Forum Discussion

Explorer | Level 4

4 years ago

Solved

Linking Personal and Business accounts - Account types?

I searched the help and forums, but couldn't quite find the answer to my question.

My wife has a long-held Dropbox Plus personal account, which syncs to her laptop (via the Dropbox app with the standard Dropbox folder). She recently opened a Basic account for limited professional use, which has now grown and in need of an upgrade. Up until now, she's only accessed it through her browser. Ideally, this account can be synced to her laptop, along with the personal one, while keeping the two accounts clearly seperate.

I've gotten as far as discovering that one can *link* a Personal and Business account, which seems to do exactly what we want, but I'm confused on which exact plans have the capability.

Per this page, the Business account for individuals is the Professional. But this page confuses me about whether a Plus account can be linked with a Professional account, or if it has to be a Business Standard. This first screenshot's description makes it sound like the Professional account is not a Business account, when it is clearly listed under Business in the second screenshot...

Help!

Also, just to confuse matters, we already upgraded her professional account to a Plus account, but I think I can easily upgrade further if needed.

Last, if anyone has experience with linking personal and business accounts -- is it pretty easy and foolproof? I believe I read there are actually two different Dropbox folders (presumably labeled appropriately) that otherwise behave like a normal personal one. That would be ideal. Too much fiddling with the app, or logging in and out, will only create confusion.

We're on macOS, if that makes any difference.

Thanks for any and all help!

Rich
4 years ago
devynosborne wrote:

But this page confuses me about whether a Plus account can be linked with a Professional account, or if it has to be a Business Standard.

While Professional is considered a business account, it's an individual account, just like the Basic and Plus accounts. Account linking can only be done with a team plan, which would be Business Standard or Business Advanced. You can't link a Plus and Professional account.

I believe I read there are actually two different Dropbox folders (presumably labeled appropriately) that otherwise behave like a normal personal one. That would be ideal.

That's correct. The existing personal account would have its folder renamed to Dropbox (Personal) and the Business account would be in a folder called Dropbox (Team Name), where Team Name is the name you give to the Business team.

27 Replies

Rich
Super User II
4 years ago
devynosborne wrote:

But this page confuses me about whether a Plus account can be linked with a Professional account, or if it has to be a Business Standard.

While Professional is considered a business account, it's an individual account, just like the Basic and Plus accounts. Account linking can only be done with a team plan, which would be Business Standard or Business Advanced. You can't link a Plus and Professional account.

I believe I read there are actually two different Dropbox folders (presumably labeled appropriately) that otherwise behave like a normal personal one. That would be ideal.

That's correct. The existing personal account would have its folder renamed to Dropbox (Personal) and the Business account would be in a folder called Dropbox (Team Name), where Team Name is the name you give to the Business team.
- devynosborne
  Explorer | Level 4
  4 years ago
  Thanks for the fast reply!
  
  Rich wrote:
  While Professional is considered a business account, it's an individual account, just like the Basic and Plus accounts. Account linking can only be done with a team plan, which would be Business Standard or Business Advanced. You can't link a Plus and Professional account.
  
  Ah, I see. So it's more accurately described as linking an individual and a team account. This page (which links to the above) uses personal and work descriptions, which was part of the confusion.
  
  Anyway, that's super helpful, thank you!
  
  One follow up: Does the Individual account take up one of the user slots of, say, the Business Standard plan? I don't imagine her needed the team member options, but you never know.
  
  Rich wrote:
  That's correct. The existing personal account would have its folder renamed to Dropbox (Personal) and the Business account would be in a folder called Dropbox (Team Name), where Team Name is the name you give to the Business team.
  Great, that's perfect.
  - devynosborne
    Explorer | Level 4
    4 years ago
    One more question, if @Rich or anyone else knows.
    
    My wife's personal account is an old grandfathered Dropbox Plus w/ Packrat account. If she links this account to her Business Standard account, will she lose her grandfathered features (namely Packrat)?
    
