Microsoft Downgrades OneDrive Storage Plans for All Users
Microsoft announced that it plans to downgrade nearly all of its OneDrive storage accounts, which will affect nearly all users. Although he will hit some harder, others.
Generally, if a company offers you an “unlimited” amount of something, you should probably expect the company to regret it later. This is the case for Microsoft’s unlimited OneDrive storage, which the company previously provided to Office 365 subscribers. Now, citing “a small number of users” who have abused the privilege, Microsoft is limiting this plan to 1 TB instead. In any case, this is not a small limit, but it is far from the infinite TB as it was before.
However, the changes do not end there. Here are all the upcoming changes, according to Microsoft:
- We no longer plan to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 subscribers for home, personal, or college. From now on, these subscriptions will include 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
- Paid 100GB and 200GB plans will be disabled as an option for new users and will be replaced by the $ 1.99 / month 50GB plan in early 2016.
- Free OneDrive storage will drop from 15GB to 5GB for all users, current and new. The bonus for storing 15GB photographic film will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.
You will notice that, unlike the 1 TB limit for Office 365 subscribers, not all of these terms are for attackers. No one could reasonably conclude that using 15GB of storage offered to free customers would be considered abuse. Heck, most phones have more memory than that. For some reason, Microsoft is trying to save as much space as possible on its servers.
To make the transition “easier,” Microsoft has also announced the following terms to help users:
- If you are an Office 365 tenant subscriber and have more than 1 TB of storage, you will be notified of this change and will be able to keep the increased storage for at least 12 months.
- If you are an Office 365 subscription customer and find that Office 365 no longer meets your needs, you will be given a prorated refund. To find out more, visit the FAQ.
- If you use more than 5 GB of free storage, you will have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes take effect in early 2016. Alternatively, you can get a free one year Office 365 Personal subscription (credit card required) that includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
- Current customers of offline OneDrive storage plans (such as 100 GB or 200 GB plans) are not affected by these changes.
Of course, this can be a little consolation for people who rely on OneDrive. For example, limiting free users to 5GB of storage would be rough right now. This limit is unlikely to become easier in a year. However, it is still beneficial that Microsoft gives users enough time to make changes before their data is locked and removed from Microsoft’s servers.
OneDrive storage plans are changing in the pursuit of productivity and collaboration | OneDrive Blog via Ghacks