When iCloud launched and MobileMe was mercifully bludgeoned, those of us fool enough to have paid for the service were rewarded for our stupidity with an extra 20GB of free iCloud storage for a limited time. That time was extended once, but is now set to expire at the end of September according to emails that went out this week.
Here is the message from Apple on their support site.
Former MobileMe members received a complimentary storage plan after moving to iCloud between October 12, 2011, and August 1, 2012. On September 30, 2013, the complimentary iCloud storage plans will expire and will be automatically adjusted to the free 5 GB plan. If you already purchased a storage plan, no further action is required.
If you look at the support site, you will note that replacing the 20GB storage will cost you $40/year. That really isn’t such a bad price … until you think about it for a minute in terms of what you are getting for that price. Especially compared to other options.
There are more exhaustive comparisons such as the one here.
Bottom line – iCloud doesn’t compare well against Google Drive, Amazon’s Cloud Drive, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, DropBox, Box, or SugarSync (and many others). It costs more per GB of storage, offers the least interoperability and lags in terms of features even within the iOS platform. The included 5GB of storage is enough to take care of what we all need in our house, and I will continue to use other services for everything else.
What about you? Are you a MobileMe survivor? Do you plan to buy more storage from iCloud or have you already migrated elsewhere?