Apple has been facing stiff competition from competitors as far as cloud storage is concerned and it seems that Cupertino isn’t going to let that thorn prickle it any longer with a set of new storage plans catering both consumers and developers.
If we look back at the old iCloud storage plans, the basic free tier started off at 5GB storage, but anyone looking for an additional 5GB storage would need to shell out $20 per year. Bump that up to 20GB and users were required to pay $40 annually.
The maximum storage one could get was 50GB and that too for a whopping $100 a year.
Other cloud storage companies didn’t even bother with low storage options and provided 100GB storage for $99.00 in case of Dropbox or $23.88 in case of Google Drive.
Ready for more storage, pay Dropbox $199 annually and you will get 200GB storage while Google was far too giving at 1TB of storage for just $119.88.
Apple iCloud lost count of its competitors who were offering much more storage at relatively low prices, but it seems that Tim Cook had enough of that.
With new pricing the iCloud is back with a bang and consumers are in for a treat if compared with previous iCloud pricing options.
The basic tier of 5GB still remains free, but if you need 20GB you only need to pay $0.99 per month and for 200GB you only need to shell out $3.99 a month – definitely competitive as far as Dropbox or Box is concerned.
Apple will also be offering a 1TB option, but it is yet to reveal its pricing, but we believe it won’t be that high based on its pricing for 20GB and 200GB storage plans.
Developers who were feeling neglected are also up for a treat with new storage and data transfer plans that effectively are free.
Welcome the CloudKit Storage and Data transfers that allow app developers to start off at 5GB storage for assets and 50MB for database. The basic tier allows 25MB/day transfer for assets and 250KB/day for database.
The impressive bit is that with each new user, the storage and data transfer grows: 100MB for assets, 1MB for database, 0.5MB/user for assets and 5KB/user for database.
Under CloudKit, storage is free for up to 1PB for assets, 10TB for database, and data transfer is free up to 5TB/day for assets and 50GB/day for database.
Comparing these options with plans provided by other storage vendors, developers will be able to save tens of thousands of dollars if they stick with Apple CloudKit.
There are a couple of things that developers need to keep in mind though: iCloud is tied to iOS and so they would either need to create apps exclusively for the platform or need to build their apps with multiple storage backend option in mind.
Those storage prices are indeed competitive. So competitive that it’s looking like at this point, the only place Dropbox and Box have to turn to is the realm of the enterprise. So far, not a lot of big players here–SugarSync, DriveHQ, and SpiderOak are a few that are trying to make it, but the problem is, for Dropbox/Box, that those other companies are so far ahead in the enterprise race. Obviously, that problem doesn’t exist for large, wealthy companies, and we see strategies like what Apple is doing here to try to take over a market, even if they did jump late in the game. I just wonder, will Dropbox/Box survive long enough to keep the focus of the Apple’s and Google’s of the world off the enterprise so that those companies can survive. Because with Google and Microsoft already having slashed prices, and Apple now also looking to revamp their cloud offering and the price for it, it may not be long till the giants turn their attention towards the true enterprise.