Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Box and the Infinite Cloud

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When we started Box in 2005, the nearest competitor was charging $10/month for 5GB of storage with no free offering. We wanted to enter the market with the most broadly available, affordable service – so after experimenting with a few business models early on, in 2006 we launched the largest free space at the time: 1GB.

Many things have changed since 2006. Hard drive efficiency – how we actually store your data – has improved nearly 400% in the past five years. That means we can store 5X the amount of data in the same space we could have five years ago. We’ve also built out two enterprise-grade data centers, received SAS 70 Type II certification, and worked with a number of partners and industry leaders to build one of the largest and most extensible cloud content management services. In response to the tremendous traction and excitement we’ve seen, we want to change the game again.

Today, we’re announcing 5GB of free web storage for our personal subscription plans. Not only that, but we’re making a major change to how our business plan works – instead of paying to incrementally add more storage for every user you have (15GB each), we’re going to start the plan out at 500GB. This will more than triple the amount of storage the average business subscriber has access to. Services like SharePoint Online, Google Docs, or Salesforce Content typically limit users to a gigabyte or less each; we think our new model offers a very compelling advantage over the current ways businesses can manage their content in the cloud today.

Ultimately, we want to move in a direction where storage is never a concern for end users or IT administrators, where the cloud is effectively “infinite.” Web-based applications should be all about flexibility, elasticity, and the power of connected applications and services. The cloud also brings tremendous economies of scale, and we believe in passing these benefits along to our users. The last thing you should be worrying about are “traditional” issues like storage allotments, bandwidth limitations, upgrades, patches, etc. We want our customers to focus on the powerful benefits of collaboration, the ability to work from anywhere, and connecting their information to other powerful applications and devices. That’s the ultimate vision of Box.

These changes are live today for new users, and we’ll be rolling out these benefits to all our existing Box customers throughout November. We also have other amazing and exciting product improvements, expansions, and partnerships we’re working on – we look forward to announcing these updates in the coming months.

Post by Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO, Box.net

Showing 31 comments

Daniel Nice October 28th, 2010

This is awesome guys! A huge improvement and now a even more compelling case to switch from dropbox to box.net. I love your service, keep up the great work!

When can I expect my business accounts to be upgraded to 500GB?

Daniel Nice October 28th, 2010

I see it now, look like I get more space in November, I can handle that :-)

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Radu October 28th, 2010

Great change! But for 5GB space what will be the bandwidth limit?
Also… stil 25MB per file? I hoped this will be increased also… :(
Anyway: I love Box.net and I use it since 2007.

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chonghua October 28th, 2010

But the old users are still 1GB

Mauricio October 29th, 2010

This is great but when will you release a BlackBerry application?

John October 29th, 2010

We have been using box since 7/24/2007 and have a (Legacy) Premium Per Year (5GB) $50/y plan. What’s the deal for us?

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Guy October 29th, 2010

When my account will be upgrade to 5GB ?

Lance October 30th, 2010

Hi Aaron,

I just found out about your company because Drop.io has been purchased by FB and is closing down and I’m looking for another service. I’m in the process of setting up a online business/website with very limited funds. It’s starting out as a free site and will likely be that way for a while.

Your free service doesn’t seem like it’s worth signing up for.

Your Business service does, but it is too expensive for a start-up without funding. I guess the problem is that I don’t really need it so I couldn’t justify spending $45/mo for it. But I would love to use it because it seems pretty cool and I could see it being helpful to me in a year or two when my company will hopefully need a CMS. I just think you’re turning away business since people like me will find something cheaper and grow with that service. I think that for a service like this it is easy to get locked into a provider since all your documents are already uploaded and being tracked and have a history attached to them etc..

One other complaint/suggestion/inquiry. Why doesn’t your Business service have encryption on the servers like your enterprise service? Wouldn’t that be a deal killer for most businesses concerned with security?

Thanks

Box.net Now Offers 5 Free Gigs Of Cloud Storage November 1st, 2010

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Daniel November 2nd, 2010

Thanks for this upgrade – I am really impressed of your development and the value you offer to your community.

Cheers, Daniel

mark November 2nd, 2010

Hi Lance,

If our business service isn’t a fit for you right now, you can always sign up for one of our personal accounts; those can be equipped with up to 50GB of storage. We want to be sure that people don’t feel trapped on a specific plan, which is why we’ve made it easy and hassle free to upgrade or downgrade on Box. Concerning security, our business accounts have all data encrypted on transfer, take a look at this page for some more info – https://www.box.net/features/security. Many of our users find this sufficient for their business needs. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out by sending me an email at mark@box.net, thanks for the feedback!

Mark

mark November 2nd, 2010

Hi Guy,

You should see this upgrade in your account by the end of November. If you don’t, feel free to contact me at mark@box.net and I’ll take care of it.

Mark

mark November 2nd, 2010

Hi John,

You can choose to downgrade to a free plan or upgrade to a personal plan. If you stay with your current plan, your storage allocation wont increase. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me at mark@box.net.

Mark

mark November 2nd, 2010

Hey Mauricio,

Our Blackberry app is currently in the works. We don’t have a specific release date set, but rest assured that we’re working hard on it. It’s been a pretty popular request from our users – we’ll get it out as soon as we can!

Mark

mark November 2nd, 2010

Chonghua,

You should see your storage bumped up to 5GB by the end of November. If you don’t see this, please let us know.

Mark

mark November 2nd, 2010

Hi Radu,

The bandwidth limit for all paid accounts is currently 2TB per month. For free accounts, our bandwidth limit is 10GB per month. Thanks for being a longtime user, we really appreciate it. :)

Mark

Eric November 4th, 2010

Mark:

I too have a “(Legacy) Premium Per Year (5GB) $50/y plan”, if I downgrade to a free account, will I still be able to use OpenBox apps like eFax? Also, I assume, my files would remain intact, correct?

Teisines paslaugos November 5th, 2010

You should see your storage bumped up to 5GB by the end of November. If you don’t see this, please let us know.

Nguyen November 9th, 2010

Dear Box.net,

I m currently box.net user with 25GB plan, it’s very useful for me. Since Im college student, i ve introduced it to a people on campus. But $45/month for business acct is a way too much. Hoping that box.net will release business plan with less user and cheaper price

mark November 11th, 2010

You can also upgrade your storage all the way up to 50GB in a personal account – we try to have lots of options so that users can find a plan that fits them. Thanks for the feedback.

Nguyen November 11th, 2010

50Gb can be filled up in less than 2 semesters as box sync is not offered for personal acct, thats the point

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Matthias February 6th, 2011

I still don’t see any upgrade to 5GB on my old plan…

Mark Saldana February 7th, 2011

Hey Matthias,

Send us an email at http://support.box.net/app/ask and we’ll help you out with that.

Sincerely,

Mark
-Community Manager

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