Amazon Killing Off its $60/Year Plan for Unlimited Storage

Amazon is tightening its belt when it comes to its cloud data storage services. The company has just announced that its $60 a year plan for unlimited data storage is being abruptly discontinued. For that same rate, you’ll now only be able to store 1TB of data.

Photographers were excited back in early 2015 when Amazon announced a $12/year plan for unlimited photo storage and $60/year for unlimited storage of any type of file. What’s more, Amazon bundled the unlimited photo storage into its $99/year Prime subscription, giving yet another nice perk to all Prime customers.

But perhaps both data storage plans were unsustainable, or perhaps Amazon is working hard to increase its profits, because now both original subscription options are discontinued. Amazon already ended its $12/year unlimited photo storage in late 2016, and now the $60/year data plan is next.

“Amazon is now providing options for customers to choose the storage plan that is right for them,” the company writes. “Amazon will no longer offer an unlimited storage plan.”

So instead of $60 for a year of unlimited storage, you’ll now have options for $12 for 100GB, $60 for 1TB, and up to 30TB total for an extra $60 for each terabyte.

If you’re a Prime subscriber and a photographer who uses Amazon for unlimited photo storage, don’t be alarmed: your free unlimited photo storage isn’t going anywhere — the latest changes only affect people who are paying individual plans for Amazon cloud storage.

These subscription plan changes took effect this week. If you’re already subscribed to an unlimited storage plan, you’ll be able to keep your data until your plan expires. If you’re storing more than 1TB of data with your plan, you’ll need to start paying more on your next billing cycle, or Amazon will flag your account as being “over-quota.” After a 180-day grace period, your data will be deleted if you don’t reduce your storage use yourself or start paying more for your storage.

If you have your entire photo archive of JPEG and RAW files stored on Amazon’s old $60 plan, the $99 Prime membership is probably looking a lot more attractive to you now — and that’s likely Amazon’s goal all along.