    My question comes up when I found this thread with @Rob_Cash.
    
    I can't tell if a "linked" account counts as "joining a team", and thus changes the account type.
    
    Or does a linked account effectively stay separate?
    
    Maybe another way to ask, is if we still get charged for both. The instruction on linking make no mention of transferring to a team, unlike the team instructions.
- HKC
  New member | Level 2
  4 years ago
  This is ridiculous and misleading.
  - EMarioC
    Helpful | Level 6
    4 years ago
    Yes, it's confusing and it feels like I'm being punished. I've paid for years what is going on here? So now that they got rid of teams, which I never wanted anyway but used my business account. Does this mean I can't synchronize these once-linked accounts? if this is true then as I've been doing for years I can no longer sync my personal and business accounts to the same PC?
- Denniz
  Explorer | Level 4
  3 years ago
  Rich
  I have been a LONG time Dropbox user. I had my personal basic and plus linked and switched back and forth without a hitch. Boom all of a sudden a month of so ago it just stopped working.
  I wish ( may be I lost the message) someone would have given us heads up that this is not going to work.. It has led to a lot of confusion as I had no idea they changed this and they keep on using the word business ( when plus was a professional account) now the terminology is changed… Go figure.. PLUs is now first tier personal account !!!!
  
  At any rate, just wanted to share in the even other linked accounts users are in my situation.
  - Rich
    Super User II
    3 years ago
    Denniz wrote:
    
    ... they keep on using the word business ( when plus was a professional account) now the terminology is changed… Go figure.. PLUs is now first tier personal account !!!!
    
    The terminology hasn't changed in years. Basic, Plus and Professional accounts have always been personal accounts (i.e. an account intended for an individual). Dropbox has, on one of their plan comparison pages, grouped Professional in with Business because it shares some features with the Business plans, but it is still a personal account.
    
    The last time the personal plans changed was likely in 2017 when the plan formerly known as Pro was renamed to Plus, then sometime later the new Professional plan was introduced with more storage and additional features.
strongroots1
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
I'm in a similar situation, though I reversed the account types (Basic for personal, Plus for my business). Because I'm a solo entrepreneur, I don't need the teams function, but would like to functionally separate my personal and business activities. Since I don't qualify for the teams accounts (only 1 person), it looks like the only option is to move all my files into one Dropbox account or move to a different platform altogether for at least one of them, if I want syncing to devices.
- devynosborne
  Explorer | Level 4
  4 years ago
  strongroots1 wrote:
  I don't qualify for the teams accounts (only 1 person)
  My wife was able to sign up for her Business Standard account, even though she is just one person. No other team members necessary.
  
  You may mean that a Business Standard account is overkill for you. But I wanted to clarify there's no qualification (unless something changed with the very recent changes to teams).
  - strongroots
    New member | Level 2
    4 years ago
    Just had a look, and it appears that yes, I can sign up for a Business Standard account, but would have to pay for 3 licenses (even though I would only be using one). I can hope that Dropbox will at some point count Professional accounts as being equivalent to Business Standard for this purpose of linking accounts, but in the meantime, I’ll be looking at alternatives.
- James JAMS
  New member | Level 2
  3 years ago
  Yes this annoys me too. It used to work, but now they want to force you into multiple paid accounts, and upgrade one to a business account which from what I understand Costa much more $$$
jseiwert
Helpful | Level 5
2 years ago
Well, a bit late. but if u did link to a teams account your packrat feature and _ALL_ the file versions it had stored were deleted by an automated script with _NO_ way to retrieve the file versions. I have opened 2 dbox tickets and after going up the support tiers I was told "sorry, no luck. we can restore the packrat feature but _NOT_ all the file versions we deleted. No where in the linking process was this explained and I was not made aware of the impeding doom from my files. Super bad practice on dbox part. Clearly the "customer success" part of dbox is not listened to and only the revenue generation team and programmers are making the decisions.