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Dropbox vs ownCloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dropbox
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (5th)
ownCloud
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
21st
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Dropbox is 8.0%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ownCloud is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Edgar  Paez - PeerSpot reviewer
Work from anywhere and backup easily while being practical
I recommend Dropbox, yet not for all of the features it has. I am a basic user. In a personal mode, we have about 100 employees, and maybe 20 of them use Dropbox as a personal backup system. ShareFile is more secure than Dropbox. Five years ago, ShareFile was qualified as having better security control, access privilege management, and version control recovery, among many features that we were using for private documentation. Overall, I would rate Dropbox an eight out of ten.
SC
Self-hosted file sync tool used to deploy custom web UIs.
I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market. It’s a full web application platform, an indispensable tool for a business of any size that needs to deploy any kind of custom web UI. If you build an ownCloud app, you’ve got authentication, storage, security, caching, and database layers already fully baked for you. You just need to build your UI and custom logic. Your app doesn’t even need to interact with files, sync, or interact with other ownCloud features. Any web UI can be included without ownCloud. It can even be a portal to web interfaces of other applications within a business using the external app to display external sites within ownCloud. This is the case as long as that site allows itself to be displayed within a frame.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"A valuable feature is that it's useful for exchanging large files and documents. I'm happy with it."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It is straightforward and works seamlessly."
"The product's most valuable feature is storage."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its convenience, I can retrieve files online from various places. It has backup options in case something was to go wrong with my computer I can restore my files."
"The solution is very fast and simple. If I want to share a file I can put it on the cloud or on-premise. It's user-friendly."
"The solution is easy to use, everyone can use it."
"It's very easy to use and quite accessible for everybody."
"I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market."
 

Cons

"While I feel the price being charged to be reasonable, it should either be more cost-effective or account for an increased amount of storage space."
"The arrangement of documents can be simplified. Personally, I am used to it, but for a new user, it might be a little confusing. It can maybe have a feature to allow people to collaborate or work on the same document at the same time. I'm just using it to load and access information, and I haven't faced many challenges. However, I have seen that the whole system or laptop slows down a bit when I am synchronizing files to Dropbox. I don't know if it is because of my system. It might be good if they can enhance the synchronization process so that we can specify that synchronization should be done after 30 minutes. In addition, synchronization should only be done for the documents that have been uploaded."
"The mobile aspect of the solution needs improvement. For instance, if I want to use a file from Dropbox on my phone, I sometimes struggle to download images off of Dropbox. The solution lacks accessibility on different devices."
"The solution could provide more capacity for free."
"Dropbox, like many file sharing tools, needs to synch to a local hard drive. That is a bit difficult with 5TB Dropbox content."
"The solution could improve by being more secure and having more storage."
"The solution could be a bit less expensive."
"Dropbox could make the installation and the log of what has changed in a file easier. Showing logs could be more accessible."
"Even with fast disks, it still takes a fair bit of time to write most schema changes to multi-GB tables."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing varies depending on the version, and the one we currently utilize is the business version."
"The solution is paid for annually."
"I don't pay any licensing costs."
"Dropbox offers a freemium model which is very convenient and affordable. Beyond that, the pricing is favorable."
"We are using the free version of Dropbox which has approximately two gigabytes of data capacity."
"The solution does not come with a licensing cost."
"A bigger discount for existing users would be appreciated."
"Dropbox is one of the cheapest tools in the market."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
65%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
3%
University
3%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dropbox?
For me, the biggest thing is version history. I can easily go back and view older versions.
What needs improvement with Dropbox?
I would like to have a document flow. Sharing documents with other people in the same division or department and being able to work without downloading the file would be ideal. Working online would...
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Comparisons

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vita Coco, BCBGMAXAZRIA Group, Centric Project, Kayak, FourSquare, Asana, Huge Adversting , USA Gymnastics, Appen, Valliant, Radio Lab
CERN, Joy Global, Sciebo, Bauhaus, datto
Find out what your peers are saying about Dropbox, Google, Microsoft and others in Content Collaboration Platforms. Updated: March 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.