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Guides/Post-Boxcryptor

Elba vs Boxcryptor (or: what to do now Boxcryptor is gone)

Boxcryptor was acquired by Dropbox in 2022 and wound down for individual users. If you are here because your Boxcryptor vault is stranded, this page is mostly about what to move to — including options that are not Elba.

At a glance

Elba compared with Boxcryptor
 ElbaBoxcryptor
StatusActive; MIT-licensed in 2030Discontinued for individuals (2022)
Account requiredNoYes
Designed forLocal foldersCloud-synced folders
Install requiredNoYes
Survives vendor shutdownYes — no server involvedThis is the cautionary tale
PriceOne-time, falling yearlySubscription (while it lasted)

What happened

Dropbox acquired Boxcryptor's technology in late 2022. Existing individual licences were honoured to expiry and then the consumer product wound down. Nobody's files were destroyed, but a great many people had to migrate on someone else's timetable.

It is worth being precise about the lesson: the encryption did not fail. The company's plans changed. That is a different risk, and it is one you carry with any tool whose access depends on a running service.

If you still have a Boxcryptor vault

Decrypt it while you still can, with whatever client version you have working. Move the plaintext to a machine that is offline or at least not syncing. Re-encrypt with your chosen replacement. Verify you can open the new copy before deleting anything. Then delete the plaintext deliberately, not just into the recycle bin.

What to move to

If your files live in Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive and you want the same experience: Cryptomator. It is free, open source, audited, and built for exactly that job. We will recommend it over Elba without hesitation for cloud vaults.

If you want a mounted container on a machine you control: VeraCrypt. Free, mature, and it is not going anywhere.

If what you actually want is one local folder sealed by a tool with no company attached to it: Elba.

The structural point

Boxcryptor is the reason Elba has a mortalware date. The licence commits the source to MIT on 1 January 2030 whether or not we are still here, and the program is a single HTML file that already contains its own source. There is no service to shut down, so there is nothing to strand.

That is a claim you can check rather than trust: open the file in a text editor, and watch the network tab while it runs.

How to judge whether the next tool will strand you too

Ask four questions. Does opening my files require a server to be running? Does it require an account that a company can close? Is the format documented, or the source readable, by someone other than the vendor? If the company vanished tonight, would the copy on my disk still open tomorrow morning?

Any tool that answers those well is a reasonable bet. Cryptomator answers them well. VeraCrypt answers them well. So does a plain AES-256 archive, for that matter. The tools that answered them badly are the ones people are migrating away from.

Migrating without leaving plaintext behind

The dangerous moment in any migration is the middle, when your files exist in the clear so they can be re-encrypted. Do it on a machine with sync clients paused, not in a folder that Dropbox or OneDrive is watching.

Afterwards, remember that the plaintext may survive in places you did not put it: the recycle bin, a Time Machine or File History snapshot, a thumbnail cache, an editor's recent-files list. Empty what you can, and treat the migration as a reason to change the passphrase rather than reuse the old one.

Who Elba is for

Elba is for people who got burned by a vendor decision and concluded that the fix is not a better vendor but fewer of them.

Questions people actually ask

Is Boxcryptor still available?
Not for individual users. Dropbox acquired the technology in 2022 and the consumer product was discontinued.
What is the best Boxcryptor alternative?
For cloud-synced folders, Cryptomator. For containers on your own disk, VeraCrypt. For a single local folder with no account and no installer, Elba.
Can I still decrypt my old Boxcryptor files?
Only with a working client. If you still have one running, export everything now rather than later.
Will Elba be discontinued the same way?
The program runs entirely on your machine with no server, and the licence commits the source to MIT on 1 January 2030. If we disappear, your copy keeps working.
Does Elba need a subscription?
No. One payment, and the price falls every year until the 2030 open-source date.
Can Elba read Boxcryptor files?
No. Decrypt them with Boxcryptor first, then re-seal.

Take the island

Elba is one HTML file. It runs locally in a Chromium browser, seals a folder with AES-256-GCM, never phones home, and becomes open source on 1 January 2030.

  1. €49MMXXVI· now ·
  2. €39MMXXVII2027
  3. €29MMXXVIII2028
  4. €19MMXXIX2029
  5. FreeMMXXX2030

the price falls each year · free to all 1 jan 2030

Take the island — €49
pay once · no account · nothing leaves

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