You can get a free $50 Amazon gift card when you sign up for Dropbox Pro today only
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Business InsiderLooking to make 2017 the year you take advantage of the cloud?
Amazon has struck a deal with Dropbox, the platform-agnostic cloud storage system with an exclusive deal.
If you buy a one-year subscription to Dropbox Pro — that gets you a full 1TB of cloud storage — Amazon will throw in a $50 gift card.
That halves the initial investment in the subscription if you're a frequent Amazon shopper. If you haven't used Dropbox, here's a primer to help you understand why this is a good deal.
A lot of people talk about "the cloud" as a nebulous thing that exists. You can keep files on it, get files from it, and even back your phone up using it. Every major tech company has a cloud solution: Apple, Google, and even Amazon all want you to use their cloud. The problem is that some of them only work, or work well, on one platform.
Dropbox is platform agnostic. That means it's available everywhere: Need files synced between a Mac and PC? Fine. Android and iOS? Easy. iOS, Android, Mac, and PC? No problem.
Here's how it works: You sign up for a Dropbox account and download their client. Dropbox lives as a folder on your computer, and anything you put into that folder is then synced to Dropbox's servers.
All you have to do to access it on any other machine is log into your account. It's a good, but flawed way to do backups of your computer. You'll still want a local backup, but keeping a copy of important documents can't hurt.
You can choose to share certain files or folders with people, which is useful if you're collaborating on a big project. All the other people will need is a generated link to that specific folder. Collaborators won't be able to see anything else you have in Dropbox.
You can get Dropbox for free, but you only have 2GB of storage. A pro account nets you 1TB — that's 500x that much. There are also pro-only features, including shared folder permissions (let some folks only view the folder's contents while others can add to it), shared link passwords, and shared link expiration dates.
Most crucially, pro users can remote wipe their Dropbox. That means if one of your devices with access gets stolen, you can set it to automatically delete Dropbox access to that machine the next time it's turned on.
If you're just getting started with cloud storage, Dropbox Pro's annual subscription fee might seem like a big investment. With Amazon's deal, though it's a lot easier to recommend.
This is a one-day-only sale, though, so if this all sounds appealing, you have to act quickly.