Dropbox Pro vs Dropbox Business

Dropbox Pro and Dropbox Business sound very similar, but they aren’t the same plan. If you’re planning to use Dropbox for your company or for professional reasons, you’ll want to take a close look at Dropbox Pro vs Dropbox Business to see which best meets your needs because the names don’t tell the whole story.

Both Dropbox Pro and Dropbox Business have a lot of the same features. Aside from offering all of the core features like storage space and file sharing, both plans provide the ability to remotely wipe devices, control shared links, and use productivity and sharing tools like Dropbox Spaces and Dropbox Paper. Both plans also feature live chat and email support.

Where the plans differ is when you want to use them for more than one person. On the page explaining Dropbox’s different plans, Dropbox Pro, called Dropbox Professional, is grouped under “Individual” plans. That’s the first indicator that it may not be the right choice for a business with more than one employee.

Dropbox Pro also doesn’t have any of the team management features that Dropbox Business plans have. With a Dropbox Pro account, you won’t have an administrator console, centralized billing, or access to any of Dropbox’s partners to integrate things like workflow, CRM, or other productivity or security apps. If you’re planning to use Dropbox for several people on your team, Dropbox Business may be the better bet for you.

If you want to have control over which devices your team members can use to access Dropbox — or have a history of who has viewed your files and when — Dropbox Business Advanced might be worth considering. The Dropbox Advanced plan also lets you set up tiered admin roles and sign in as users, and it lets you force invited users with a Dropbox account on your domain to join the team account.

Another thing you may want to consider when you’re looking at Dropbox Pro vs Dropbox Business is what kind of information you’ll be storing. Unlike Dropbox Pro, Dropbox Business offers features that help with HIPAA compliance. If you’re storing anything that might fall under HIPAA, you’re better off with Dropbox Business.

Finally, if you’re the type of person who prefers to pick up the phone and call someone for help, all the Dropbox Business plans come with phone support during business hours.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t use Dropbox Pro, or Dropbox Professional, for business purposes, especially if you’re a team of one.

Dropbox Pro has a lot of features that aren’t available on the free plan, like advanced sharing controls and 180 days of file version history in case you delete something and need it a few months later. You can also use a feature called Showcase to select files from your Dropbox account and arrange them into a single page for sharing, as well as track who views and downloads the files in the showcase.

If you’re a creative professional, you might like the watermarking feature in Dropbox Pro, which lets you add a watermark on your files before sharing them with collaborators or clients. This feature isn’t available in any of the Dropbox Business plans, and it can save you a lot of time so that you don’t have to download a file, manually add a watermark, and then send it to a client.

For example, a photographer could send multiple wedding photos — with a big “PROOF” watermark across them — to a client to view before they pay the final amount. If you send a lot of files, this would take seconds with Dropbox instead of hours.

Solo professionals can get a lot out of Dropbox Pro, and in some cases, they can use Dropbox Plus and get everything they need to keep their business of one running. But Dropbox Business has team features and provides tighter admin controls and sharing settings, and it’s designed for businesses.

Before choosing a plan, consider how much space you’ll need, how many users will be on your Dropbox account, and whether you need features like device approvals, tiered admin roles, and audit logs.

Essentially, you can do a lot with Dropbox Pro. But if you’re looking for something that can work for multiple users, Dropbox Business is better because of all the administrative features it offers.