Dropbox Business

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Dropbox Business is a robust cloud storage and file-sharing app with enough range and flexibility to satisfy most small to midsize businesses (SMBs). It features four tiers that target different work needs, such as collaboration and PDF editing. However, Dropbox Business is so much more than that. It includes file editing and annotation, rich multimedia support, and IT-friendly features like device approvals and remote wipe functionality. In fact, the app has so many excellent elements beyond basic cloud storage that it's a syncing toolbox that almost rivals Editors' Choice winners Egnyte and Microsoft OneDrive for Business. That additional functionality comes with a steeper price, however.

Plans and Prices

Dropbox has four business tiers, each designed for a different productivity type. For professionals, there’s the Essentials plan. Starting at $19.99 per month, this tier grants single users 3TB of storage, PDF editing, and the ability to track file engagement. On the multimedia front, Essentials lets you record, review, edit, and annotate video files. The maximum file size is 100GB.

For teams of three or more users, there’s the Business plan, starting at $18 per user per month. Your team receives 9TB of storage and the ability to set administrators. Everything else is on par with the Essentials plan, just better geared for multiple users.

Next up is Business Plus, which costs $30 per user per month. It increases the team's cloud storage capacity to 15TB and includes tiered administration roles and upgraded security features (suspicious activity alerts and compliance tracking). The maximum file size is 250GB.

Large organizations should consider the Enterprise tier. Its benefits are expanded security features and live support from Dropbox’s "dedicated experts." The Dropbox website doesn't list a price for this plan, so you must contact a sales rep for a quote.

It also has a free tier, Basic, with just 2GB of storage. That's it. You can't edit PDFs or leverage e-signature tools.

Overall, Dropbox is on the pricier side compared with the competition. Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive for Business cost $6 per user per month and $5 per user per month, respectively. However, Dropbox gives you more storage for your dollar. Egnyte's entry-level tier costs slightly more ($20 per user per month) but includes data governance and ransomware protection.

Getting Started With Dropbox Business

To create an account, you must supply contact details, create a password, and provide payment information, team name, company size, and the number of users. Once set up, you can invite team members and collaborators or go straight to the admin console. There, you'll see feature tips, such as inviting and managing members, accessing settings, and monitoring activity usage across your team.

Dropbox Business has a simple dashboard. As an admin, you can see the team members, pending invites, and remaining licenses (the free trial includes three). Additionally, the dashboard lets you access activity logs, add files and folders, check sharing settings, view the team file folder, set up groups, and visit the help center. You can also restrict document sharing and allow or block collaborator comments.

You can request files from anyone via email, even if they don't have a Dropbox account (for instance, a client or contractor who is not a part of your staff). The service has a folder for deleted files, which is a welcome safety net.

Depending on your workflow, there are multiple ways to upload files. You can drag and drop files from your desktop to the Dropbox desktop app or upload them to your web-based Dropbox page.

File Editing and Collaboration Options

Any file you place in the team folder is automatically available to everyone on the same account. Optionally, you can share a folder or document link and set it as public (so anyone with the link can access it). If you don't want a public file or folder, you can password-protect it, restrict it to team members, or set an expiration date. Editing permissions are available for files and folders.

Editing documents in Dropbox is easy. Once you open a PDF file, there are many annotation options (highlighting, drawing, and adding signatures) and the ability to edit the document's text. Importing a PDF from Google Docs and editing it in Dropbox was seamless in our tests. Likewise, creating and adding a signature to a document took mere seconds. Dropbox also integrates with the web-based Microsoft Word for no-hassle editing.

Dropbox lets you edit photos and videos, but don’t expect anything too elaborate. For example, you can crop, flip, and rotate the image and adjust the color and hue. Your options are similar for editing videos. You can also create a transcript from your uploaded video, though Dropbox only transcribed the first spoken sentence in testing. Don't like what you saw? Dropbox has manual transcription, too.

A subscription includes Dropbox Paper, a proprietary collaboration space for Dropbox users to create and edit documents, comment, and assign related tasks. Unfortunately, files not created in Dropbox Paper aren't editable there. As a result, you're better off creating original Dropbox Paper files if you want to collaborate on documents. You can export documents created by Dropbox Paper in the .md and .docx formats.

