Another name to be taken as the best Microsoft Office alternative in 2018 is WPS Office.

With 500 million registered users, including 11.9 million paying users, Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services. Thanks to that, it’s one of the services almost everyone can name off the top of their head.

It’s a good cloud storage service, which isn’t surprising because you don’t get a lot of users based on smoke and mirrors. You get them by making your service easy and intuitive to use while providing many collaboration features, capable sharing options and fast sync. On top of that, Dropbox has strong user support.

The Pandora music streaming service is the best at predicting which songs the user would enjoy hearing. Unlike services which have rudimentary recommendation algorithms, Pandora uses over 400 selection attributes that are combined to form over 2,000 focus traits including rhythm syncopation, key tonality, harmonies, and instrumental proficiency.
Slightly reduced features when using a Mac system. Bottom Line: GoToMyPC is a mature, easy-to-use remote access software with the best available balance between features and ease of use.
Find an Evernote Alternative: 25+ apps for note-taking in 2018 Alternatives to Evernote for Windows, Mac, Web, iPhone, Android and more. Filter by license to discover only free or Open Source alternatives.

That said, it’s not without its faults. Dropbox’s pricing plans aren’t competitive or anywhere near the best deals in cloud storage. Plus, it lacks zero-knowledge encryption and has a confusing privacy policy. Still, it remains to be seen whether Dropbox is the best cloud storage platform. That’ll depend on what you want to get out of a cloud storage service.

In this overview, we’re going to take a look at the top 10 best Dropbox alternatives. Most of the picks in this ranking may not have the user base that Dropbox does, but we found that in one category or another, they outpace it as a service. Before we start the list, let’s talk about Dropbox in more detail.

If you’re unfamiliar with cloud storage terminology we suggest educating yourself by visiting our cloud storage library.

What Makes Dropbox Good

We’re going to look at what Dropbox does well so we can determine what makes another service better.

Dropbox is popular because of its strong syncing and sharing capabilities, features set and good user experience. It’s also the place where the model of sync commonly used by cloud services was invented. We talk at length about those categories in our Dropbox review.

The central point of the common model of sync is the sync folder. The sync folder works like any other folder, but anything you put in it will be synced to the cloud and anything you have in the cloud will be available from it. Dropbox improves on that concept with the smart sync feature, and it’s the best cloud storage for sync because of it.

Smart sync lets you access your cloud files without first syncing them to your computer. The downside of that is that you won’t be able to access your files while you’re offline. One problem with Dropbox’s sync model is the inability to sync folders other than the sync folder.

Most of the competition uses the same model, but only some execute it as well. You can compare Dropbox’s sync capabilities against its two most direct competitors, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, and it’ll do better than both, at least when it comes to syncing changes to files already copied to cloud storage thanks to its block-level sync.

Dropbox Sharing

Dropbox also has strong content-sharing features. You can share links using the web client or send them via email. Dropbox lets you protect links by setting a password or expiry date, disabling downloads or only granting access to specific individuals. You can’t send them directly to social networks, though.

Note that content control options for sharing are reserved for Dropbox’s Professional plan, which isn’t its cheapest plan. We’ll talk more about that in the next section.

You can see what you’ve shared with others on a dedicated page. If you want to invite others to share with you, you can use the “file request” feature.

On top of that, Dropbox integrates with Microsoft Office Online, which lets you edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents from the Dropbox web interface. Plus, Dropbox has a useful note-taking app called Dropbox Paper that lets you make notes and more, which we explore in our Dropbox Paper review.

If you have a lot of files in Dropbox and need to search through them, you can do that with a full-text search. The search includes documents scanned with the mobile app, which is an unusual feature among cloud storage services. Dropbox lets you use it to scan a document and upload it as a .pdf or .jpeg file to the cloud.

What’s Not Good About Dropbox

Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services, but there are many others. A lot of them aren’t better than Dropbox in every category, but they may beat it in one or two important areas. How important that is for you depends on your cloud storage priorities. If they beat Dropbox in those it might be enough for you to abandon ship.

Dropbox Security

Dropbox has had a turbulent history with security since it started. The largest and most talked about breach is the 2012 theft of emails and passwords from over 68 million Dropbox users.

About half of the stolen passwords were hashed using bcrypt, which should render them unreadable. The other half were hashed using a much weaker algorithm called SHA-1. What’s worse is that Dropbox didn’t reveal the extent of the hack until 2016, when some of those stolen credentials showed up for sale online.

Dropbox has reportedly tightened control and changed its password hashing algorithms multiple times since 2012 to prevent a repeat. It uses AES 256-bit to protect your files at rest and the TLS protocol with AES 128-bit to protect your files in transit. Still, it decrypts your data once it’s in the cloud to extract metadata for indexing and then reencrypts it.

You’ll find several secure alternatives that don’t do that in the list below.

Dropbox Privacy

On top of problematic security, Dropbox’s privacy is a concern. Dropbox has been involved with the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM project. PRISM is a surveillance program designed to locate terrorists. To that end, though, the NSA collects data from everyone thanks to the effects of the USA Patriot Act.

Dropbox can and will block certain files from being shared under the guidance of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Dropbox doesn’t scan your cloud storage files to do that, but it looks at your content when you share it, which isn’t quite as bad. That said, a few cloud storage services provide zero-knowledge file sharing, which prevents that.

Plus, some services we’re going to recommend are in more privacy-friendly locations than the U.S. That’s relevant because internet service providers are legally allowed to spy on user data and sell it to third parties without giving consumers the opportunity to opt out.

As a side note, if you value your privacy, check out our selection of free tools to protect your privacy and our best VPN services roundup.

Dropbox Free Plan and Pricing

Unlike some services, Dropbox only gives you 2GB to work with on its free plan, which won’t be enough if you need to store high-definition photos and videos.

Premium plans aren’t much better because they’re pricey. Dropbox’s cheapest plan is Plus which costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year and provides 1TB of storage. The next plan is Professional, which gets you 2TB of storage for $19.99 per month or $16.58 per month if you pay for the year. It also gives you features that protect your shares.

The Best Dropbox Alternatives

Those are just some of the reasons that make people consider Dropbox replacements. It’s certain there are more, but we’re going to focus on alternatives to Dropbox.

We’ve ranked them in rough order of preference which won’t be the same for every user. If you see a service that might fit your needs, we recommend signing up for a free trial to see how you like it. Nothing beats experience with a given service.

Sync.com

Toronto-based Sync.com has been on top of our best cloud storage comparison list for some time. To see why, read our Sync.com review. It also ranks high in our top five providers with large free service plans and holds the top spot in our best zero-knowledge cloud services list. Those are the key categories needed to beat Dropbox.

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