Dropbox Business Review, Pricing & Features

What is Dropbox Business?

Dropbox Business is an document management system for a wide range of businesses looking to store their company’s files and facilitate team collaboration. Over 500,000+ businesses have used Dropbox Business for their document management needs. Its standout features are its robust admin console and collaboration settings.

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Table of Contents

Dropbox Business Review Summary

Dropbox was launched in 2008 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Three years later, Dropbox Business was launched in an effort to bring teams more collaboration, storage, and security features. Today, Dropbox Business has been used by over 500,000 businesses from Dropbox’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Dropbox Business’ features are similar to most document management tools. Its strongest features are its admin console and collaboration tools. The solution, however, does not feature document creation capabilities like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.

Dropbox Business’s pricing starts at $15 per month per user. This puts it in the average range of pricing for document management systems.

Overall, Dropbox Business is a powerful document management solution best for businesses interested more so in improving the way their documents are stored, rather than a system to create documents. Businesses particularly interested in collaboration will find Dropbox Business’ features very helpful for their needs.

Dropbox Business Pricing & Cost

Dropbox Business pricing starts at $15 per month per user. Its Starter plan comes with 5 TB of overall storage. Annual plans are about 20% more affordable than monthly plans.

PlanPrice per UserStorageFeatures
Starter$155 TB
  • File recovery
  • Admin console
  • Remote device wipe
  • Two-factor authentication
  • Microsoft 365 integration
Advanced$25Custom
  • Everything in Standard plan
  • Advanced admin controls
  • Single sign on (SSO) integration
EnterpriseContact supportCustom
  • Everything in Advanced plan
  • Network control
  • Domain insights
  • 24/7 phone support

Dropbox Business Features

Let’s discuss the major features that Dropbox Business offers and how they can help your document management needs. Product screenshots are included to add context and demonstrate the user interface.

Admin Console

Dropbox Business offers a flexible admin console for administrators to manage their team. There are particularly a number of helpful permissions and security options available to change. These help your business streamline your share settings and ensure your files are protected.

Dashboard

The admin console in Dropbox Business offers a user friendly dashboard containing all your team members.

”Dropbox

You can sort your members through various filters, manage their individual licenses, and import as well as export them as CSV files.

Dropbox also shows you other contacts that your team members have worked with. You can easily manage their permissions and invite them to your team from the dashboard. This is very helpful for your workflow and provides you greater context into who your teammates are working with and what projects they’re working on.

Permissions

You can edit member permissions for individual folders and files from the admin console. Editing permissions is user friendly and flexible.

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As you can see, you can edit the permissions of every individual member. You can allow users to either view or edit files from the Content tab. However, you can sort through more permissions in the settings tab. These include:

Permission CategoryPermissions
Authentication
  • Password control
Devices
  • Device approvals
  • Multiple account approval
Members
  • Membership
  • Groups
  • Directory restrictions
Content
  • Top-level editing
  • Member space limit
  • Sharing limits
  • Deletion permissions
  • File recovery

Security

Security in Dropbox Business is robust and allows you to protect your team’s files in a multitude of ways.

One of the primary ways to coordinate security amongst your team is protecting their account information. You can set up two-step verification, single sign-on, and password requirements to streamline and protect your teammates’ accounts.

You can also remote wipe a user’s device if it’s lost or stolen. The process is very simple.

”Dropbox

You can see all the devices your individual teammates have logged in with through the admin console. From there, you can unlink your device. Files will be deleted even if the account is logged back into. This is an additional layer of security for your team’s files.

Dropbox Business comes with additional security features for your business that you can set up in the admin console:

FeatureDescription
Account transferMigrate user files and delete accounts of former employees
WatermarkingAllow members to watermark their files for protection
Trusted teamsAdd teams you’re collaborating with to coordinate security, billing, and other settings

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage options are strong in Dropbox Business. This includes your device accessibility, offline access, and file recovery and backup.

Offline Access

Accessing files offline in Dropbox is very simple to set up. However, you must download the desktop version of Dropbox in order to do so.

You can access and sync files on the following systems:

DeviceOperating System
Desktop
  • Windows
  • Mac
  • Linux
Mobile
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Windows
”Dropbox

As you can see, local and online only files are marked respectively by a checkmark or cloud logo. Unfortunately, Dropbox automatically downloads files that are uploaded by your team members. This happened even though we set the default for files added to be online only in the admin console.

This means you must manually check every file you want to access strictly online. This is a hindrance on your workflow, especially if your team uploads a high volume of files.

File Recovery and Backup

Restoring files in Dropbox Business has a longer cutoff date than Google Workspace but is ultimately weaker. This is because version histories in Google Workspace show exact edit details such as edit times and who made changes.

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Although basic information about version histories are available, they are nowhere near as robust as those in Google Workspace. Dropbox’s main advantage over Google Workspace in this category is that you can recover files within 180 days of their last edit. Workspace only comes with 25.

