Box File Request creates a branded upload page that writes into a Box folder you own. Senders need no Box account. Unlike Dropbox's equivalent, it is not available on a free personal plan.
How to create a file request in Box
- 01Open the Box folder you want uploads to land in.
- 02Choose "File Request" from the folder menu.
- 03Set the title and description senders will read, and add any custom fields you need answered alongside the files.
- 04Adjust the appearance if you want the page to carry your own branding rather than Box's.
- 05Set an expiry date if the request should stop accepting files on its own, then copy the link.
What Box does better than the others
The intake form. Dropbox gives senders a name and email field; OneDrive gives them a name. Box lets you define the questions, which means you can collect a project code, a document type, or a signed-off checkbox at the moment of upload rather than chasing it in a follow-up email. It also lets the page carry your branding, which matters if the link goes to clients who should not be looking at another vendor's logo mid-project.
What it costs to get there
File Request is a business-tier feature. If you already run on Box, that is not a new cost and the feature is one of the better reasons to stay. If you do not, adopting Box purely to collect files means paying for a full content platform to solve an intake problem — and it puts your incoming files in a third system, separate from both your email and wherever your team actually works.
Where it stops fitting
If your working files live in Google Workspace, a Box file request delivers every submission into a platform you then have to move it out of. The better the intake form, the more annoying this gets: you have captured structured answers about each file, and then you copy the file into Drive by hand and leave the structure behind in Box.
The Google Drive alternative
Drive File Request is the closest match to what Box does — custom questions, a link that expires, a page senders cannot use to browse your files — with uploads landing in your own Google Drive and no separate content platform to buy. Answers to your custom questions can route uploads into subfolders automatically, so the structure you collect is the structure you get in Drive.
| Box File Request | Drive File RequestNative | |
|---|---|---|
| Files land in | Your Box account | Your Google Drive |
| Plan required | Business plans | Free trial, then Pro |
| Sender needs an account | No | No |
| Custom questions before upload | Yes | Yes |
| Routes uploads into subfolders by answer | No | Yes |
| Password-protected link | Yes | Yes |
| Expiry date | Yes | Yes |
| Native Google Drive integration | No | Yes |
Pricing is here. The equivalent write-ups for the other platforms are Dropbox file requests and OneDrive request files.