Dropbox Inc., a provider of online data storage, is ending its unlimited option, saying a small handful of customers were using massive amounts of resources that had the potential to degrade the cloud service for the rest of its clients.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s highest-tier \u201call the space you need\u201d storage plan will be capped at about 5 terabytes per user for new customers, the company said in a blog post shared with Bloomberg to be released Thursday.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s enough space to save about 33 million documents, Dropbox said.<\/p>\n
While the plan was designed for businesses, some clients were instead using it for cryptocurrency mining, pooling storage with strangers, or re-selling the cloud service, Dropbox said.<\/p>\n
These uses \u201cfrequently consume thousands of times more storage than our genuine business customers, which risks creating an unreliable experience for all of our customers,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n
With more than 18 million paying users, Dropbox is one of the best-known companies in the cloud storage industry and reported $2.5 billion in annual recurring revenue during its fiscal-second quarter earnings on 3 August.<\/p>\n
The company has worked to expand beyond storage with document management services and video-specific tools.<\/p>\n
The change follows Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google removing \u201cas much storage as you need\u201d product branding for its highest-tier Workspace plan in May,\u00a0according to copies of its website hosted on the Wayback Machine<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Customers have posted on forums about\u00a0being told\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>they had exceeded storage limits and needed to pay for\u00a0additional capacity<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Some discussed moving\u00a0to Dropbox<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0after receiving such warnings.<\/p>\n A Google spokesperson said the company began rolling out \u201cpooled storage\u201d for customers last year, and those using over 80% of their plan\u2019s limit will be notified.<\/p>\n While storage policies weren\u2019t changed in May, language was updated to \u201cclarify that customers on these plans receive 5 TB of Drive Secure cloud storage per user with the ability to request more,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Dropbox said it saw a surge of unintended uses the past few months \u201cin the wake of other services making similar policy changes.\u201d<\/p>\n The company\u2019s server capacity faced increased pressure in recent weeks, said a person familiar with the issue who asked not to be named discussing internal matters.<\/p>\n Under Dropbox\u2019s new plan, each additional terabyte will cost $8 per month compared with the previous \u201cas much space as needed\u201d plan at $24 per month.<\/p>\n Current users with less than 35 terabytes \u2014 more than 99% of top-tier plan customers \u2014 will be able to keep their current storage at the same price for five years, the company said.<\/p>\n Those exceeding will be contacted \u201cto discuss a range of options.\u201d<\/p>\n Across the economy, more people and businesses rely on internet-based services to store and manage their files.<\/p>\n Industry analyst IDC said that spending on cloud storage is expected to jump 25% this year to $59.9 billion, and hit $127.8 billion in 2027.<\/p>\n For its infrastructure customers, Google\u00a0increased the cost<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>of cloud storage last year. Apple Inc. also recently raised cloud storage prices for customers in the UK.<\/p>\n Amazon.com Inc. once offered an unlimited storage plan, before\u00a0ending it<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in 2017.<\/p>\n Microsoft Corp. made a\u00a0similar move<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in 2015. Box Inc., another provider,\u00a0still advertises<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u201cunlimited storage\u201d for its enterprise plans.<\/p>\n \u201cWe recognize that changing an \u2018all the space you need\u2019 policy will be disappointing for some customers,\u201d Dropbox said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we\u2018re unable to offer this option going forward, our goal is to ensure that the vast majority of teams on our Advanced plan experience no disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n While the plan was designed for businesses, some clients were instead using it for cryptocurrency mining, pooling storage with strangers, or re-selling the cloud service, Dropbox said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":505436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2882,1922,167],"class_list":["post-505434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hosting","tag-cloud-storage","tag-dropbox","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":505438,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505434\/revisions\/505438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: Cloud accounting services for South African businesses<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"