Box Problems & Issues

Every business plan, from Business Starter to Enterprise Advanced, requires at least 3 paid seats. Monthly billing costs about a third more than annual: Business is $20 vs $15 per user/month, Business Plus $33 vs $25, Enterprise $47 vs $35, and Enterprise Plus (about $50) is sold only on annual billing. Small teams and solo users pay for seats they don't need.

A recurring Trustpilot theme in 2025-2026: charges after cancellation, annual renewals users didn't expect, duplicate billing, and refund requests denied or needing repeated escalation. Box cancels at the end of the paid term and points refund requests to its cancellation team rather than issuing automatic pro-rata refunds.

Box's pricing page lists external collaborators on the Business plan as pay-per-collaborator. Unlimited external collaborators start at Business Plus ($25-33 per user/month). Teams that share with many clients or contractors can be pushed up a tier.

In a long Box Community thread (2023-2024), files showed up on box.com right away but took 30 minutes to several hours, sometimes more than a day, to reach Box Drive on other computers. This happened even with small test files, on different networks, and on the latest Drive version. Other users report large offline folders taking days to sync and files being skipped.

Users report web uploads failing with a generic 'something went wrong' error, and files over a few hundred MB failing through the desktop app while the browser works. Box's own troubleshooting points to browser cache, extensions, firewalls, proxies, VPNs and file names. Box says it does not throttle bandwidth, but it processes each file after upload.

Box Drive's cache is meant to stay under 50% of free space or 25 GB, but users report caches of 200 GB or more. The cache location can't be moved. Offline folders don't count toward the cap. The reliable way to clear the cache is to log out of Box Drive, which also removes offline content.

Box Drive marks files it can't sync as problem items. Common causes are names with characters Windows or macOS reject, unsupported file types (Outlook PST, QuickBooks, Mac packages, Google Docs), full local disks, and the folder owner's quota. Users often only notice when a red exclamation icon appears or when collaborators can't see a file. Mac users also report zero-byte uploads and having to log in again repeatedly.

Recent Trustpilot reviews keep describing slow or unhelpful replies, chatbot loops, long phone waits, and ticket forms that don't match the problem. Several say real human help is mostly reserved for higher-priced plans. On the Box Community forum, many sync threads are marked 'answered' with only generic advice.

Users report being locked out, accounts disabled or reactivated unexpectedly, failing password resets, and 2-step verification codes that arrive late, show as expired, or trigger a 'too many attempts' lock. Getting back in usually requires a support ticket.

Box is retiring Box Sync in December 2026. After that, there are no bug or security fixes. Users must move to Box Drive, which streams files on demand instead of keeping a full local copy. Folders needed offline have to be marked again in Drive. Universities including Cornell, UW-Madison and Tufts are migrating their users.

Per-file upload caps depend on plan: 250 MB (free), 2 GB (Business Starter), 5 GB (Personal Pro, Business), 15 GB (Business Plus), 50 GB (Enterprise), 150 GB (Enterprise Plus), 500 GB (Enterprise Advanced). Shared folders use the folder owner's limit, so a paid user uploading into a free user's folder is capped at 250 MB. The mobile app and Box Sync cap at 15 GB, and email uploads at 50 MB.

Reviewers say people receiving a Box link are sometimes forced to create an account, then nudged toward paid plans. Collaboration invites can stay stuck as pending or hit seat-limit errors. Shared links also break when the owner changes link access or the owner's account is deactivated.

Business Plus and other 'unlimited' customers report 'Account storage limit reached' errors. Usually the cause is a quota set by their admin, or a shared folder owned by a free 10 GB account, since storage counts against the folder owner. Business Starter is not unlimited: it has 100 GB and a 10-user cap.

Box keeps 1 version per file on the free plan, 10 on Personal Pro, 25 on Business Starter, 50 on Business and Business Plus, 100 on Enterprise, and unlimited only on Enterprise Plus and above. Teams that need long audit trails have to buy the top tiers.

Box desktop apps support only Windows and macOS. Box community moderators have said a Linux client is not on the roadmap. Linux users are limited to the web app or workarounds such as a Windows virtual machine.