OneDrive reduces its storage plans

The OneDrive team has just announced changes that won't cause too much joy among its users. This is thereduction of space in their storage plans , which until today were some of the most generous on the market, offering much lower prices than Dropbox, and slightly more convenient than those of Google Drive.

The reason for these changes, according to Microsoft, is that some people may have used the unlimited space plan inappropriately, making backups of many PCs and saving entire collections of movies and series that could weigh 75 TB (14.000 times more space than the average user uses).

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In Redmond they affirm that the objective of OneDrive is not to offer support for those scenarios, but to focus on experiences of productivity and collaboration for the day to day. Therefore, starting in 2016, the 1 TB limit for Office 365 subscribers will be returned to Payment plans for 100 and 200 GB are also eliminated, which will be replaced by a 50 GB plan at $1.99 per month, also starting in 2016."

Free space is reduced from 15 GB to 5 GB, and the 15 GB bonus for saving camera photos is removed.

So far, the new OneDrive policy can be understood, even if one does not fully share it. However, they also remove the 15 GB bonus to back up camera photos, which until now was offered free to Windows Phone, iOS users and Android to enable photo backup in OneDrive mobile apps.And what's worse, they reduce the free space from 15 GB to just 5 GB.

These last two measures seem unjustified to me, since clearly the users with these space quotas have not been using OneDrive to store all the seasons of The Simpsons. What's worse, the camera bonus and more free space were important features that set OneDrive apart from competitors like Dropbox (and even allowed it to gain ground against it).

The only way they could compensate for this, in my opinion, would be by offering a leap forward in performance and stability, an aspect where a Today OneDrive lags far behind Dropbox. Perhaps by reducing the space they offer they can improve more on that level.

Although another reading that can be made of this is that Microsoft wants to push more people to contract Office 365, since after these changes the Office plan + 1 TB of space remains the only modality attractive within OneDrive.

Making the transition to new plans less painful

Microsoft's announcement is bad by all accounts, but at least the company is offering some measures to compensate users affected by the reduced space:

• Office 365 users with unlimited space who have used more than 1TB will be notified and can keep their additional space for 12 more months.
• Office 365 users who decide to cancel their subscription after this announcement will be eligible for a refund.
• Free plan users who have used more than 5 GB will receive a free 1-year subscription to Office 365 Personal (credit card required to receive promotion). If they do not agree to this, they will still be able to access all of their files for 1 more year.
• "Users of 100 or 200 GB plans will be able to keep these plans (it is not specified for how long, it only says that they will not be affected by these changes)."

What do you think of these changes?Would you still use OneDrive despite this?

Via | OneDrive Blog