? Put another way, is there a particular segment of the market that Dropbox is chasing?