A new survey confirms what we’ve known all along: Apple’s stinginess in terms of iCloud storage is pushing people into paid upgrades.
When you set up iCloud, Apple gives you a paltry five gigabytes of free storage. That’s not enough to back up an average iPhone, let alone sync photos and videos people take. Small wonder people buy iCloud storage upgrades because what other choice do they have? Backing up their iPhone manually using… a computer and a cable? While Apple’s competitors are more generous regarding cloud storage, they don’t enjoy the prime placement and integration like iCloud.
Apple’s stubborn refusal to increase the free iCloud storage is such a cheap strategy, but it’s worked. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) has discovered that iCloud is by far the most popular subscription service from Apple, with about two-thirds of its customers in the United States paying for iCloud storage. This pales in comparison with the percentage of US iPhone owners that subscribe to Apple Music (42 percent), Apple TV+ (32 percent) and AppleCare (17 percent).
“Paid iCloud storage has almost no competition and is well-integrated across Apple devices,” CIRP noted. “iPhone users are prompted to subscribe when their backup and storage of photos and other data crosses the free to paid capacity threshold.”
Apple’s iCloud+ storage plans and pricing
Since its debut in 2011, iCloud has offered five gigabytes of free storage on servers per each Apple ID account. Back in 2011, you could do a lot with five gigabytes, but not anymore. But hey, you can always purchase more storage! Apple will happily upsell you to an iCloud+ plan with 50GB, 200GB, 2TB, 6TB or 12TB of storage for a monthly subscription of $1, $3, $10, $30 or $60, respectively.
You can use iCloud storage for device backups, syncing Messages, storing full-resolution images, videos, and other items from your Photos library, saving your documents from the app, saving items in your iCloud Drive, etc.
You’ll get more storage if you subscribe to an Apple One bundle, which offers three tiers. The Individual tier includes 50GB of iCloud storage for $17/month, the $23/month Family plan boosts your iCloud storage to 200GB, and the flagship $33/month Premier tier includes 2TB of iCloud storage.
How much free storage does Microsoft offer?
Microsoft gives you fifteen gigs of free Outlook.com mailbox storage for emails, contacts and calendars. In addition, each Microsoft account gets five gigabytes of free cloud storage shared across OneDrive, Outlook.com and Microsoft 365.
However, even the basic $2/month Microsoft 365 subscription boosts your cloud storage to 100GB and the mailbox storage to 50 GB. The $7/month and $10/month tiers boost that to 1TB and 6TB (1TB per person), respectively.
Google storage: Pricing and plans
Google includes fifteen gigabytes of free cloud storage shared across Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos. Extra storage is available with Google One plans.
The Basic tier ups your cloud storage to 100GB in exchange for $2/month. The Premium plan gives you 2TB of cloud storage for $10/month. And the AI Premium plan includes 2TB of storage for $20/month. Like Apple One, Google One tiers include many other perks besides cloud storage.