// ZDNET — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Got a Microsoft 365 subscription? Your storage is about to shrink
Today, shared Microsoft 365 plans include 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage for every family member. Microsoft is about to shrink that allotment dramatically.
If you’ve been to the grocery store lately, you’re probably familiar with the phenomenon of shrinkflation — where the price of a bag of chips or a candy bar stays the same, but the product itself gets smaller.
Microsoft 365 subscribers are about to experience the cloud version of shrinkflation. Microsoft announced today that it will be making changes to its Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium, and Pro subscriptions. The company is positioning the changes as giving subscribers “more flexibility with their AI and cloud storage benefits.” That may be true, but the net effect on subscribers who take full advantage of those subscriptions could be a huge price increase.
Also: Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Ultra finally has a starting price
The changes, slated to roll out “in the coming months,” will affect shared AI usage and cloud storage benefits.
The shrinkflation hits hardest at the shared OneDrive storage available through all these plans. Currently, if you have a Microsoft 365 Family, Premium, or Pro plan, each member has a fixed OneDrive storage allowance of 1 TB. If you’re the owner of one of those plans and you’ve used all five of your available shared slots, your family has a total of 6 TB of storage available.
After the changes take effect, these plans will get a shared storage pool for the entire subscription. Each family member’s accounts and files will remain private, but their usage will be subtracted from the shared pool. And the shrinkage is significant: Instead of 6 TB of storage divided evenly among six shared account holders, Microsoft 365 Family and Premium plans will get a total of 2 TB of shared storage.
Also: Office 2021 support ends this month – you have 5 options
Microsoft 365 Pro — a new plan that was very quietly launched in September — gets 5 TB of shared storage and the highest available AI usage limits, but that plan also comes with a hefty $100-a-month price tag.
For Microsoft 365 Family and Premium subscribers who are using more than 2 TB of total storage across all accounts and aren’t willing or able to cut their usage, the shrinkflation will turn into actual dollars-and-cents inflation. The base cost of a Microsoft 365 Family plan is $130 a year, or just a little over $10 per month. Each 1 TB of additional OneDrive storage adds $10 a month to the subscription price. So even if your family has used roughly half of your current total allowance, your bill could double or triple.