Too many users abused unlimited Dropbox plans, so they’re getting limits::Some people have taken “as much space as you need” too literally.
I’m glad I have a NAS.
But does your NAS has UNLIMITED storage?
It has more than I need for now. Isn’t that effectively unlimited? I could definitely see myself filling it up eventually as my media library grows, though.
Dolla dolla bill
This reminds me of how Skype always had limits in the fine print of its unlimited calling plan back in the day when we paid for minutes on cellphones.
Or, y’know, how current cellphone data plans are only unlimited up until the point where you’ve used enough and then become “deprioritized.”
Or how backblaze offers unlimited plans on Windows and Mac but not on Linux because Linux users tend to actually know how much storage they’re using.
Companies have a number that is the profitable point for whatever unlimited plan they’re offering. They just want to be able to advertise “unlimited” since that’s what customers want and they hope people don’t go over their “profitable usage” metric.
“Abused”? Is it unlimited or not? I don’t see how as much as you need can be taken too literally. It’s either true or it isn’t.
How the fuck do you abuse unlimited access? This is just a company blaming an idea that was always going to be unsustainable on their customers and not their own damn lack of forethought.
It was a business plan and they found hardly any of the plan subscribers were actually businesses, and I’m guessing reselling your unlimited data was against the ToS.
It was a business plan and they found hardly any of the plan subscribers were actually businesses
And why the fuck would that matter? If they can’t handle some random’s porn and piracy collection, how the fuck would they handle a legit business? lol
Reselling an account would hurt their bottom line, but still have no effect on providing the storage. Imposing a limit doesn’t stop that though, other than perhaps by making the product worthless and therefore unworthy of reselling.
This was dumb AF anyways. If you really have a problem with a few large accounts, you just make their access rates to their data atrocious. There’s no way the plan guarantees an access speed.
why the fuck would that matter?
Because it “hurt their bottom line” in some measurable way. Yeah I’d be pissed if I were a subscriber of this plan. But either you accept the caveats of using someone else’s infrastructure or you roll your own. ¯\(ツ)/¯
If you offer me “unlimited Hotdogs” and proceed to be offended by me eating infinite Hotdogs, you did not offer “unlimited Hotdogs”.
That’s “false advertising” Baron von Jenius.
That’s “false advertising” Baron von Jenius
🤣 Kudos for being the first to lobby that particular insult 🍻
They advertised a service, people used the service and it was as advertised, the service was deemed to be unprofitable due to usage, they announced the discontinuation of the service and no longer advertise it.
I don’t see any mention of unlimited storage in any of their plansEdit: they do say “as much space as needed - Customizable” for the Enterprise plan. So that’s likely how they’re distinguishing the “legitimate business” users, to still offer a plan for clients needing more storage and probably has tiered/progressive pricing where it gets cheaper per GB/TB the more you use, but lets DropBox feel like they’ve vetted these high use clients to avoid the use cases they mentioned.https://www.dropbox.com/business/plans-comparison
https://www.dropbox.com/plansAs long as subscribers to the unlimited plan retain unlimited storage through the end of the term for which they had already paid, then DropBox is fulfilling the terms of the service they sold. And the last two paragraphs of the article seem to indicate that DropBox is indeed doing that
To help legitimate business users transition, Dropbox says that “customers using less than 35TB of storage per license” can keep however much they’re using plus an additional 5TB for five years “at no additional charge.” Organizations using more than 35TB will get the same deal for one year, but they’ll need to deal with Dropbox directly to work out pricing. As a baseline, adding 1TB of storage without adding additional users will cost either $10 a month or $96 a year.
New customers will be affected by this policy change immediately, as you’ll see if you check the current pricing for Dropbox Advanced plans. Existing users will be “gradually migrated” to the new plans starting on November 1, and they’ll be notified at least 30 days before the migration happens.
So I don’t think false advertising applies here.
Because some people where using it for crypto mining some coins that depend on storage space.
They didn’t mean unlimited use. They meant “sign up, forget about it and pay us forever”.
Then it was never unlimited to begin with, wtf?
Don’t use the fucking word unlimited if it has limits? Something that has a limit, no matter how high, is not unlimited.
I always hated the term unlimited when it’s not really unlimited. Is it really abuse if you’re using it as intended?Edit: I eat my words. People are assholes. I thought this was referring to providers of unlimited storage or bandwidth, only to say “oh, you’ve using it too much, so we’re going to throttle you.”
I think you are right the first time.
“Unlimited “ only ever an advertising term, to garner attention. No one ever intends to deliver on it .
I just want to add a surprising fact. My mobile carrier does actually deliver on the promise of unlimited data, and an ISP is the last company that I would trust.
How much can you use before your speed gets throttled?
I can try it, but my current record s 50 GB in a singled day. The only thing that it wants is a conformation via SMS for every 18 or so GB, but that is only if you use that much in a single day.
I remember when google photos offered unlimited when it first came out. Called that off pretty damn quick
Don’t offer unlimited if you can’t deliver unlimited. FFS
Eh… If you offer unlimited you have to live with unlimited.
Fuck these people but thats also on Dropbox.
What they meant to say was “We didn’t have the foresight to monetize these heavy users, so we will be doing that now. But first we’ll create the problem…”
Makes sense, and their implemented solution also seems reasonable to me.
Honestly they’re giving existing users at least a year with their current storage capacity and plan.
Google gave like 60 days. Dropbox are handling this much better.
Uhu, exactly. I get that it’s frustrating, but the simple fact of the matter is that offering unlimited storage capacity (or unlimited anything for that matter) will inevitably attract people who will abuse it. Their new plans are functionally unlimited for most people, while also curbing that abuse.
That’s not to praise Dropbox too much (they shouldn’t have offered unlimited in the first place, but it’s an easy way to draw people in), but I still can’t fault them too much for how they handled this.
Calling it “abuse” is a weird PR move. If your service is good enough, this is bound to happen with an unlimited storage plan. This is basically a win on their part since they got people to sign up for their service. Why shame your user base?
Users: Use the product as it was designed and advertised.
Corporations:
“Abused” service they were advertised. Now it is misadvertisement.
