14 DAY TRIAL // Dropbox, the popular cloud sync and backup service is about to unveil just how popular it really is. While the numbers aren't official yet, they'll sure please fans and investors alike. The service is said to have reached 25 million users, an impressive growth from just one year ago.
The news comes from TechCrunch which says that it will be made official later today. At 25 million, it would be one of the biggest and most popular such services, and it's not hard to see why.
Dropbox had four million users a year ago, so that would be a fairly big improvement, growing more than six times in a year is no easy feat, especially for a service which was already a household name with those interested in the market.
Dropbox is also seeing some 200 million new or updated files each day. But the service seems to be handling it rather nicely, most syncs are fast and seamless.
The main attraction of Dropbox is its simplicity. It's easy to set up an even easier to operate, on the desktop, Dropbox runs in the background and automatically updates all new files in a dedicated folder.
The product doesn't get in the way and mostly just works. This is the key part of its success, since Dropbox is not lacking in competitors.
With Dropbox, you get 2 GB for free, more if you get friends to sing up, but you have to pay if you want more. 50 GB will set you back $9.99 a month, or $99 for a full year. One weak spot is that you can't get any less than that and the jump from 2 GB to 50 GB is fairly large.
In terms of actual space there are better, or at least cheaper, alternatives out there, Amazon just launched Cloud Drive with 5 GB for free with cheap upgrades for more. It doesn't offer sync though.