The desktop app contains Dropbox Badge, a feature that extends some Dropbox functionality to Excel, PowerPoint, and Word files. A badge appears on any of the documents saved in your Dropbox, so you can add comments, share a file, view a file's history, and see who is viewing or editing the file. Dropbox recommends using the desktop app to upload entire folders and large files since the website uploader has a 10GB limit. Any files you mark as favorites are available offline. This is a nice feature, but Evernote and Google Drive (at its Enterprise tier) let you access all files offline.

Dropbox Business for Android and iOS

In addition to a desktop app, Dropbox has mobile apps for Android and iOS. In fact, Dropbox recently added new mobile features on iOS that let you see file activity and team feedback in the file preview mode. Of course, the apps let you create files and folders, sync them, and share them.

The apps include another important mobile capability: document scanning using your phone, either from your existing camera roll or by transforming a photo into a document. They outline whatever document you're trying to scan, whether as small as a business card or a full-size page. They also straighten the image (even in the case of the mildly crumpled receipt we threw at it during testing) and let you capture up to 10 pages at a time. Scans are saved as PDF or PNG files. As with other documents in the Dropbox system, you can add comments or @mention people to notify them that they should take a look at a file.

In addition, you can also sign documents, annotate images with a date or custom text, or scan documents into your Dropbox using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). With OCR, an image of text is converted into machine-readable text that lets you search for scanned documents via keywords. We scanned a book page and were able to quickly search by chapter name. Although this feature is useful for scanning a few pages, it may not be optimal for scanning document stacks. For that, you're better off with Abbyy FineScanner.

Advanced Syncing, Remote Wipe, and Integrations

Selective Sync is a cool feature that helps you save hard drive space by designating certain files and folders as available locally, online, or in a mixed state. Another tool, Smart Sync, works similarly, except Dropbox makes the file and folder decisions based on your usage.

LAN Sync is a feature unique to Dropbox Business that speeds up syncing when a file exists on a Local Area Network (LAN) drive or folder. During the sync process, Dropbox proactively looks for the new file on your LAN, bypassing the need to download the file from Dropbox's online servers. This is helpful for SMBs that have computers networked together over the same router.

Streaming File Sync lets you share a file with a collaborator before it's fully uploaded, which is helpful in time-critical situations.

Remote Wipe works the same way as the smartphone security feature. IT can scrub the devices if a team member leaves the company or hardware with Dropbox Business installed is lost or stolen.

Dropbox has a significant API presence for custom integrations, making it compatible with popular apps from Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Slack, and other companies. It is also one of the most accessible APIs, supporting various approachable programming languages. This translates directly to meeting future business requirements and today's process and collaboration needs. In addition, the Dropbox DBX Platform offers integration with multiple tools and provides a central location to connect content, devices, and apps.

Security and Customer Support

On the data security side, Dropbox maintains ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, and ISO 22301 certifications and SOC1, SOC2, and SOC3 assurances. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance is not active by default and requires a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with your organization before complying. Activity audit logs are also available to administrators, which can help maintain Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance.

Dropbox has its own data centers, which gives it more direct control of data safety and potential regulatory compliance issues than competitors who leave that to third parties (like Jungle Disk). It also has GDPR compliance and a forensic-level audit log. This means you can track team members, file access, and share information without digging into logs or requiring a system administrator.

The service lacks user encryption key management, so any keys are under Dropbox's control. However, Dropbox has placed tight controls on what data is available to technicians for troubleshooting purposes. Although this may not be enough to qualify for FedRAMP, it's good enough for many cases. Dropbox also supports several two-factor and multi-factor authentication (MFA) strategies, including Google Authenticator and Windows Authenticator.

Dropbox has data governance, but it's an additional service you add to your existing Dropbox account (you must contact the sales team for a quote). If data governance is highly important for your business, check out Egnyte. It comes bundled with a subscription.

Need assistance while using Dropbox? It has a PDF guide, self-guided support, a searchable Help center, and support via live chat, email, and phone (weekdays, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET).

Verdict: Cloud Storage With Many Sharing and Security Options

Featuring a simple UI, large storage capacities at various tiers, many user permissions, and mobile apps that let you sync files on the go, Dropbox Business helps your team collaborate more efficiently. Although Dropbox isn't a one-stop shop for online productivity, its ability to edit numerous document types is extremely enticing. However, the service is a bit pricey compared with the competition. Editors' Choice winner Microsoft OneDrive for Business has a lower price and superior file editing functionality. Egnyte, another Editors' Choice winner, costs slightly more than Dropbox but includes data governance (which costs extra with Dropbox).

Gadjo Sevilla contributed to this review.