Boxcryptor

Boxcryptor is a Mac application that places a zero-knowledge encryption barrier between your personal files and whatever cloud storage service carries them. Every write goes through local encryption first; by the time Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive receives the data, the plaintext is already gone.

What is Boxcryptor?

Boxcryptor is a client-side encryption tool that mounts as a virtual drive on your Mac and silently encrypts every file you save there before the cloud provider's sync client can see it. The key design principle is zero-knowledge: the service has no access to your encryption keys, meaning neither a server-side breach nor a third-party data request could expose your plaintext.

A note on current status matters here: Dropbox acquired the Boxcryptor product and intellectual property in late 2022 and closed new sign-ups immediately after. No new personal or business licences can be purchased today. If you already run Boxcryptor — through a corporate deployment or a licence bought before the acquisition — the Mac client continues to function and the encryption design itself remains sound. For new users, the alternatives section below is where you should spend your time.

What does Boxcryptor do best?

Boxcryptor's headline feature was invisibility. I ran it for a year alongside Dropbox and the experience was indistinguishable from using an unencrypted folder: drag a file in, it syncs, done. Behind the scenes, a combination of strong symmetric and asymmetric encryption handled every byte without interrupting your workflow. The virtual drive approach meant you did not need to restructure your existing file layout — your normal cloud folder and the encrypted equivalent coexisted, and you could selectively apply protection only to what needed it.

• Multi-provider coverage: one app could wrap Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, iCloud, and more, all simultaneously and independently keyed.
• Filename obfuscation: an optional setting encrypted folder and file names in addition to content, so even file metadata revealed nothing to an observer.
• Team folders: shared encrypted directories let colleagues decrypt files without exchanging raw private keys — an elegant delegation model most competing tools lacked at the time.
• Cross-device continuity: companion iOS and Android apps brought the same vault to mobile without weakening the desktop encryption model.

How much does Boxcryptor cost?

Boxcryptor historically offered a free personal tier covering one cloud provider and a single device, with paid tiers unlocking unlimited providers, team collaboration, and enterprise key-management features. That pricing model is no longer active for new customers. New licensing has been unavailable since the Dropbox acquisition, which means there is no paid plan to evaluate and no free trial to start.

Existing licensees retain functionality for currently activated devices. If you are a current user wondering about renewal, be aware there is nothing to renew — licences persist until the infrastructure is eventually retired, whenever that happens.

Who should use Boxcryptor?

In its prime, Boxcryptor earned a loyal following in legal practices, healthcare environments, and any team subject to data-sovereignty regulations like GDPR or HIPAA. The combination of strong encryption, auditable key management, and a transparent Finder-level workflow made it unusually practical for compliance-sensitive work — not a security tool bolted awkwardly onto a business process, but one that disappeared into it.

The realistic audience for Boxcryptor on macOS today is organisations that deployed it before 2023 and have not yet completed a migration. If that is you, keep it running — the encryption is not compromised, just unsupported. Journalists, freelancers, and anyone considering it for a fresh setup should save the research time: the product has reached end-of-sale, and every hour spent configuring it is an hour better spent on Cryptomator.

What are the best Boxcryptor alternatives?

The standout replacement for nearly every personal Boxcryptor use case is Cryptomator — free, open-source, actively maintained, and publicly audited. The vault-in-a-cloud-folder model maps closely to what Boxcryptor did, and I moved to it the week the acquisition was announced without missing much day-to-day. For teams that need managed key infrastructure, escrow, and admin controls, Tresorit is the premium choice: think of it as an encryption-first cloud storage service rather than a wrapper layer. NordLocker sits in the consumer-friendly middle ground with a polished interface but a narrower provider list. If your concern is encrypting individual archives rather than live synced folders, VeraCrypt handles that case powerfully, though the workflow demands far more manual involvement than any of the above.