Dropbox Limits Free Accounts to Three Devices

Hi Curtis,

thanks for your answer. The problem has been around for several years, so I don’t think reporting once more would change anything, unfortunately.

My point was to warn that if someone never bothered about this when using dropbox on the Mac might not be aware that he/she will run into problems when using OneDrive, and have no problems using the service offerings from Google, Amazon and maybe others as well.

My view of such things is the view of a user who does not go beyond the macOS GUI, which is basically what I am.

Regards,

Andre

I don’t know about other instances of OneDrive but OneDrive for Business at my institution does synchronize filenames with accented characters, I tested it before I posted. If I had files that didn’t synchronize, I would contact OneDrive Support.

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As far I know, even family sharing does not allow cross access between family members, i. e. My wife with her own Apple-Id would not be able to access the data stored under my own Apple-Id, and vice versa; and we would not be able to have a common access area or give one another access to the other’s data…
Is that correct?

Thanks,

Andre

Yes, correct. Each is in its own silo. iCloud is personal.

No sharable links to folders and files, a big issue compared to the offering on Dropbox.

Yes, it’s possible to replace characters, but it’s a pain, and also needs to be done for any new file(s) one might add. This kind of manual tracking of allowed and disallowed characters for how I name my files is not what I want from a sync service where I want to set it up and forget about it. Dropbox and iCloud are both very good at that (haven’t tried Google’s offering, so can’t comment).

Have you ever considered using pCloud - a Swiss based cloud storage provider? They do not have this limitation for free users+They have Lifetime plan and Family plan. The most reliable cloud storage service I have used so far. Love it!

Thanks, I hadn’t heard of pCloud before. For others like me, this article provides some comparison.

https://www.cloudwards.net/pcloud-vs-dropbox/

I have been using both services for a couple years. The comparison article does not make clear that pCloud Drive is a non-synced storage of files, which means keeping files only in the cloud while being able to access them as needed (only index is kept locally). In nutshell, one has to tell Dropbox which files one does not want to sync. In pCloud, it is sort of the other way around. Dropbox feels better integrated with Finder, but pCloud allows multiple shared folders and allows to have them anywhere on the local drive (and named whatever you want). I also experience pDrive getting disconnected for no clear reason once a while, but I do not keep it mounted all the time.

The issue might be because of the updates. After updating with the latest version, no issues, whatsoever with pCloud Drive. I am a very happy and satisfied customer.

Dropbox has been such a valuable game changer that I will be upgrading to the $10-per-month plan for my small business, even though my wife already has that plan at our preschool. Sure, other companies have jumped on the bandwagon with their own take and bargains, but I like to validate the originator. I like that my 1Password goes to my accounts on my wife’s computer and my laptop, my iPhones (I have a couple of older backups) and an iPad. Also my wife’s important files come home via Dropbox to be backed up, and mine go to my Dropbox on my account on her computer. Lol…I actually feel a little guilty for not upgrading already. :slight_smile:

I was just trying to do a test for @simon relating to this question:

But since I upgraded to the iPhone 11 Pro, it’s not included in the three devices I can have associated with Dropbox. (I have quite a few more associated, but those are grandfathered in.) So now I’m basically hosed, since I have four devices that I regularly need to use with Dropbox: iPhone, iPad, iMac, and MacBook Air. And since the iMac and the MacBook Air are starting to show their age (2014 and 2012 models, respectively), they’ll fall off the Dropbox wagon soon enough, and I’ll be forced to pick three of the four when I rationalize it all. Or maybe Apple will ship iCloud Drive folder sharing. Or I’ll switch to Google Drive. Sigh…