Dropbox for Churches
Dropbox is a great cloud-based, file-sharing tool for personal use or business use. It lends itself beautifully for churches as well.
Dropbox works across multiple platforms and devices (Mac, PC, Linux, Android, iOS etc.). At a basic level, it works just like a “Documents” folder on your computer, where you drag and drop files into it. You can open files from the folder and save the updated versions. But what happens next is magical. Anything saved in your Dropbox folder is synced with your account on their servers. Once that syncing is complete, you can access that file from anywhere. You can open it across platforms and even open it from Dropbox.com.
Sharing is Caring
While great for storing and accessing personal files, the real beauty of Dropbox is in its ability to share files. You can share individual files or entire folders with other users. Drop Sunday’s sermon notes in a shared folder and your media guy now can access it to add the appropriate files to your presentation software. Those files are also conveniently stored in that same shared folder. Or, your children’s director can add curriculum to a folder that is shared with your teachers and now they all have access to those files from anywhere. There are other cloud-based church resources that can allow for more in-depth church management, and the costs and features of these can vary.
Safety is Priority One
With cloud-based software, there is always a risk of losing your information or of that information being hacked. Since Dropbox syncs the files with your main computer (or multiple computers) the chances of losing all of your files is almost zero. And they utilize the highest industry standards to protect your software from hackers. As always, it is wise not to keep super confidential information in any cloud software.
The Cost
Dropbox starts out for free. Each user starts with 2 GB of space, which will be sufficient for most users. However, for the times when your needs are greater, such as in a church that uses a lot of video. An individual Pro account (1 TB) is just $9.99 a month and the Business level solution (Unlimited) is just $15 a month per user.
Dropbox serves as a great option for churches who need to share files, especially churches with multiple staff members or multi-site churches, but is really a tool that every pastor can use regardless of staff size.