2016 Cloud Services Changes
This has been a tough year for cloud services. It looks like that business isn't really going well for Freemium usage. Here are some of the notifications that I have gotten this year from various companies:
Bitcasa Drive
Bitcasa decides to focus on the business market and canceled their consumer option:
This message is to inform you that the Bitcasa Drive service will no longer be supported. You will need to take action to avoid losing your files.
All data must be downloaded by 11:59pm PST on May 20, 2016, after which time all accounts and stored data on Bitcasa Drive will be permanently deleted.
Dropbox drops support for Carousel
Dropbox returned to a single Dropbox photo experience as the Carousel app doesn't bring in new DropBox subscribers:
On March 31st, we're shutting down Carousel as a standalone app and returning to a single Dropbox photo experience. Carousel has always been a way to view and interact with photos stored in Dropbox. All the photos in your Carousel timeline will remain safe in your Dropbox where they've always been.Microsoft changes OneDrive storage limit.
Microsoft decides to reduce storage limit on OneDrive to the Freemium consumers market in order to focus more on the business cloud solution.
On July 13, 2016, the amount of storage that comes with your OneDrive will change from 15 GB to 5 GB. We are also discontinuing the 15 GB camera roll bonus.Evernote changes Price and Functionality
Evernote Plus is now $3.99/month or $34.99/year (save 27%)
To stay in sync across all your devices, consider Evernote Plus. You'll also enjoy the ability to take notebooks offline on a mobile device, so your notes will be with you wherever you go, even when there's no Internet connection. You can forward emails into Evernote and keep them alongside related notes, complete with attachments, and 1 GB of upload space each month means you can keep all your projects together.Lesson Learned this Year
The key lesson learned is that if you're going to use a cloud service, you should invest in it and not just take up on the free plan for storage.