Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 by MIT students Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi as a startup company, with initial funding from seed accelerator Y Combinator.
Dropbox has experienced criticism and generated controversy for issues including security breaches and privacy concerns.
Concept Dropbox brings files together in one central place by creating a special folder on the user's computer. The contents of these folders are synchronized to Dropbox's servers and to other computers and devices where the user has installed Dropbox, keeping the same files up-to-date on all devices. Dropbox uses a freemium business model, where users are offered a free account with set storage size. For more capacity and additional features, Dropbox offers paid subscriptions. Dropbox Basic users are given two gigabytes of free storage space. Dropbox offers computer apps for Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, and Linux computers, and mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone smartphones and tablets. In March 2013, the company acquired Mailbox, a popular email app, and in April 2014, the company introduced Dropbox Carousel, a photo and video gallery app. Both Mailbox and Carousel were shut down in December 2015, with key features from both apps implemented into the regular Dropbox service. In October 2015, it officially announced Dropbox Paper, its collaborative document editor.
History
Dropbox founder Drew Houston conceived the Dropbox concept after repeatedly forgetting his USB flash drive while he was a student at MIT.
Houston founded Evenflow, Inc. in May 2007 as the company behind Dropbox, and shortly thereafter secured seed funding from Y Combinator. Dropbox was officially launched at 2008's TechCrunch Disrupt, an annual technology conference. Owing to trademark disputes between Domains by Proxy, Inc. and Evenflow, Dropbox's official domain name was "getdropbox.com" until October 2009, when it acquired its current domain, "dropbox.com". In October 2009, Evenflow, Inc. was renamed Dropbox, Inc.
In an interview with TechCrunch's "Founder Stories" in October 2011, Houston explained that a demo video was released during Dropbox's early days, with one viewer being Arash Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi was "so impressed" that they formed a partnership. In regards to competition, Houston stated that "It is easy for me to explain the idea, it is actually really hard to do it."
User growth Dropbox saw steady user growth after its inception. It surpassed the 1 million registered users milestone in April 2009, followed by 2 million in September, and 3 million in November. It passed 50 million users in October 2011, 100 million in November 2012, 500 million in 2016, and 700 million in 2021.
Acquisitions In July 2012, Dropbox acquired TapEngage, an advertising startup. The following December, Dropbox acquired two companies; Audiogalaxy, a music-streaming startup, and Snapjoy, a company that provided photo organization tools for mobile platforms. In July 2013, Dropbox acquired Endorse, a startup which offered mobile coupons.
In April 2014, Dropbox acquired photo-sharing company Loom (which would be shut down and integrated with the then-recently announced Carousel), and document-sharing startup Hackpad. Dropbox later announced in April 2017 that Hackpad would be shut down on July 19, with all notes being migrated to Dropbox Paper.
In May 2014, Dropbox acquired Bubbli, a 3D graphics startup.
In January 2015, Dropbox acquired CloudOn, a company that provided mobile applications for document editing and creation. At the same time, Dropbox told TechCrunch that CloudOn's base in Herzliya would become the first Dropbox office in Israel. In July, Dropbox acquired Clementine, an enterprise communication service.
In January 2019, Dropbox acquired e-signature company HelloSign. The acquisition was reported to be Dropbox's largest to date, at a reported $230 million.
In March 2021, Dropbox announced the acquisition of DocSend. DocSend offers a secure document sharing and analytics product.
In October 2021, Dropbox announced that an agreement to acquire universal search company Command E has been signed.
In November 2022, Dropbox announced that an agreement to acquire several key assets from Boxcryptor has been signed. Boxcryptor is a provider of end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption for cloud storage services.
In December 2022, Dropbox announced the acquisition of form management platform FormSwift for $95 million.
In August 2024, Dropbox announced the acquisition of AI scheduling tool Reclaim.ai.
Remote workforce At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Dropbox was one of the first companies to shift to a remote workforce. In October 2020, the company announced its "virtual first" initiative which would shift the company to a long-term remote working plan, which launched officially April 2021.
Workforce reductions In January 2021, Dropbox CEO Houston announced the layoff of 315 employees, which was approximately 11 percent of the workforce at the time. The company said the reductions were necessary in order to focus the company team structure and focus on top level priorities. The software firm also announced that COO Olivia Nottebohm would be leaving the company on February 5, 2021. In the same month, Dropbox announced it would sublease much of its office space in a transition to remote work.
In April 2023, Houston announced the layoff of roughly 500 employees, or 16 percent of the current workforce. The company cited a slowdown in growth and a need for different, AI-focused skill-sets. In October 2024, Houston announced the layoff of roughly 528 employees, or 20 percent of the current workforce.
