About Dropbox Family Plan

Dropbox offers the Dropbox Family plan to manage all family members’ files together for $16.99 per month and generate and share 2TB (2,000GB) of cloud storage with up to 6 members (13+ years old in the United States, or 16+ years old anywhere else). Everyone in this family plan can get their own private Dropbox account, and store, and share photos, videos, docs, and more with the shared 2TB if you are willing to have a wonderful file management experience.

If you’re in the family plan and share Dropbox with family members of the same family plan, your files will only count once towards the storage quota of the family plan. It will count towards both of your storage quotas if you share files with others that are outside the family plan, or if others outside the family plan share files with you. Besides, if your family members copy the same file to their Dropbox account, both of the files will be counted towards the used storage space.

Thus, it’s highly recommended to try the Dropbox family sharing to maximize storage usage instead of copy files.

What is the Dropbox Family Room folder?

There is something you should be aware of, the “Family Room” folder, with a folder icon with 2 or 3 people on it, is the location where all family members share files, the folder cannot be deleted, moved, or renamed, which is the Dropbox predefined folder name. Therefore, all Dropbox family members have the Family Room folder which allows you to share files with others or access files shared by others.

All family members will have edit access automatically if you upload or create files and folders in the Family Room folder, which means that all members can edit, remove these files at any time, and other members can see the latest version of the file immediately or cannot see the files anymore if it is deleted.

Who is the Dropbox Family Room folder owner? The Dropbox Family plan manager is the owner of the Dropbox Family Room folder. The owner has the ability to invite new members to join the Dropbox Family plan, or remove members from the plan.

The invited people can access the Family Room folder automatically once they joined in. And every member of the Family plan will keep a copy of the Family Room folder in their own account if the owner cancels or change the Dropbox plans.

You can decide to whether keep a copy of the Family Room folder or not for the members if you remove a member from the Family plan.

If a member leaves the Dropbox Family plan, they will no longer access the Family Room folder, and keep a copy to their personal account.

★Tips:

If you cancel the Dropbox Family Plan, it will take effect after the subscription ends. After the subscription, then you are the Dropbox Basic user with 2GB of free cloud storage space, and you own all files in your personal Dropbox account plus the copies of everything in the Family Room folder. That is to say, you cannot access the Dropbox Family storage space anymore.

You have to use Dropbox Transfer to send certain files and folders from the Family Room folder to the people outside your Family plan. But you can’t share the entire Family Room folder with people outside the Family plan.

Share Files between Dropbox Family Members

Before Dropbox Family sharing, you can edit the sharing permissions for every member of the Dropbox Family plan. Then share files via the email address or a link.

Share permissions to invite members to join the Family plan

There are only two options for sharing permissions: Can edit and Can view when you choose to share files and folders with certain members or all Family members.

• Can edit: the members that have been shared with this permission, means that you can make modifications to the files and folders that have been shared with you, any changes you made will be automatically reflected in the Family Room folder in other members’ Dropbox.
• Can view: if you shared with this permission, you can only view these files and folders, as well as comment on the shared files. Of course, you cannot make changes to these files.

Dropbox Family Sharing on Dropbox desktop app

You can perform Dropbox Family sharing via email on the Dropbox desktop app, here are the steps to share files with other family members via email:

1. Open the Dropbox folder on your computer. 

2. Right-click the file or folder you would like to share.

3. Click Share… from the dropdown menu.

4. Type the email or name of the person (or people) you’d like to share in the To section.

5. Choose Can view or Can edit from the dropdown menu.

6. Click Share to share Dropbox account with your family.

Share files with Family Members on the Dropbox mobile app

1. Please open your Dropbox mobile app, and tap Files > the three dots icon (vertical three dots icon or ellipsis) next to the file or folder.

