I’m leaving because of this. And I give them the ~$100/year for the pro plan. Screw ‘em.

Also it really shits me that every time I log in I get a little banner that says “Almost out of space? Try Dropbox Business!”.

One, no, I am not almost out of space. I’m at 15% and if you don’t know that, there’s something terribly wrong.

Two, I’m not a business. I’m just me. And I already pay for Pro. Get out of my goddamned face.

/rant

Not one to support rants normally but this irritates me too, especially when encountered in billion-dollar businesses (not only Dropbox). It's like they can't afford investing a part-time developer and a few extra db queries in customer experience and retention, which indicates that they are in it for the fast buck, right or wrong. This type of customer indifference should have a special, and tarnishing, name.

I think it’s more a problem with most companies of any size.

It’s not the devs. The owners likely become sufficiently detached from the end product and experience and sales/marketing teams are left to squeeze every bit of fiscal value from the thing. That usually results in battles for new analytics or new features that usually look like background software/network bloat, and judging the client to increase their spend no matter what. Those teams always have to post higher numbers regardless of the market.

Not that I disagree.

Paypal's post login page comes to mind. I want to see the dashboard after login, not a uninformative ad that probably took time and money to put there.

My PayPal was put on freeze a few weeks ago. When I called to get unlocked I was told the verification lock was put in place because perhaps (they couldnot say exactly) because I had started some Capital Loan process they have. Really, what had happened was I clicked that damned interstitial ad post-login.

The forced ad, accidentally clicked, locked my account, had to spend an hour cleaning it up.

There's a chance that's there because some split test showed it increases conversions to their (presumably) more lucrative business payment plan.

Probably got tests running to see what exactly keeps people around when they get onto the plan.

When you've got that many users, I think it becomes norm. I remember a funny story about how Google tested hundreds of shades of blue to see which exact shade lifted click through rates the most. The standard default blue won.

I can't agree that the impact on UX is worthwhile in the long run but I can see how such things can be attractive when you haven't got the, I dunno the right word for it, "clout" to look past the immediate bottom line like Amazon or Apple had when people were betting on them.

I thought only cable and broadband companies spammed their customers with marketing material, but clearly I was wrong.