When Apple first introduced the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus back in September they also, without much fanfare, increased iCloud storage plans. Although they didn’t upgrade the standard 5GB of iCloud storage that comes with every iOS device, Apple did drastically improve the cloud storage limits of their existing plans.
New iCloud Storage Plans
- 50GB –> $0.99 / month (2.5X more storage for the same price).
- 200GB –> $2.99 / month (cost reduced by 25%).
- 500GB –> $9.99 / month (discontinued).
- 1TB–> $9.99 / month (cost reduced by 50%).
Finally, Apple’s new iCloud plans are much more competitive and can compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Dropbox. Unfortunately, these upgrades, while offered at the same cost or even lower than previous iCloud plans, do not upgrade automatically for existing users. So how can you upgrade your current iCloud plan to one of the new storage plans at no additional cost to you?
How to upgrade your iCloud Plan for free
My current iCloud plan was one of the legacy plans and was no longer available. I was paying $10.99 for 20 GB/year. Apple has since offered a comparable plan that was a little more expensive at $0.99/month. Fortunately, when the new plans were announced, I was now able to upgrade to 50GB of storage for the same $0.99/month price of the existing 20GB plan. However, I had to manually select this plan to acquire the extra storage. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I was currently on a yearly billed plan that didn’t expire next August. It is unclear whether or not Apple would have increased my storage at the time of renewal–or at least alerted me to the new storage options when my current yearly plan was due for renewal.
To view your iCloud settings, and upgrade your storage plan, got to Settings–> iCloud–> Storage–> Change Storage Plan.
When you choose to change your storage plan you will be shown the all the current available options. At this time I could increase my storage by 2.5X from 20GB to 50GB for the same monthly price. It was a $1/year increase for me only because I was still on a older, discontinued plan.
With any changes to you your iCloud storage plan (both upgrades and downgrades) you will have to enter your iTunes password before you can confirm your selection. If you were like me, and you had many months remaining on a yearly plan, Apple will refund you the pro-rated difference for the unused portion. In addition, they will also immediately charge your account for the new monthly plan, and will continue to charge your account each month until you change or cancel your plan.
© Renkman for iPad Insight, 2015. |
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Post tags: iCloud storage, iCoud