OneDrive with its unlimited cloud storage for Office 365 subscribers was a irresistible offer for users, with many other cloud service providers taking up the competition and offering better storage space for cheaper rates Microsoft has decided to end the unlimited OneDrive Storage plan. The other plans are being changed as well, Microsoft is claiming abuse from its users as the reason for this change.
With other competitors like Google offering 15GB of free storage and selling 1TB for $10 per month along with Apple offering 5GB free and 50GB for 1$ per month. The best deal of all is from Amazon which allows unlimited photo storage for $12 per year and $100 per year Prime membership giving unlimited storage. Microsoft going ahead with removing the unlimited plan and decreasing the capacity of the other plans surely will take away the edge it had over its competitors.
The changed plans are as follows:
- The earlier unlimited plan is now restricted to 1TB for Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers.
- The paid plans for new users which were 100GB and 200GB has been changed to 50GB for $1.99 per month from early 2016.
- The worst hit will be the Free OneDrive storage option which is being decreased from 15GB to 1GB along with the 15GB camera roll storage bonus which was available earlier being discontinued.
If you are an Office 365 consumer and are having more than 1TB size of files stored in OneDrive you will be notified of the change and will be allowed to store files for up to 12 months. You will be getting a refund in case you choose to stop using the services. the same is seen in case of the free storage plan, if your files are more than 5GB you will be given 12 months of time which starts from early 2016.
Microsoft has said that there are users who have uploaded more than 75TB worth of data which is a whooping 14,000 times the average which include stuff like movie collections, recorded videos, PC backups, Game files etc, leading to this decision. Whatever maybe the reason making such drastic drop is storage space will take away a lot of customers from Microsoft which is making it hard for itself in this competitive environment.
The new changes will start taking effect from Early 2016 and with the time of 12 months given to existing users who have exceeded the limit, it seems like Microsoft is giving a time frame to shift to other Cloud Storage service providers. Seems like Microsoft is also going the Apple way by capping things and making users pay for more.
Source: blog.onedrive.com
