The fact is cloud storage pricing is complicated, it doesn’t always cost less than on-premises options, and egress charges are unlikely to be a budgeting problem for you.ĭespite the complexities of cloud storage pricing, the good news is that the object storage offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) all have similar pricing models for cloud storage. So, I hope to provide some clarification to help you have a better understanding of cloud storage pricing so you know what to expect. We routinely see people express confusion about cloud storage pricing. With all the talk about the lower costs of cloud storage (outside of variable egress fees), how do you figure out what’s best for your organization? What’s more, the process of untangling the pricing of cloud storage services can cause confusion and frustration. Google’s competitive prices will ultimately benefit the entire technology ecosystem, from individuals users and developers to startups and enterprises.It’s no secret the cost of ownership model for on-premises storage is nothing like the way enterprise cloud storage pricing works. Ideally, Google’s new prices will push other cloud services to do the same in some ways, as ReadWrite contributor Matt Asay notes, it’s already begun happening. If anything, lower prices will push greater adoption rates which, in turn, provide greater focus on optimizing infrastructure to the cloud.

Drive is the glue that binds Google’s family of productivity apps together: It’s the home for Docs, Slides and Sheets (Google’s answer to Microsoft’s Office suite of apps), it contains all of your photos from Google+ and it’s the foundation for storage options within Gmail, Google’s popular email service. Google Drive may not be the company’s sexiest offering, but it is one of its most important. Turning Cloud Storage Into A CommodityĪ cheaper Google Drive means more money goes directly to the company, but more importantly, it benefits Google’s entire ecosystem. To reiterate, Google only asks for $10 a month for 1 TB. Similarly, the cheapest plans on Microsoft’s Azure platform cost about $68 per month for 1 TB. Amazon’s popular S3 cloud service, which is a favorite among developers (Dropbox included), costs roughly $85/month for a terabyte of space.

Google drive storage pricing commercial