Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is the latest company to ax unlimited cloud storage following other large storage services, including Microsoft’s OneDrive. The company announced it will no longer offer unlimited storage plans, instead opting for only two tiers.
Small businesses have been using Amazon’s storage and cloud services because of the availability it provides. It is a company with a global infrastructure and pricing models the vast majority of small businesses can afford.
What’s Replacing Amazon Unlimited Storage?
The new tiers include a 100GB storage option for $11.99 per year and 1TB for $59.99. If you are looking for additional storage, you can increase the amount at 1TB increments, also at $59.99 per TB. On the FAQ page, Amazon says this payment and storage structure is available for up to 30TB.
For current customers, the change will not take effect until their subscription expires. Once it is expired, it will be renewed with the new rates. If you have auto-renew, make sure you are aware of the cost for the amount of storage you have. That $60 price can quickly jump to hundreds of dollars if you have many terabytes.
If you don’t have auto-renew, you can go to the Manage Storage page and see how much storage you are using. Then opt-in to the plan that best suits your needs.
What About Prime Members?
If you are a Prime Member, you will still get Amazon unlimited storage for your photos along with 5GB of additional storage, such as documents or videos.
What Happens to Your Content if You Don’t Pay for the Extra Storage?
If the content you have stored is more than the free storage quota on your account, Amazon will classify the account as an ‘over-quota status.’ At this point, you can view, download, and delete content, but you won’t be able to upload anything.
Amazon is providing a 180-day grace period so you can add more storage space, or delete content to bring you within the allotted storage you are paying for. Blow is another look at the new payment tiers:
Images: Amazon
This article, “Amazon Drops Unlimited Cloud Storage Plan” was first published on Small Business Trends