Dropbox users can collaborate easily with the new teams feature
Collaborating for free is always a plus, and now Dropbox is making that easier.
The company is launching a new feature called Dropbox Teams, which makes it easier for people to use their personal accounts at work. The feature will be available to Basic and Pro users over the next week.
Here’s how it works: Users can create a team folder to keep files in one place. Group members added to the team folder will have access to all the files within that folder. Anyone added to that team will have immediate access to everything, even if they’re added later on.
There’s also an option to link your personal and work Dropbox accounts
There’s also an option to link your personal and work Dropbox accounts so that you can switch from one to the other without signing out.
Dropbox for Business, a service Dropbox says is being used by more than 100,000 companies, already has similar tools. However, Dropbox Teams will be available to all users — those using the service for free with a Basic account or paying $10 a month for a Pro account.
The new feature is aimed at smaller companies that may already use Dropbox but don’t pay for Dropbox for Business, which offers more advanced features like more administrative and security controls such as two-factor authentication. More than 400 million people use Dropbox, and 60% of the Basic and Pro users are using it primarily for work, according to the company.
“We do expect that a lot of these small teams who start using the team functionality will, over a period of time, graduate to having those kinds of needs and start using Dropbox for Business,” Dropbox’s Pranav Piyush, a product manager, told Mashable. “That’s going to be a very natural progression.”
Meanwhile, other file-sharing and storage services are competing for users. On Monday, Google also claimed Google Drive has one million paying organizations, according to Fortune. Cloud storage company Box also announced growth in its service. Revenue rose 43% in the second quarter, according to the company, and it also has 39 million registered users and 50,000 paying customers worldwide.