Leadership change In May 2026, Dropbox announced that co-founder Drew Houston will step down from the role of chief executive officer to assume the role of executive chairman. The company said Houston will serve as co-CEO with Ashraf Alkarmi for an initial period before transitioning to the chairman role. Alkarmi, who is the company's chief product officer, will become the company's permanent CEO thereafter. Dropbox also announced the appointment of Mike Torres, who will replace Alkarmi as chief product officer from Google in July 2026.
Platforms Dropbox has computer apps for Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, and Linux computers, and mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone smartphones and tablets. It also offers a website interface. As part of its partnership with Microsoft, Dropbox announced a universal Windows 10 app in January 2016.
Dropbox's apps offer an automatic photo uploading feature, allowing users to automatically upload photos or videos from cameras, tablets, SD cards, or smartphones to a dedicated "Camera Uploads" folder in their Dropbox. Users are given 500 megabytes of extra space for uploading their first photo, and are given up to 3 gigabytes of extra space if users continue using the method for more photos.
In July 2014, Dropbox introduced "streaming sync" for its computer apps which improved the upload or download time by up to 2 times for large files.
In August 2015, Dropbox announced the availability of "Universal 2nd Factor" USB security keys, providing two-factor authentication for logging into its services.
Financials Dropbox received initial funding from seed accelerator Y Combinator.
In October 2008, Dropbox raised a $6 million Series A round led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Accel.
A May 2010 report in The Wall Street Journal said that "since [founder Drew Houston] started reading Eric Ries' Lean startup blog about a year ago, the company has started trickling out new features when they are ready instead of waiting to launch a fully featured product. That helps test customer appetite, he says, dubbing the practice "minimum viable product".
TechCrunch reported in July 2011 that Dropbox had been looking to raise between US$200 and US$300 million, and had a valuation "to end up in the $5 billion to $10 billion range. [...] quite a step up from its previous funding rounds which have totalled a tiny $7.2 million". As noted in a Forbes article, Dropbox had "revenue on track to hit $240 million in 2011".
In April 2012, Dropbox announced that Bono and The Edge, two members of the Irish rock band U2, were individual investors in the company.
In 2014 Dropbox raised financing from BlackRock Inc. and others that values the company at $10 billion.
In March 2017, Bloomberg reported that Dropbox had secured a US$600 million credit line, with the company expected to file for its initial public offering (IPO) "as soon as this year".
In February 2018, Dropbox filed an IPO to be listed on the Nasdaq. The company's initial intent was to raise $500 million. Dropbox's stock rose 42 percent to $29.89 in its first day of trading on March 23, 2018.
Business model Dropbox uses a freemium business model, where users are offered a free account with a set storage size, with paid subscriptions available that offer more capacity and additional features. Accordingly, Dropbox's revenue is a product of how many users they can convert to their paid services.
Dropbox Basic users are given two gigabytes of free storage space. This can be expanded through referrals; users recommend the service to other people, and if those people start using the service, the user is awarded additional 500 megabytes of storage space. Dropbox Basic users can earn up to 16 gigabytes through the referral program.
The Dropbox Plus subscription (named Dropbox Pro prior to March 2017) gives users 2 terabytes of storage space, as well as additional features, including:
Advanced sharing controls: When sharing a link to a file or folder, users can set passwords and expiration limits. Remote wipe: If a device is stolen or lost, users can remotely wipe the Dropbox folder from the device the next time it comes online. "Extended Version History": An available add-on, it makes Dropbox keep deleted and previous versions of files for one year, a significant extension of the default 30-day recovery time.
In November 2013, Dropbox announced changes to "Dropbox for Business" that would enable users to connect both their personal Dropbox and their business Dropbox to the same device, with each of the folders being "properly labeled for personal or work, and come with its own password, contacts, settings, and files". Furthermore, Dropbox announced shared audit logs, remote wipe for business administrators, and account transfers, as new features of its Business offering. In January 2017, Dropbox introduced "Smart Sync" for Business and Enterprise customers, a feature that lets Windows and macOS users see all files in the Dropbox folder, but only download specific files on-demand.
Similar to Dropbox Basic, Dropbox Plus users can also earn extra space through referrals. Plus users earn 1 gigabyte per referral, up to 32 gigabytes.
Dropbox Business is Dropbox's application for corporations, adding more business-centered functionality for teams, including collaboration tools, advanced security and control, unlimited file recovery, user management and granular permissions, and options for unlimited storage. For large organizations, Dropbox offers Dropbox Enterprise, the "highest tier" of its product offerings, adding domain management tools, an assigned Dropbox customer support member, and help from "expert advisors" on deployment and user training.