Dropbox to shut down Mailbox & Carousel in early 2016, focus on collaboration

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in iPhone
Dropbox will shut down its Mailbox app on Feb. 26, and its photo management app Carousel on Mar. 31, the cloud storage service announced in a Monday blog post.
The company will instead concentrate on "collaboration and simplifying the way people work together," including its beta Paper offering. Two features from Carousel -- shared albums and space saving -- will migrate back to Dropbox, and some ideas may also make their way over from Mailbox. Although Carousel has struggled to gain any traction, Mailbox was once an extremely popular iOS app, aided by an early waiting list scheme. Dropbox bought its original developer for an estimated $100 million in 2013. Even Mailbox was allowed to languish however, its last app update arriving in July. Co-creator Gentry Underwood has already left Dropbox, according to TechCrunch, and fellow co-founder Scott Cannon is only staying on for a short time longer as an advisor. In some ways the first popularizer of cloud storage, Dropbox has had to fight to stay relevant thanks to competition from Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box.net, and Apple iCloud. Dropbox's free tier offers just 2 gigabytes of storage by default, well below the 15 gigabytes offered by Google or Microsoft, or even Apple's 5 gigabytes.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    What about Bubb.li that Dropbox acquired? No updates there in a long time and the only app of its kind. Any word on this?
  • Reply 2 of 12
    I use Carousel - although admittedly I primarily use it for automated backups of my photos to Dropbox. If they integrate that feature into the Dropbox app, I doubt I'll miss Carousel.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    Damn...Mailbox is Superb.  I use it all the time. Great way to dismiss tons of email in one swoop. Maybe apple with copy that as well (they already copied the individual swipes) in their next update. 
  • Reply 4 of 12
    anomeanome Posts: 1,533member
    The company will instead concentrate on "collaboration and simplifying the way people work together," including its beta Paper offering.
    Because Mail clearly has no role in "collaboration" or "the way people work together". And how many apps do we need called "Paper"?
  • Reply 5 of 12
    I dropped Dropbox after iCloud Drive gained an iOS app. Dropbox's "either or free or $10.00 per month" strategy may be failing. I don't need anywhere near 1TB of data, so I felt fleeced by Dropbox every month and I have been a user for shortly after they launched their app. Maybe if they had a $4.99 tier for 500 GB, I would have kept it.


    nolamacguy
  • Reply 6 of 12
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    carthusia said:
    I dropped Dropbox after iCloud Drive gained an iOS app. Dropbox's "either or free or $10.00 per month" strategy may be failing. I don't need anywhere near 1TB of data, so I felt fleeced by Dropbox every month and I have been a user for shortly after they launched their app. Maybe if they had a $4.99 tier for 500 GB, I would have kept it.


    I've dropped myself down to the free tier, but I've not managed to stop using Dropbox all together, and I wish I could, as I would prefer to not be using so many separate cloud services.

    - Dropbox allows public links and file sharing. I can actually stage and test/edit a whole website within dropbox.
    - The sync client is much more mature and reliable than iCloud, across Macs and PCs.

  • Reply 7 of 12
    dougddougd Posts: 292member
    The problem with Dropbox is they don't have tiered service. It's either the free version or a whole Terabyte.  I don't need that much so switched to iCloud 200 GB plan for $3.95 per month.  They will loose a lot more customers if they don't get real
  • Reply 8 of 12
    We loved Mailbox too :'(. They gave us swipes and snoozes, thank you guys! In fact, they even inspired us to do something of our own too.

    If you are looking for a new email client, you can check out Mailburn, it will be a quick transition, and the name is only 3 letters different :). https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apple-store/id938405668?mt=8

    We show only important emails in the main tab, and show them in a clean chat-like view. By the way, do check our 1-swipe unsubscribe from newsletters - it's just marvelous! And yes, snooze is coming soon too, we promise!
  • Reply 9 of 12
    pmz said:
    carthusia said:
    I dropped Dropbox after iCloud Drive gained an iOS app. Dropbox's "either or free or $10.00 per month" strategy may be failing. I don't need anywhere near 1TB of data, so I felt fleeced by Dropbox every month and I have been a user for shortly after they launched their app. Maybe if they had a $4.99 tier for 500 GB, I would have kept it.


    I've dropped myself down to the free tier, but I've not managed to stop using Dropbox all together, and I wish I could, as I would prefer to not be using so many separate cloud services.

    - Dropbox allows public links and file sharing. I can actually stage and test/edit a whole website within dropbox.
    - The sync client is much more mature and reliable than iCloud, across Macs and PCs.

    i switched to copy- get some other folks, or other computers signed up and you get 5gb each go. i am up to 40gb myself.
  • Reply 10 of 12
    mr omr o Posts: 1,046member
    anome said:
    The company will instead concentrate on "collaboration and simplifying the way people work together," including its beta Paper offering.
    Because Mail clearly has no role in "collaboration" or "the way people work together". And how many apps do we need called "Paper"?
    You should have a look at Slack: it is like a private twitter with colleagues/friends/family. 
  • Reply 11 of 12
    So far, the next best thing to me is myMail. Manages Gmail just as well + supports all other email services.
  • Reply 12 of 12
    Loved Mailbox. Just posted an obituary from a fan perspective. Sooze in peace, Mailbox! https://blog.briteback.com/mailbox-snooze-in-peace-an-obituary-by-a-fan/
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