When Microsoft promoted OneDrive along with the Windows Phone, 15 GB of Free OneDrive Storage was offers for users, including new customers. It also included 15 GB of camera roll storage bonus which was a key for many as Windows Phone offers native backup for photographs. Today, Microsoft has taken a U-turn for all these offers.
In an official blog post from OneDrive blog, Microsoft has listed the following changes:
- No unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers. Starting now, those subscriptions will include 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
- 100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away as an option for new users and will be replaced with a 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month in early 2016.
- Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.
As per Microsoft analysis, a small number of users backed up many PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average.
While this looks legit, Microsoft seems to have fallen in a pit-hole for its own offer. It may not impact those heavy users, but it’s definitely going to hit on the consumers which were not making excessive usage of those offers. It would have been nice if Microsoft could have done it differently but that is how it goes from 2016. So how is the transition taking place?
- Office 365 consumer subscriber in excess of 1 TB, you will be notified of this change and will be able to keep your increased storage for at least 12 months.
- If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and find that Office 365 no longer meets your needs, a pro-rated refund will be given.
- If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription (credit card required), which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
- Current customers of standalone OneDrive storage plans (such as a 100 or 200 GB plans) are not affected by these changes.
What do you think of these changes? let us know in the comments.