Dropbox Adds Data Privacy, Security Features for Cloud Storage

What does it take to win the cloud storage wars? More storage at lower costs may be part of the answer, but so are powerful, user-friendly security and privacy features. That, at least, is what Dropbox is betting in the wake of a revamping of its premium cloud storage plan.

A few days ago, Dropbox announced new pricing and storage capacity for Dropbox Pro, its premium storage plan. Now, the company is offering a simplified, one-size-fits-all solution that provides 1TB of data storage for $9.99 per month—or about a penny per Gigabyte, for those of you who like doing math.

The new plan dramatically lowers the cost of Dropbox storage for high-volume users. Previously, 1TB of storage cost $49.99 per month.

But the price per Gigabyte of cloud storage is not the real story here. That's just the icing on the cake. (It also, by the way, makes Dropbox only comparable to, but not dramatically cheaper than, other cloud-storage services in terms of pricing for high-volume users.)

What Dropbox appears to be banking on more than cost to continue expanding its paid user base are new features that it has also introduced for Dropbox Pro. Those include protecting shared files with passwords, setting expiration dates for shared data and deleting Dropbox data remotely from devices that have been lost or stolen.

It's features such as these—not to mention genuine support for Linux users, a demographic that most other major cloud-storage services only serve half-heartedly—that really help to differentiate Dropbox from its competitors and provide value as the cloud storage market matures. These days, cloud storage has become so cheap across the board that pricing alone has ceased to be a particularly compelling reason to choose one service over another. Now, it's enhanced security and privacy features that make a true difference.