Forget Dropbox Pro–Businesses Should Use Dropbox for Teams

Dropbox announced that it is doubling the storage allocation for its paid Dropbox Pro accounts, and expanding the Dropbox Pro options to include up to 500GB of storage. That’s great news for families or individuals looking to sync and share data in the cloud, but businesses should be using Dropbox for Teams.

With trends in technology in general, and the addition of photo syncing from mobile devices to Dropbox, the capacity of the Dropbox Pro options was quickly becoming insufficient for many users. Dropbox explained that it has heard feedback from architects and photographers who need to upload and share massive files, but most of the complaints came from families who simply have more photos and videos to store than the old Dropbox Pro accounts could accommodate.

Besides, with big players like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to compete with, Dropbox found itself on the pricey side of its competition. Even with the new Dropbox Pro plans, Google Drive and Microsoft Skydrive both offer more bang for the buck. Dropbox offers 100GB of data for $120 per year, or 200GB of storage space for $240 per year. Compare that to Google Drive with a 100GB plan for only $60 per year, or Microsoft Skydrive with a 107GB plan that costs a mere $50 per year.

If you’re shopping for yourself, or for a cloud storage option for your family, you will want to consider the cost and features of each of the available options and choose the one that works best. If you’re looking for a business solution, though, you should avoid Dropbox Pro altogether and instead look at Dropbox for Teams.

A one-man business like a professional photographer may be able to get by using the consumer-grade storage options, but a company with more than one person needs to have some ability to monitor and protect all of its data. If employees upload data to individual Dropbox or Dropbox Pro accounts, there is no way for the business to manage its data.

Dropbox for Teams starts at just under $800 for up to five users. That’s a lot of money, but it’s a 33 percent discount off the cost of buying the equivalent five separate 200GB Dropbox Pro accounts. More importantly, it gives the company administrative control to determine how and where data can be share or accessed, and the ability to remove users who leave the company to protect company data.

If you’re an IT admin–or searching for a cloud storage solution for a business–don’t get caught up in the hype of the doubled capacity of Dropbox Pro accounts. Check out Dropbox for Teams and compare it against the business-centric alternatives to find the right online storage choice for your company.