Is it legitimate to use dropbox as file storage for my site?

Question

I am approaching the limits of my hosting plan. I doubled it once from 2 to 4 GB and my site (a popular woodworking community in Hebrew) is getting close to using the disk space available for the images people are uploading.

I was wondering if it were a legitimate use of DropBox (or any of the other free cloud hosts), to serve the files of it as public files... i.e. whenever someone uploads a file to my server it will be instead uploaded using the DropBox API to the DropBox servers, and the Public LINK to the file will be stored in my DB and served to the users.

Another option would be to upload to a hosting server in GoDaddy (I can afford those prices), but that would require writing my own client, which isn't ideal (a good exercise, but I don't have the time).

Obviously the site also generates a fair amount of traffic, I would not ask if it were for personal/close friends usage, I'm talking about many thousands of hits per day...

Update: an answer and comment mention that "Dropbox public links have a bandwidth limit. 20 GB/day for Free and 200 GB/day for Pro." https://www.dropbox.com/help/45 - this seems to suggest that as long as my bandwidth requirements are somewhere below this number, then I am in the clear... Is that so?

Raulrausch

FYI: Dropbox public links have a bandwidth limit. 20 GB/day for Free and 200 GB/day for Pro. dropbox.com/help/45 – Jungjungfrau

It is not clear what you mean about writing your own client. – Pentamerous

Actually, before posting the question, I read through everything I could find on the DropBox website concerning Limits, Terms and Acceptable Use and could not find anything remotely suggesting that this is not a proper use... Still I have to wonder (Amazon S3 charges a nice amount for the same scenario). – Raulrausch

My Own client means that I would have to write a PHP/Software client to automatically upload my files to a remote storage that doesn't have an API that is already setup for this sort of operation (DropBox has this) – Raulrausch

Answer 1

Dropbox has bandwidth limits. I use it quite often for running simple static websites for internal testing, but it there are limitations.

Take a look at this: https://www.dropbox.com/help/45

Falsework

Thank you for this! so as long as I stay under the 20 GB limit per day (not clear if it is per account or file) I am good? This is a good solution for me in that case... – Raulrausch

Most of the time you should be fine, but I still wouldn't recommend using it in a production environment. You can always give it a shot and try. They may suspend your public links temporarily if you use too much bandwidth, but that's about it. You won't be banned from using Dropbox or anything of that sort. – Falsework

Answer 2

Look in to Rackspace Cloud Files and Amazon S3. You can hotlink directly to the files.

Alteratively, have your users use an image hosting service like Flickr or photobucket, and have them provide links instead.

Pentamerous

I am aware of these services, but they charge so much, it is cheaper to enlarge my own hosting account (which is also quite expensive). – Raulrausch

Answer 3

As far as I know, Dropbox "Free" is only for private usage. They also have business plans. I would consider to upgrade your existing host for a few more dollars.

Dally

See my comment about DropBox terms - it does not appear to be as you say. – Raulrausch

Answer 4

Whether it's legitimate or not, Dropbox will no longer allow it as of 2017. From https://www.dropbox.com/help/16:

The Public folder

Important changes to the Dropbox public folder

Dropbox accounts created after October 4, 2012 won't have a Public folder. If you'd like to quickly share files you can use a shared link. Shared links work even if the person you're sharing with doesn't have a Dropbox account.

Dropbox Basic (free) users

> As of March 15, 2017 the Public folder in your Dropbox account has been converted into a standard folder. By default this folder is private to your account. This transition will occur automatically.

Here's what you need to know:

All of the files in your Public folder will remain safe, but public links to those files will stop working If someone visits a link to a file in your Public folder, they'll see an error page To see a list of your public links, visit the Public folder—any file in this folder will have previously had a public link associated with it Dropbox can't convert existing public links into Dropbox shared links If you'd like to re-share any of the files in your Public folder, please use a shared folder or shared link Using the public folder to render HTML content

As of October 3, 2016 Dropbox Basic (free) users can no longer use public links to render HTML content in a web browser. If you're a Basic user, and you created a website that directly displays HTML content from your Dropbox account, it will no longer render in the browser. The HTML content itself remains safe in Dropbox, and you can share it using any of our other sharing methods.

> Effective September 1, 2017, Dropbox Pro and Business users will no longer be able to render HTML content, and the Public folder and its sharing functionality will be disabled. Until that date, Dropbox Pro and Business users can continue to use public links to render HTML content.

Velum

Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes permanently offline. – Effervescent

Answer 5

I go through the same process with a website with a lot of traffic, but the public doesn't upload. In fact, there are so many posts per day, that the server stores many images.

Now ... my advice in this case is not to use Dropbox, but another CDN or host that has greater availability for this process. DropBox is for storage. And not for big traffic ... Which with that, will certainly have slow loading and failures. So there is this daily limitation.

There are other services like cloudinary, CDN and hosting specialized in images that can do the same job and without a headache.

Nape