Just as it had promised at its press event last week, Apple has today revised the pricing tiers for iCloud storage, making some tiers cheaper whilst doing away with the 500GB option completely.
Going live in time for the new iOS 9 release, the new prices make iCloud better value without making it super cheap, though, given the fact that iCloud can be the host for all of your iPhone and iPad backups, we’re sure a couple of dollars a month is an excellent price to pay for the security that regular, wireless backups can bring.
While the existing 5GB free tier remains exactly the same, a user spending $0.99 per month will now get 50GB of storage, which is a huge jump from the 20GB previously on offer for the same price. The 200GB plan is now cheaper, costing $2.99 instead of $3.99 and the 1TB plan is now half its earlier price of $19.99, costing $9.99 per month. Users who were on the now-axed monthly 500GB plan will automatically be upgraded to the 1TB model, and will have to downgrade all the way down to 200GB if the increase in monthly fee doesn’t suit them. If you’re currently on a yearly plan, you have the option to continue with it, that is, until you choose one of the updated monthly pricing models.
The pricing structure will alter slightly depending on your country of residence and Apple has made available a page that outlines just what each tier will cost in your particular country. If you have ever bought an app from the App Store, though, you should find that the pricing tiers follow that particular model, so no huge surprises there. Below is a shot of the aforementioned international pricing.
The new pricing tiers for iCloud Storage come as Apple released a whole new version of iOS, iOS 9 and also announced new iPads and iPhones last week. Anyone using an iPhone or iPad really should be taking advantage of iCloud backups, and if they happen to have perhaps an iPhone, an iPad and an iPad Pro, that storage can get used up very quickly indeed. That 5GB of free storage doesn’t last forever!
Whether Apple’s new pricing compares favorably with the competition or not, we wouldn’t want to put a price on the photos of our kids. Back up your data, folks, even if it costs a couple of dollars a month.
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