The following chart compares the pricing plans ($/year) of various online storage services in case you need more than a few Gigabytes to store your photos and documents in the cloud.
Online Storage Costs – SkyDrive Most Affordable
It turns out that Windows SkyDrive offers the best value for money ($/GB/year) but if your storage requirement exceeds 100 GB, Google Drive is the way to go.
Everyone’s favorite service Dropbox looks pretty expensive at this time – they offer 100 GB space for $199/year ($2/GB) while SkyDrive charges $50 (or $.5/GB) and Google charges $60 (or $.6/GB) for the same amount of online storage.
The aggressive pricing strategy adopted by Microsoft and Google has put lot of pressure on Dropbox to lower prices and offer smaller plans. Here are some comments of Dropbox Pro users that echo a similar sentiment.
- My $99 Dropbox yearly plan just auto-renewed and I don’t know if I feel good about it in light on this weeks news. I really want to stay with Dropbox (because I think they are better), but the difference in price/space is large enough to consider switching. I hope that Dropbox responds, for their sake.
- Everyone has been complaining that Dropbox needs to lower their prices especially in light of Amazon cloud lowering their costs… I think there is a VERY high probability I will be moving to Google once it does. The price per space differential is just too high. Unless they do something, they are probably going to lose customers. I just wish they had been proactive about this BEFORE Google released their product.
- The price per space difference is significant. Enough for me to consider moving unless Dropbox lowers their pricing. I hope they do as I am a Dropbox supporter and push the service to all my friends, but with significant price difference, I can’t justify staying with Dropbox.
- I’ve been a strong supporter of Dropbox and have recommended many people to the service – especially in the early days, but with Drive coming out with those prices, Dropbox is going to have to do something with their pricing plans. I don’t want to leave Dropbox, but unless pricing is brought down a little, I will move.
- Like many other users have said, I will not renew my subscription once my current one is over unless Dropbox lowers the price significantly. The current price is simply way too much. Google Drive seems promising and good enough.
