OneDrive team has announced that it is making changes to its OneDrive Storage plans. OneDrive is committed to make this transition as smooth as possible for its consumers. One of the reason which has forced OneDrive to make changes to its storage plan is due to misuse of the storage by some users.
OneDrive misused
OneDrive provides unlimited cloud Storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers. A small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. And this in some cases exceeded 75 TB per user or 14000 times the average. So OneDrive wants to remain focused on what the majority of Onedrive users expects – providing high-value productivity and collaboration experience – and not on extreme backup cases. Thus to remain focused and to tackle such cases, OneDrive decided to make changes to its plans which some of the users may not like.
Changes to OneDrive Plans
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No more unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal or University subscribers. These subscriptions will get 1 TB of OneDrive Storage starting now.
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100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away for new users and will be replaced by 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month starting in early 2016.
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Free OneDrive storage to be decreased from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start to roll out in early 2016.
Also the OneDrive team is taking following steps to ensure a smooth transition:
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If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and have exceeded 1 TB storage , you will be notified of the change and will be allowed to keep your increased storage for at least 12 months
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If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and find that Office 365 no longer meets your needs, a pro-rated refund will be given.
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If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
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Current customers of standalone OneDrive storage plans (such as a 100 or 200 GB plans) are not affected by these changes.
Announcing about these changes, OneDrive team further said,
“…These changes are needed to ensure that we can continue to deliver a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service. They will allow us to continue to innovate and make OneDrive the best option for people who want to be productive and do more.”
In my opinion, the free storage decrease and discontinuation of camera roll storage bonus, are too harsh – and in fact these two features were the main reasons, a normal user was choosing OneDrive. It is unfair to punish the majority, due to misuse by a fraction.
