Bitcasa's infinite cloud storage balloons to $999 a year
If you thought Bitcasa's infinite cloud storage was too sweet of a deal to exist on this mortal plane for $99 a year, that's because it was — or at least partly because the bulk of subscribers filled up far less of their digital lockers than expected.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bitcasa built its brand on 'infinite' storage at $99 a year — a price the company itself now concedes was set against expectations that subscribers would fill far more of their lockers than they actually did, leaving the flat-fee model upside down. The pickup list shows the repricing travelled widely within a day of Bitcasa's own announcement, landing at PC World, Ubergizmo, The Next Web and ProgrammableWeb alongside Engadget's writeup.
First-order effects
- Existing $99-a-year 'infinite' subscribers face a tenfold price increase to keep their current plan, forcing each of them to decide whether their stored data is worth $999 or whether to migrate elsewhere.
Second-order effects
- Competitors offering flat-rate unlimited tiers now inherit the burden of proof: Bitcasa's admission that usage fell short of its own cost assumptions hands every rival's marketing team a data point that 'infinite' pricing can be repriced at will.
Third-order effects
- If flat-fee unlimited keeps collapsing under real-world storage economics, consumer cloud pricing should consolidate around metered or capacity-tiered plans — with providers competing on per-gigabyte price rather than headline 'unlimited' promises.
The trend: Consumer cloud storage is moving away from loss-leader 'infinite' flat fees toward capacity-aware pricing, as providers reprice plans against actual subscriber usage rather than projected it.