Amazon has discontinued the unlimited cloud storage plan option for Amazon Drive introduced in March 2015, leaving just fixed sizes available at annual rates.
Options will include 100GB for $11.99 per year, or 1TB for $59.99 with the potential to access up to 30TB at the cost of the original $59.99 price for each one added. The original options were categorised simply as $11.99 a year for unlimited photos, or the $59.99 price tag for unlimited everything.
There is an exception to this new rule in one area, as unlimited cloud storage for photos will remain available to Amazon Prime subscribers.
Users of the scrapped option will be given a 180 day time period within which to trim their data down to size to fit one of the remaining fixed plans. Failing to meet the deadline, files will be deleted beginning with the most recent, until an acceptable size is met.
Until this action has been carried out, accounts will be put in “over-quota status” upon the expiry of the subscription. While an account holds this status, files cannot be uploaded.
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Users with over 1TB and the auto-renew setting switched off will be required to manually switch to a different plan, while those with the setting enabled and less than 1TB will be converted to the $59.99 option that spans a year.
Amazon are not alone in having opted to double back on an overarching unlimited storage plan, with cloud storage service, Bitcasa, also removing the option.
In 2015 Google released a free unlimited cloud storage option for photos soon after Amazon announced its unlimited cloud storage plan. This represents the competitive drive surrounding unlimited storage options, and their popularity among consumers.
It could be seen that Amazon no longer need to have this option available, as Amazon Web Services offers capabilities to match the original unlimited offer.
