Dropbox has announced a transition from its unlimited storage policy to a metered storage system for its Advanced plan. This decision comes in light of a surge in unconventional usage of the service.
The company observed that these users often consumed “thousands of times more storage than our genuine business customers,” potentially compromising the experience for all users. While Dropbox had always intended the Advanced plan to provide as much storage as necessary for legitimate business operations, the misuse of this policy led to the decision to implement a metered model.
As stated in the official announcement from Dropbox, “a growing number of customers were buying Advanced subscriptions not to run a business or organization, but instead for purposes like crypto and Chia mining, unrelated individuals pooling storage for personal use cases, or even instances of reselling storage.”
Starting immediately, new customers purchasing the Dropbox Advanced plan with three active licenses will be allocated 15TB of shared cloud storage. For every additional active license, 5TB of storage will be added. Dropbox emphasized that this amount of storage can accommodate approximately “100 million documents, 4 million photos or 7500 hours of HD video.“
For current users, over 99% of whom utilize less than 35TB of storage per license, there will be minimal disruption. These customers will retain their existing storage amount and receive an additional 5TB of pooled storage for five years without any increase in pricing. However, for the less than 1% of users consuming 35TB or more per license, Dropbox has committed to engaging in discussions to find the best storage solutions for their needs. These high-volume users will be able to maintain their current storage levels and gain an extra 5TB of pooled storage for one year, capped at a total of 1,000TB.
Microsoft Made a Similar Move with OneDrive
Way back in 2014, Microsoft promised unlimited OneDrive storage to all Office 365 subscribers. Just a few months later, the company went back on that commitment.
According to Microsoft, the main reason behind this change of heart was “A small number of users,” who “backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings.” In fact, “In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average.”
Additional Storage Options
Dropbox will introduce storage add-ons for customers requiring more space. Starting September 18 for new customers and November 1 for existing ones, these add-ons will be priced at $10/month for 1TB on a monthly payment plan or $8/month if paid annually.
The company will begin transitioning existing customers to the new policy on November 1. All affected users will receive a notification at least 30 days prior to their scheduled migration date.
Last Updated on November 8, 2024 11:47 am CET
