Microsoft Slashes OneDrive Storage Allotments
by Brett Howse on November 3, 2015 5:05 PM EST- Posted in
- Cloud Computing
- Microsoft
- OneDrive
Microsoft’s OneDrive team put up a blog post today outlining some changes coming to OneDrive, and the news is not good for pretty much anyone using the service. Just barely a year after announcing that OneDrive would offer unlimited storage for subscribers to Office 365 consumer and business, the Redmond company has decided to back out on that commitment. Here are the changes.
First, subscribers to Office 365 consumer will have their storage allotment reduced from unlimited to 1 TB. This is clearly a significant downgrade, and any users who are using more than 1 TB will be notified, and their data will be kept for “over 12 months” before it is reduced. Microsoft is attributing this to some users gobbling up excessive storage, with an example given of a single user having 75 TB of cloud storage used up. The reduction will mean that Office 365 Personal will be 1 TB, and Office 365 Home will be 1 TB for up to five people, or 5 TB total. If you are over the 1 TB limit though, tough luck. Microsoft will not be offering tiers higher than 1 TB even at an increased cost.
The bad news doesn’t stop there though. The paid 100 GB and 200 GB tiers are now gone, and have been replaced with a single 50 GB offering for $1.99 per month. So you get half the storage now for the same price. Previously the 100 GB plan was $2 per month and the 200 GB option was $4 per month. This seriously reduces the number of tiers, and you now go from free, to 50 GB, to 1 TB, with no other options anywhere else.
And, they may as well sweeten the pot with even more reductions. The free tier, which originally started at 25 GB, and was then reduced to 5 GB, and increased again to 15 GB, is once again reduced to 5 GB. They are now in-line with what Apple offers with iCloud, but Google Drive is still 15 GB for free. This is a massive reduction, and to add more salt to the wound, anyone who had been using the extra 15 GB free for using the camera roll feature of OneDrive will also have that removed.
This makes the new OneDrive look like this:
Microsoft OneDrive | |||||
Storage Allotments | Free Tier | Paid Tier 1 | Paid Tier 2 | Office 365 Consumer | |
Current Allotment | 15 GB + 15 GB Camera Roll | 100 GB for $2/month | 200 GB for $4/month | Unlimited Storage | |
New Allotment | 5 GB | 50 GB for $2/month | No second tier | 1 TB |
Clearly, this is a massive reduction in service for most users. Microsoft is trying to lay the blame on several users with excessive amounts of cloud storage use, but that is likely not the motivating factor. They could easily have dealt with these users on an individual basis without the massive reductions in service, and paid users abusing the paid system should not affect the free system.
There is more information in the blog post which I would guess was posted accidentally. Microsoft says that the 75 TB user was using “14,000 times the average” which means that the average allotment of OneDrive use is just 5 GB of storage, despite paying for unlimited.
So there are a lot of use cases to be addressed. As I already mentioned, if you are over 1 TB of OneDrive, you will be notified and your data will be kept for at least 12 months before it is cleared out. If OneDrive is no longer what you want to use, you can apply for a pro-rated refund of your subscription. If you are currently subscribing to the 100 GB and 200 GB plans, there are no changes, and any changes will only affect new subscribers. If you are using the free tier, and are over the 5 GB limit that will be imposed, you will receive a free year of Office 365 personal and the 1 TB allotment that comes with it, assuming you provide a credit card. If you don’t want to provide a credit card, your data will be kept for at least 12 months as well.
Microsoft is going to implement these changes in early 2016. OneDrive is still one of the best prices for 1 TB, but these kinds of wholesale changes to the product are going to have ripple effects for some time to come. If you were using just the free tier, there are certainly other solutions which offer more storage at no cost now.
Source: OneDrive Blog
115 Comments
View All Comments
nils_ - Thursday, November 5, 2015 - link
That pretty much renders the services useless for anyone who stores any data that is confidential.crimson117 - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
The 1TB limit is pretty reasonable, but the other reductions are just wrong. Makes me wonder whether Microsoft has bitten off more than it can chew in the cloud storage product space.DanNeely - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
There has to be more to the story. While 1 TB as the top tier is plenty for the vast majority of customers and $60/year for the cheapest O365 tier is half of what Google's currently asking for 1TB ($10/mo or 120/year); that some users would abuse the hell out of any completely unlimited tier should have been obvious when they set it up. The decision to either eat the loss from them for marketing reasons or hide an abuse clause in the fine print should've been done then too.Not offering a paid tier above 1 TB is inexplicable. Yes most customers who need that much online storage are probably medium+ sized business customers and should be steered to Azure Storage (priced per GB used at an effective starting price of $24/tb/mo for 3x replication); but not all of them are.
Beyond that, forcing customers at medium size plans to either cut back on their storage or pay more is insane in a market where we've all been accustomed to getting more space for our dollar every year or so as competition pushes prices down to match cheaper storage. They couldn't've done a better job of writing their competitors FUD for them if they tried.
keitaro - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
The worst part is that the reduction affects the free users like myself. I personally utilize the 15GB allotment and the bonus 15GB from camera roll. Personally this is the best free deal for online storage for anyone with a smartphone and/or tablet. Google may offer 15GB up front but having double the amount at OneDrive is hard to beat. And Dropbox can't even hold a candle with their limited 2GB minimum start.I wonder how long MS can hold on to this ridiculous concept until they revert free capacity to 15+15. Because if they don't, I am removing my photos and videos from their service and placing them in cold storage.
ImSpartacus - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
A lot of people have free dropbox accounts with 16+gb of storage. I'd look into that. There's got to be some promotions.From all of the promotions in past years, I think mine is 26gb.
Samus - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
I'm worried about what's going to happen to all my "promoted" GB's of OneDrive storage I've accrued over the years from referrals, promotions and one-time services. I remember I received something like a 5GB bonus for signing up for camera roll years ago, then another 10GB during an XBOX media promotion, then a bonus from adding a Windows Phone, another bonus from a Surface 2, and so on. I'm at 46GB right now of available storage. I'm only using 15GB. I'm just waiting for the day I sign in and I have like 18GB or some BS with 3GB free...K_Space - Thursday, November 5, 2015 - link
You bet you will! Between the number of Samsung and HTC phones I owned (contract renewal every year) I amassed approx 45Gb in promotional storage. By last year it got reduced to 9Gb. What happened? I just moved it all. This is exactly what's going to happen to OneDrive free users who may get hit by the new ceiling.Morawka - Thursday, November 5, 2015 - link
you have to be a salesman for dropbox to get that much free space. Spamming referral links on your Facebook and Twitter feed, or creating a bunch of fake emails, and then referring yourself.it's just not worth the time and effort when most people already need a word processor and a spreadsheet. the average joe now buys office 365 not for the apps, but for the storage.
Murloc - Thursday, November 5, 2015 - link
those promotions only give you temporary space so you're back to square one at some point.University students get lots of free space because of their yearly challenge.
lmcd - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
Already posted but agreed, and this ruins my setup. I took the bait and put my music on OneDrive, and Microsoft's going to make me regret it.