Ask HN: Best Alternative to Dropbox?

5 points by benrapscallion 4y ago ↗ HN

Since Dropbox was launched on HN (in a way), it is only appropriate that I ask for alternatives to it here. I have been a paying subcriber for many years now but of late with their own app on Mac, they seem to have made many anti-user, pro-company-revenue, dark-patterns decisions (e.g., if I choose for some folders to be "local" I then see that all its subfolders are still cloud-only) that have sent me searching for another viable alternative, especially one that will allow an easy import from Dropbox.

9 comments

[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 36.0 ms ] thread

mardiyah 4y ago ↗

Mega cloud

mgh2 4y ago ↗

Yeah Dropbox turned greedy by not standing out among competitors. Even OneDrive or Google Drive (free) are good alternatives

camb416 4y ago ↗

[Syncthing](https://syncthing.net/) is the free version that doesn’t need a subscription. People on here seem to swear by it, I haven’t gotten around to ripping the bandaid of migrating to it yet though.

rPlayer6554 4y ago ↗

I hate that even though I paid for the service, the web version still has a banner ad asking me to upgrade. It's so stupid that the "share" button on mobile goes to dropbox's own share and "export" (Android's share and what I usually want) is buried deep in a menu. Also photos, the whole reason I got dropbox (to switch away from Google photos) is a terrible experience. The web photos page is awful, you can't see albums made on mobile and it's slow. Also I have a bug I can't fix where on desktop if photos are downloaded for offline, the thumbnails disappear.

It's frustrating that so many developers have taken such a strong mobile-first approach to the detriment of the desktop; especially something like Dropbox.

benrapscallion 4y ago ↗

I share all these grievances. I hope Drew Houston is reading this.

[deleted] 4y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

vr46 4y ago ↗

Mega, OneDrive

runjake 4y ago ↗

Syncthing or the open source Maestral client for Dropbox that makes Dropbox just a synced folder again.

Both are pretty robust in my experience.

https://syncthing.net

https://maestral.app

zingplex 4y ago ↗

For a Linux user, you can replicate Dropbox trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.