2. Tap Share > Invite to file or Invite to folder.

3. Type the email address or the person's name under Send to section to share.

4. Choose Can view or Can edit for sharing permissions.

5. Pitch on Share to share storage with other Dropbox Family members.

Dropbox Family Sharing on the Dropbox website

Invite members

The steps to invite people to join your Family plan are listed below:

1. Please sign in to dropbox.com with your account.

2. Then click your avatar on the top right, and select Settings > Family.

3. Hit the Invite members button.

4. Follow the guide to invite people via link or email to join your Family plan.

Create files in the Family Room folder to share with family members

If you have invited members to your Family plan, you can create or upload files to the Dropbox Family Room folder to share with all of them, here it is:

1. Please log in to your Dropbox account on Dropbox.com.

2. Open the Family Room folder.

3. Hit the arrow next to Create new file button, and choose Google Docs or other file types to create.

4. After editing the file, just close the file and it will be automatically saved to your Family Room folder.

Now other members can see the created file in their Family Room folder immediately, and until now Dropbox family sharing has been finished.

Dropbox Family Sharing FAQs

Q1: What’s the difference between shared folder and Family Room?

A1: Dropbox shared folder allows you to edit the share permissions for your team members to edit, or view-only to some subfolders or entire shared folder, and you can delete, move or rename the Dropbox shared folder. You can invite people outside your team or who don’t have a Dropbox user account to join in the shared folder.

The Dropbox Family Room folder is a predefined folder that is used to share all files and folders in this folder with all family members, every member has edit access by default and you can’t delete, move or rename the Dropbox Family Room folder, which means that Family Room folder is added automatically when the family members joined in. You have to sign up for a Dropbox account to enjoy the Dropbox Family Room folder.

Q2: Does every member of my Family plan see all my files saved to Dropbox?

A2: All Family members have their own, private Dropbox accounts. Only all files and folders in the Family Room folder can be seen by other members, as well as the file you choose to share can be viewed or edited by others. Thus, there is no need to worry about your privacy if you store files in your private Dropbox account and don’t share them.

Q3. How much storage space in total do I have within the family plan?

A3: You have a free Dropbox basic storage space, 2GB, plus shared 2TB with other 5 members. That is to say, you have two storage spaces, one is the free 2GB, and another is the cloud storage shared from the Dropbox Family plan.

Transfer Dropbox to Another Account Directly

If you would like to migrate Dropbox to another Dropbox account if you’re a free Dropbox Basic user, what should you do? It’s highly recommended to try the free cloud backup service - CBackup, which allows you to free migrate Dropbox to another Dropbox account directly without downloading files and re-uploading files manually, saving much more time.

The steps listed below to transfer Dropbox to another Dropbox account with CBackup:

1. Please download and install the CBackup desktop app, then sign up and sign in.

2. Tap the Storage tab, select Dropbox, and hit Authorize Now. Finish the steps according to the guide.

3. Select Sync > Sync Public Cloud to Public Cloud in sequence.

4. You will be led to the CBackup web app, then hit New Task.

5. Hit Add Source to choose Dropbox, and hit Add Destination to choose another Dropbox account.

6. Press the Start Sync button to sync files between Dropbox accounts directly.

Wait for a while, you will get a copy from the source Dropbox and save it to the destination Dropbox account.

Besides, you can enjoy the following useful features while protecting your files:

Combine two or more Dropbox accounts if your Dropbox is full, then you can backup more files to the combined Dropbox storage easily.

Backup Dropbox to other clouds for data security and keep unlimited backup versions so that you’re able to restore data to any backup version you keep.

Offers 10GB of free cloud storage for CBackup Cloud, which allows you to expand to get 1TB, 5TB, or more.

You can sync or backup files to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive directly without any file size limitations if you meet Dropbox not syncing all files or other problems.

The End

Now, you have mastered Dropbox Family sharing, just follow the steps to share files and folders with other family members via email or link. Or let Dropbox share space with family members to store more files effectively. If you want to keep your Dropbox data safe or migrate Dropbox to another account or other cloud, CBackup is your best choice. So why not give it a try?