Dropbox Limits Account Linking to 3 Devices for Free Users
Attention, Dropbox free users: You'll no longer be able to link your account to an unlimited number of devices.
Instead, Dropbox will limit account linking to only three devices. The company announced the change quietly in a help document posted to the Dropbox website. "Basic users have a three device limit as of March 2019," it now reads. "Plus and Professional users can link unlimited devices."
So far, Dropbox hasn't explained why it made the change, which was initially spotted by Liliputing. But it's likely intended to nudge free users into a paid plan. A Plus account starts at $9.99 a month and offers 1TB of storage, while a Professional account goes for $19.99 and doubles the amount of storage space.
Whether users actually upgrade to a paid account is another matter. In 2016, note-taking service Evernote implemented a two-device limit on account linking, in addition to a price increase. But since then, the company's business has reportedly stagnated on limited user growth.
As for Dropbox, the good news is that the change only applies to any new devices you attempt to link to your account. "If you're a Basic user and you linked more than three devices prior to March 2019, all of your previously linked devices will remain linked, but you can't link additional devices," Dropbox said in the help document.
This probably explains why free users haven't noticed the policy update unless they've purchased new hardware. "I just bought a new iPad so now I have 4 devices (Desktop PC, Laptop, Android phone, iPad) and sadly I will need to upgrade if I want to access my Documents from my new tablet," one user wrote on Reddit.
For alternatives, check out PCMag's picks for the best cloud storage providers.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.