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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
6.7
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (3rd)
ownCloud
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
20th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Dropbox is 7.9%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ownCloud is 0.9%, up from 0.6% 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

"What I like most about Dropbox is that it's very, very easy to use. It's also easy to share files through it."
"Reliability is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is very clear and easy to use."
"Irrespective of the geographical location that you are present in, and even if you don't have any storage devices, you can access your data and files with the help of Dropbox."
"It ensures all our staff are using the current version of our documents."
"I can use the cloud version for storage and easy retrieval."
"The most valuable features I have found to be accessibility and ease of use."
"It is definitely stable. The main advantage of Dropbox is that you can see the files, and you can easily share them with all the team members. They can be accessed by whoever you give access to, and it is all secure. Dropbox is a seamless product. It provides you the privacy that you're looking for. Privacy is a major factor for my company, and Dropbox provides you that."
"I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market."
 

Cons

"Dropbox needs to increase its storage."
"They should archive the data."
"Dropbox could probably be improved around the integrated security, but those options are probably available. I don't have much of a view on improvements, based on the relatively few occasions that I use it."
"Dropbox could be improved by reducing the storage price."
"Security could be enhanced."
"I would like to see more storage included and more lessons on how to optimize it."
"The solution could be a bit less expensive."
"Considering the solution's shortcomings, I want the product to be more user-friendly and offer more storage capacity."
"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

"We must pay when we upsize to a larger space."
"We are using the free version of Dropbox which has approximately two gigabytes of data capacity."
"Its price is quite cheap. It is quite competitive. You just need to pay for the license. There are no additional costs."
"The solution is paid for annually."
"We pay a monthly subscription fee."
"The solution allows one only a certain amount of free storage, but he must pay for a subscription, perhaps on a six-month basis, if he wishes to maintain this."
"The solution does not come with a licensing cost."
"The solution is purchased on a subscription basis, and there are purchasing options. If you purchase annually there is a discount."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
35%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
5%
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?
One area of improvement would be to allow multiple users to edit a file simultaneously and see edits in real time, similar to OneDrive. In Dropbox, once a file is opened on one system, it locks the...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

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, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Content Collaboration Platforms. Updated: July 2025.
861,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.