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Last active May 18, 2016 22:03
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Weird pricing of Dropbox Pro

Last week Dropbox introduced Dropbox Pro with 1TB storage space (and some other cool features) for $99/year (or $9,99/month), which is a pretty good deal (Google Drive 1TB also costs $99,99/year). The problem: it's not $99/year, but $130/year (or $13/month) if you happen to live in Europe. Instead of converting prices from dollars to euros, they just changed $ to €.

pricing

But that's not the best part. You can buy it cheaper if you use Dropbox app on iOS.

pricing on iOS

Now it's only $118/year or $10/month, which is much cheaper than through their website (and they still have to give 30% of that to apple!). I guess we should thank apple for not allowing different pricing in different regions. So if you plan to upgrade to Dropbox Pro, do it through their mobile app.

This practice of converting prices $1:€1 is really unfair to european consumers, which for some reason have to pay way more for their services, and Dropbox is not alone in doing this.

@visakhnair
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It's the same with Spotify and Netflix too...they just change the dollar sign to euro...

@wattengard
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Steam also does (did?) this...

@kangasbros
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eoporie, while I respect projects like storj, advocating them at this point as replacement for dropbox makes more harm than good. They are nowhere near the usability and easiness of dropbox. Decentralization is bloody difficult, and if you want also very easy-to-use interface (like dropbox has), it is nearly impossible problem.

@zingmars
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zingmars commented Sep 1, 2014

Sadly, this has been a huge problem for a lot of services. Spotify does this, Steam does this (though there was something about Australian consumer rights groups taking them to court) and a lot more. A lot of people argue, that it's a matter of buying power - supposedly we Europeans are richer so we can afford more. I call BS on that.
At this point I doubt that it's laziness too, but who knows.

@Firefishy
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Bittorrent Sync FTW.

@kluivers
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kluivers commented Sep 1, 2014

Do the dropbox prices include VAT? Usually US prices are shown without VAT, because the percentage differs per state, while EU prices usually include VAT (~21%). Might explain (part of) the price difference.

@nichdiekuh
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I may be wrong, but do US prices already includes taxes?
European prices usually have VAT included and as I've been told earlier, US prices don't. When comparing $ to Eur prices, ppl usually forget about the VAT.

@kinnth
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kinnth commented Sep 1, 2014

I too would say that often pricing in Europe is inflated because services have to pay higher VAT and other taxes. However the 1-1 change is too much. You could just buy in US dollars from the US app store with Apple Gift Cards to save the most money.

@sfermigier
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With OVH/Hubic (https://hubic.com/en/offers/) you get 10 TB for the same price.

@nashv
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nashv commented Sep 1, 2014

You do realise that Dropbox is pretty much pathetic these days. I've already switched to the cheaper and in some ways better integrated Google Drive. There are others - like SpiderOak and so on that are also cheaper. After 2 years of Dropbox Pro, I began asking myself what I was paying for anyway.

@cm-t
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cm-t commented Sep 1, 2014

@cwattengard yes Steam did and does it. For example DotA2 is available in the USA under the price of $0. In Europe the price is up to 0€. Don't ask me, I don't understand.

@vinzenz
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vinzenz commented Sep 1, 2014

I think the question rather should be, if they add the VAT on top of the price. If not, then it's actually getting pretty close with $1:€1 since, they add the VAT on top of the US price.
I know services where they just charge you the VAT on top of it, and then there was also the 'unfair' claim to Europeans. This happened when LindenLab (Second Life) introduced the VAT charge (quite some years back).
A lot of in-world businesses in virtual real estate (land business) had suddenly to pay for the monthly fee 20% more than US citizens. That created in case of Second Life an unfair favouring of US vendors.

I can understand their pricing differences, but it gives one a bad taste especially when you consider the IOS in-app price difference.

@danlucraft
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In the UK it is quoted as $99, which is also odd (but welcome!!)

@guanix
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guanix commented Sep 1, 2014

Regarding VAT: In some EU countries VAT is 25%, so simply changing $ to € is only slightly more expensive at current exchange rates, and businesses will be able to claim that back. I’m not sure what Dropbox does, but a lot of the time when Apple sells a European customer something digital, they apply Luxembourg VAT rates, which is generally 15% and 3% for certain things like books.

@jphussey
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jphussey commented Sep 1, 2014

in UK at dropbox.com it's £79 annually, on iOS it's £69.99. A decent enough saving.

@jimeh
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jimeh commented Sep 1, 2014

Seems they're listing £7.99 GBP ($13.98 USD) on their UK site for me:

@d53dave
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d53dave commented Sep 1, 2014

It is common practice. Apple does it, and other do it too. When you sell something in Europe, just do $ -> €. Just wanted to sign up for Microsofts OneDrive for Business: 1.99$ becomes 2.50€

@sustainablepace
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@madranet
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madranet commented Sep 1, 2014

Try Jottacloud, a Norwegian Dropbox clone (even down to automatic camera uploading), which is; powered by green energy, subject to EU privacy laws, cheaper than Dropbox

... and doesn't have any war criminals on the board!

@dainiuxt
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dainiuxt commented Sep 2, 2014

Use HubiC: 25 GB FREE, 100 GB = EUR1/Month, 100 TB = EUR10/month. You can choose datacenter in USA or Europe.
hubic.com

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ghost commented Sep 2, 2014

ad HubiC: you can not really share Folders and you can not share files, you can only give someone access to a permanent file which doesn't regard later changes.
Therefore it is unfortunately not at all comparable with DP.

ad price: I was charged only $99 for one year of DP Pro a few months ago while living in the EU.

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