Dropbox is consolidating its three Pro account options into a single plan that’s priced at US$9.99 per month and includes 1TB of storage and added controls for document sharing and security.
The Pro plan is aimed at freelancers, contractors and other workers who want more storage and tools than come with the free Basic plan, which starts at 2GB, but for whom a Business account might be overkill.
Previously, Dropbox had three different Pro plans with 100GB, 200GB and 500GB of storage, priced at $9.99, $19.99, and $49.99 per month, respectively.
In addition to a terabyte of storage, the new plan includes several features for collaborating with clients. There’s “view-only” permissions, which an interior designer could use to let a client see a mockup of a design but not make changes to it, for instance.
Users can also password-protect links to documents and folders, and apply expiration dates to links, so a wedding photographer could provide access to a group of photos for a limited amount of time.
Finally, there’s remote wipe feature. If a user loses their mobile device, they can log on from another computer and have Dropbox stop syncing to that device and delete the files on it the next time it comes online.
The new Pro plan aims to provide a more compelling option for those willing to pay for online storage, but Dropbox is competing with larger competitors like Google and Amazon who continue to slash prices and increase the storage they offer.
In March, Google cut the price of its 1TB Drive plan by 80 percent, from $49.99 to $9.99, and Amazon cut the price of its 1TB S3 plan by 65 percent, $0.03 per GB per month.
The Dropbox for Business plan, which includes the sharing controls in Pro plus many admin tools for employers, starts at $15 per month for five users.