File Management

File management in Dropbox Business is decent, but comes with very little document creation capabilities. We recommend alternatives like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 if you need to create a wide variety of files and store them in the same document management system.

Document Creation

Creating and editing documents in Dropbox Business is its most limited feature. You can create very simple documents in Dropbox Paper. We will discuss this feature more in the Collaboration section.

You cannot create spreadsheets or slideshows in Dropbox. You can, however, leverage Dropbox’s native integration with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 to create these respective file types and automatically save it to your team account.

Although this is helpful, it’s an unnecessary additional step to your workflow. This could be curbed by just using Workspace or Microsoft 365 to begin with.

Organization

Organizing files in Dropbox Business is straightforward and easy to manage. The primary way you organize files is through folders.

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As you can see above, folders have a hierarchical structure. This makes moving files a very user friendly process. You can also automatically sort files by their file type, name, date last modified, and the amount of team members assigned to them.

Collaboration

Collaboration in Dropbox Business is very powerful. Its standout feature is Dropbox Paper. Other features include annotating files, sharing files up to 100 GB with Dropbox Transfer, and requesting electronic signatures from teammates. Note that Dropbox Business does not have automated workflows like Box.

Dropbox Paper

Dropbox Paper is the primary way to facilitate collaboration in Dropbox Business. This is a hub where your team can collaborate and set project deadlines.

”Dropbox

As you can see, Dropbox Paper comes with a plethora of user-friendly features to coordinate on projects. You can create tables, checklists, and project schedules. These are all well designed ways to visualize your project timeline and action items.

You also have direct access to your Dropbox files and folder hierarchy on the side panel. You can also add media directly from native integrations such as Google Drive, YouTube, Adobe XD, or Trello.

Finally, Dropbox Paper offers a variety of templates for your team based on categories including:

  • Education
  • HR
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Product
  • Sales

Comments

Comments in Dropbox are not flexible. This is because you cannot edit text directly like Microsoft 365 and Workspace.

”Dropbox

As you can see above, you must highlight sections you want to comment on instead of directly editing text itself. This is a process that is far more intuitive for images.

Another weakness is that comments and documents are not dynamic in Dropbox. This means that an entirely new document must be uploaded once changes are made. This differs from Google Workspace’s most efficient workflow, where users can make edits and comment on the same document for however long they please.

Dropbox Transfer

Dropbox Transfer is the primary way you can share large file sizes to other people. You can transfer up to 100 GB. Recipients do not need a Dropbox account, which is helpful for businesses working with clients who do not have Dropbox.

”Dropbox

Creating your transfer is as simple as dragging and dropping the files you wish to send. From there, you can confirm when your file has been delivered or even expire the link so it’s no longer downloadable.

You can even design your transfer’s landing page to have a custom background and company logo. This is particularly helpful for designers and companies who need to communicate their branding and style to clients.

Electronic Signatures

Dropbox Business offers a native integration with HelloSign so you can attach electronic signatures to your documents.

”Dropbox

You can add any number of signers to your document. From there, you can add signature and initial fields wherever you want on your document.

Note that Dropbox Business comes with the free version of HelloSign, which means you can only send up to three signature requests per month.

Dropbox Business Integrations

Dropbox Business comes with a multitude of native integrations. These include integrations that streamline collaboration and help with document creation.

  • Adobe Acrobat
  • Canva
  • Google Workspace
  • Jira Cloud
  • Miro
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Slack
  • Zapier

Dropbox Business Customer Service

Dropbox Business’s customer support team is quick to respond and helpful. They are reachable through live chat and email.

Dropbox Business also offers a blog with product tips, industry news, and posts on company culture. Dropbox’s blog is very original both in content and presentation. Many blog posts felt more so like insightful articles rather than basic writeups.

Customer Support ChannelsLive chat, email
Other Support ResourcesBlog posts
Application Status PageYes

Dropbox Business Alternatives & Competitors

Dropbox Business has a number of competitors on the market today. Its most comparable alternative is Box.

Here’s a full list of Dropbox Business competitors:

  • Box
  • Google Workspace
  • Microsoft 365
  • Zoho WorkDrive
  • eFileCabinet

Is Dropbox Business Right For You?

Overall, Dropbox Business is a powerful document management solution used by a diverse range of businesses. It is ideal for businesses in need of a pure storage system with very few document creation capabilities. Although its collaboration features are also very strong, businesses who are in need of a centralized management system with both document storage and creation capabilities should consider alternatives like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

If you're interested, you can try Dropbox Business today.

Yousef Fatehpour

Yousef Fatehpour is a Junior Research Analyst at SoftwarePundit. He graduated from University of California, San Diego, where he studied Human Centered Design and Communications. His work at UCSD's Design Lab emphasized UX research and product management.

Yousef's primary areas of interest are software design, user journeys, and how user experience is handled across software markets. Yousef also has experience in product design and multimedia content production. You can connect with Yousef on LinkedIn.

Yousef is an expert in several software categories including:

  • SMS marketing software
  • Document management software
  • Human resource software
  • Applicant tracking software
  • Design software