Dropbox passes 400m users

Dropbox today announced a new milestone: 400 million users. The company also touted there are now 50 countries around the world in which at least 1 million individuals have Dropbox accounts.

Dropbox users sync 1.2 billion files every day, create over 100,000 new shared folders and links every hour, make 4,000 edits every second, and access the service at over 8 million businesses around the world. The company also reiterated it has over 100,000 paying Dropbox for Business customers, a number it hit in December 2014 when it launched an API for enterprise developers.

“While it started off as a way to give people simple, secure access to their files anytime, anywhere, today Dropbox has become a place where people create amazing things together,” a Dropbox spokesperson told VentureBeat. “There’s a shift in how people are using our products: over a quarter of our users are using Dropbox to create, share, and collaborate on content.”

To put the milestone figure in perspective, here’s a quick timeline. Dropbox hit 100 million users in November 2012, 200 million in November 2013, and 300 million in May 2014.

In other words, Dropbox’s growth was accelerating last year, but it has slowed down again in 2015. Jumping between 200 million and 300 million took only six months. Adding the most recent 100 million, however, took 13 months.

It’s really no surprise Dropbox’s growth has slowed: Adding 100 million users every six months is not sustainable. Oh, and there’s all those pesky competitors that keep getting in the way.

Having launched in September 2008, Dropbox had a solid head start over many of today’s popular alternatives. Yet services like Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive have the obvious advantage of integration across a myriad of related services, not to mention being backed by significantly deeper pockets.

For its part, Dropbox isn’t standing still. The company is making key acquisitions in areas like mobile productivity, audio streaming, and data analytics.

Furthermore, Dropbox has partnered with Microsoft to integrate each other’s services across mobile and the Web. Dropbox has even experimented with building its tools directly into Gmail for Chrome and Microsoft Office for Windows and Mac, no partnerships required.

On top of all that, Dropbox has been building out its own features to ensure it continues to offer users more and more options. Most recently, that includes handy additions like comments and great new tools like file requests.

If that seems like a lot, keep in mind that Dropbox has more than 1,200 employees spread across 10 global offices. That’s a ratio of 333,333 users to 1 employee, which is both impressive and concerning for any company taking on the big tech giants.