Bitcasa had a change in leadership back in September and looks like that change is bringing some BIG changes to Bitcasa, today they announced new plans and pricing. Here is a breakdown of what has changed.
What is gone is the $99.00/year for infinite storage. To get infinite storage now the price tag has jumped to $999.00/year! The good news, existing users have been grandfathered in, but as we all know those grandfather clauses tend to be forgotten about eventually. Not only has the price jumped dramatically for infinite storage now it only allows for 5 devices.
The new plans are Premium and Pro. The Premium plan is only $10.00/month or $99.00/year (the price the old infinite plan was) but now only include 1TB of storage and only 5 devices. The Pro plan is $49.00/month or $499.00/year and offers 5TB of storage with up to 5 devices.
As I mentioned existing users that have paid for the previous $99.00/year Infinite plan are going to be grandfathered in. Here are some details about that from the blog post.
Commitment to Customers
For our existing customers here’s a breakdown of how the changes apply to you:
Customers who have already signed up and paid for our Infinite plan (monthly or annual) will remain on that pricing plan.
Customers on the free plan will keep their 10GB quota and can also invite friends to get an extra 15GB extra space (25GB total!).
If you’re currently a free user and wish to upgrade, you will need to choose a plan that suits your needs on the new pricing plans.
If you want to cancel or change your plan from monthly to annual, etc. you will need to transition to the new pricing plans.
Any new offerings, such as our upcoming Linux client, will also be on the new pricing plans.
Call me skeptical about this but I suspect existing customers will eventually have to leave the $99.00/year Infinite plan just like Mozy unlimited users did when Mozy changed plans.
Along with the new prices they have also announced today the Bitcasa Secure Storage API. This is good news for Bitcasa users, if there are any new customers that is. Existing customers should get access to the new API but for who knows how long.
You can watch Bitcasa’s new CEO Brian Taptich talk about the new plans and changes.
Personally, I don’t think he should be proud to announce this. He should be embarrassed.
I have to say I am disappointed in Bitcasa. I had high hopes that they could be the next big thing, but with the new plans and limits on devices they have over priced their service as a backup solution considering Backblaze, Carbonite and others that are still unlimited are just cheaper and better for backup. As a storage service they are slightly better than Dropbox for size but the limits on devices seriously restricts how useful the service is.
Not only has Bitcasa out priced their infinite service compared to other services, at $99.00/month you could easily order a brand new drive from Amazon, like the Western Digital My Book 2TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Security, Local and Cloud Backup and build your own infinite cloud using tools like BitTorrent Sync or other personal cloud servers.
Obviously this announcement means I need to fix the review and a few other pages here at Cloud Storage Buzz, including the Dropbox vs. Bitcasa post which I suspect Bitcasa has now just lost.
So long Bitcasa it was nice knowing you.
Want to know more about Bitcasa? Read our complete Bitcasa review for more information.
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