In a world where cloud storage services are a dime a dozen, it takes companies “pulling an Oprah” (‘and you get free storage, and you get free storage!’) to get users to sign on. After all, if all your data’s being saved in the cloud anyway, why does it matter which company stores it? Today, Box announced its latest incentive to grab new users (or keep the users it already has): double the storage. That’s right; instead of getting just five measly gigabytes of free storage, users of the free Personal plan will now start out with 10GB.
It’s not like Box is hurting for users, though, as it currently has 20 million, but it’s still nice to know that those of us who prefer not to pay for our cloud storage can now have twice the amount as before on Box. If you need a little bit more than 10GB of storage, Box also announced its new “Starter” plan today, which is intended for small businesses – though could be used by anyone, really. The Starter plan is $5 a month, and users will get 100GB of pooled storage and a 2GB file size limit for teams of up to 10 users to get started on Box.
“We’re focused on removing any and all barriers to cloud adoption,” Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, said in a press release. “More than ever before, the economy today is driven by information and collaboration. Whether you’re a global corporation, a small business, or a freelancer, the key to competing is being able to securely share, manage and access your content anywhere, on any device. These new plans make the cloud more accessible than ever before.”
According to Levie, we’re accessing and sharing data more than ever across a myriad of devices, and it’s estimated that there’ll be “nearly 40,000 exabytes of digital data created by 2020 (enough data to fill up 671,088,640,000 64GB gold iPhones).” When Box started in 2005, there were only 130 exabytes of data in existence.
The move to saving and sharing content in the cloud is growing, but here’s our PSA to you: Upload at your own risk, as most cloud storage services don’t offer a data guarantee.
