mozy

Mozy's ultra-creative users have hoarded too much room in the cloud, and now the storage provider is forced to eliminate its unlimited plans.

Apparently, the cloud is running out of room. Online backup service Mozy will no longer be offering unlimited storage plans for its Mozy Home customers – and if you’re one of those users, it’s your own fault.

“Consumers have the capacity to generate more data than was ever possible when these unlimited plans came out. Very large users of these types of media can generate multiple terabytes. But three out of four users still fit comfortably within out 50 gigabytes,” VP of product marketing Russ Stockdale told PC Mag this morning.

Mozy’s customers have become so content-creator happy that the company will also be increasing prices. It’s entry level account will tap out at 50GB for $5.99 a month, and the bump up will get you 125GB for $9.99 a month. That 10 bucks will be able to store data for up to three computers, though, where it previously would only be able to cover two PCs. You can also purchase an additional 20GB a month for $2. “We’ve seen the multi-computer phenomenon on the per-household level and we increasingly see it on the per user level. We’re trying to being the incremental cost of [backup on] those machines down,” Stockdale said.

Demand for backup storage increased 50 percent this past year, and while Mozy claims that most users stay well within 50GB, there are “power users” crowding the cloud. These types (about 10 percent of Mozy’s customers) are storing things like high-def video files, high-res photos, and massive music catalogs. According to Stockdale, you can blame these guys: “The great majority of customers are growing at manageable levels, while the heaviest users bring up the average for the entire group.”

Old customers will be able to use their plans until their contracts are up, but for everyone else the new system starts today.

Showing 12 comments

  1. SamH at 3:36am 28th June 2011 Mozy was a total waste of time and money for me, the backup process took forever, also I was disappointed with their bad customer service. I had to cancel my subscription with them .currently I am using much easier software Timeline Cloud, the set up only took 5 minutes plus they have cloud disaster recovery .I signed up for their 2 week trial and so far everything is going well .You can check them here: http://www.timelinecloud.com/
  2. Crashplan-guy at 9:48pm 15th February 2011 i was with carbonite... i moved to chrashplan in january exsample of great service.. you get 15% when switching from mozy to chrasplan you can choose to ahve Hard-drive send to you for uploading.. even when your comp crhasr you can have dvd send to your home or hardrives. so you dont hafto download like +1TB for exsample. just goto chrasplan site and read about it.. ten check out carbonite.. im sure you will pick crashplan.... everybody loves it.
  3. Todd G. at 7:18am 11th February 2011 There has been a lot of buzz the past several days about where the online backup industry is headed and whether unlimited backup is a sustainable business model. Carbonite will continue to provide consumers with unlimited backup for a flat fee because of the simplicity it provides. http://www.carbonite.com/en/online-backup-softwar...
  4. WatchMeBackupOnline at 2:12pm 6th February 2011 Carbonite is a great alternative to Mozy. Carbonite's much simpler to setup and costs roughly the same at $55/year (less than $5/month). Check out my How To video's to see how easy it is to setup Carbonite. http://watchmebackuponline.com Blair de Jong WatchMeBackupOnline.com
  5. svxdan83 at 9:56am 2nd February 2011 As a hobby, I record & produce music. I also edit video. This hobby has created around 400gb of data on my system that requires backing up. Apparently, my love of music makes me a 'bad egg'. Sorry for doing what I love, Russ.
  6. Jillian Code42 at 2:30pm 1st February 2011 CrashPlan is offering a 15% off our unlimited backup to Mozy refugees. Just go to www.CrashPlan.com/MozyOnOver
  7. spoon at 12:42pm 1st February 2011 Anything free without a limitation is going to be abused. It could have been one user uploading petabytes of information or two users with exabytes. Storage will always be a commodity as our ability to generate more data grows horizontally along side it. If anyone wants to offer free or cheap storage, the ability to accommodate the user should be projected to be exponential bursting.
  8. budmang at 12:31pm 1st February 2011 It is certainly not the fault of the users. Nor is it inevitable. While user storage increases, hard drive prices decrease. Vendors can innovate to keep prices as flat. At Backblaze, we are continuing to offer unlimited online backup for $5/month. Gleb Budman CEO, Backblaze
    1. mambo at 2:20pm 1st February 2011 Hi, Mr. Budman. Due to this decision, I'm a soon-to-be ex-Mozy user and have been looking around for a new service. Backblaze seems to be the best choice for me although I do have one issue: the 9GB file limit. The files I have that exceed 9GB are very few but very important. Are there any ways (other than the iPhoto/Aperture library bundles) around this or plans to change this limit in the future?
      1. budmang at 4:52pm 2nd February 2011 Hi Mambo, In general, yes, we periodically review this size limit. (The limit used to be 4 GB.) However, what types of files do you have that are so large? Would love to understand the use case. Thanks, Gleb
  9. WraithTDK at 12:26pm 1st February 2011 Every time off-site backup starts to seem like a viable options, harsh reality pops up. So these users signed up for unlimited accounts, and probably took MONTHS to upload that much data to the Mozy servers, and now that they've done all that, they're going to be told they have pay more. Nice. It's not the users fault that Mozy was too short-sided to expect that in a day where a cheap point-and-shoot camera can produce pictures that take up several MBs a piece, and there's more amateur-created video than professional, people were going to be needed more than 50GB of storage.
    1. ioman at 12:39pm 1st February 2011 Agreed. Tired of the bait and switch tactic these companies are using.
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