Dropbox launches Teams version for businesses

The online file-hosting firm Dropbox has released a new service explicitly aimed at business customers.

Dropbox for Teams, announced on Thursday, provides the standard Dropbox service for web-based document, photo and video-sharing, but adds features such as phone support and centralised administrative controls.

"People in over a million businesses around the world trust Dropbox for its simplicity and reliability," Dropbox sales chief Sujay Jaswa said in a statement. "Now, Dropbox for Teams will give businesses the control and freedom to rethink how they work."

The enhanced service costs $795 (£494) a year for five users, with additional seats costing $125 each. Unlike the free version, Dropbox for Teams gives administrators the ability to manage and migrate staff members' accounts. Admins also get centralised billing, and the version makes it possible to view an unlimited version history for all files.

The annual fee also brings a shared storage limit of 1,000GB, with each extra seat getting 200GB. The free version, by contrast, gives each user just 2GB, although paid-for 'Pro' versions increase this to 50GB or 100GB.

As the Pro versions work out at $240 a year for those wanting 100GB of storage, the Teams version is significantly cheaper for groups of people with large data-sharing requirements.

It is possible to convert free Dropbox accounts to the Teams version without having to download a new client.

Dropbox for Teams is, like the free and Pro versions, an encrypted service that stores files both on Amazon S3 and on users' computers. It is compatible with the Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and BlackBerry operating systems.