Google Drive chops prices by 80 percent, now an even cheaper alternative to Dropbox for photographers

by Liam McCabe

posted Thursday, March 13, 2014 at 5:49 PM EDT

 
 

More backup is never a bad thing, and one of the best-known cloud services just became a much more affordable place to stash a giant photo archive.

Google Drive chopped prices for its monthly storage plans today. It’s now $1.99 per month for 100GB of space, down from $4.99. The 1TB plan is only $9.99 per month, slashed from $49.99—that’s less than $120 per year for massive space. There are options for even bigger chunks of storage, too. And of course, the standard 15GB plan is still free.

 
Google driving down prices

Even with the price cuts, Drive isn’t strictly the cheapest or most photo-oriented place to keep big collections. SmugMug, for example, offers unlimited storage even with its $5/mo basic plan—and that includes tons of portfolio features, too.

But it’s hard to deny that Drive is super-convenient—you probably already have an account, it’s accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, and it’s a recognizable way to share shots with clients in a pinch. The storage plans also apply to Gmail and Google+ Photo accounts, which helps offset some of the disadvantages compared to photo-first storage sites. And Drive is now even cheaper than its chief rival, Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/pricing).

So if all those A7R RAW shots were putting a strain on your storage limits, you can breathe a sigh of relief.