Amazon customers are used to a lot of services for a moderate fee, but one of the best deals has just been killed: The unlimited data storage deal. The unlimited storage on Amazon Drive was introduced in 2015, but as of June the 8th, the deal is no more. From now on, users will only get 1TB storage for the same price.
The Old and the new Amazon Drive Deals
Up until now, customers could store as much data as they liked on for just $60 a year. If you only needed photo storage, then you could do it for as little as $12 a year. A great price, but no more. Now, 100GB will cost you $11.99 a year while 1TB will cost you $60. Each additional TB of data will cost you another $60 with a maximum storage of 30TB in total.
That is a substantial change to the plan and there is probably more than one user out there wondering what they should do next.
Existing Unlimited Plans are Honoured
There are a few good pieces of news in all of this, or at the very least, they aren’t totally bad. Existing unlimited deals will be honoured until they run out. Those with Amazon Prime membership will also retain their unlimited photo storage, just as anyone who signs up for Amazon Drive will get their 5GB free.
If you’re a current unlimited customer and don’t want to continue your data plan, then you’ll have 180 days to download or delete your data. After that period, Amazon will start deleting content for you.
Be Aware of Auto-Renewal
If you’re a customer right now, then you need to be aware of your renewal settings. Upon a renewal, you’ll be billed by the new rules which are $60 per 1TB of data. For those with a lot of data stored, this change can turn into quite the bill.
The Alternatives
So what are your alternatives? First of all, there is no shortage of cloud service providers. You’ll also find services offering unlimited storage or “pay for what you actually use” data plans. So that is one option. Another would be to simply store your data yourself.
Most routers have USB ports, cloud services, and sharing functions as well as mobile companion apps. It only requires a one-time purchase of a USB hard disk and 2 minutes of setup. A more expensive, but also a more comprehensive solution is the use of a NAS (Network Attached Storage). Whether you pick a QNAP, Synology, ASUSTOR, or Thecus NAS, they all offer personal cloud options. It is a one-time purchase after which it’s free to use. It’s also very easy to set up and use.
When we considering that Amazon wants $60 for 1TB storage, then the choice is easy in my book. Purchasing hard drives with the same capacity will cost you less and they’re yours for life. And you remain in control of your data, not a large corporation.
