Box Sweetens Cloud Storage Offers for Consumers, Businesses

Cloud service storage and collaboration provider Box has announced that it is doubling its personal offering to include 10GB of free storage and launching an all-new starter plan for small businesses that offers 100GB for $5 per month per user.
Box hopes the new plans make it more of an inducement for small businesses and consumers to move their content to the cloud instead of keeping everything onsite in local storage drives that can–and often do–blow up when one least expects it.
“We’re focused on removing any and all barriers to cloud adoption,” said Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie. “More than ever before, the economy today is driven by information and collaboration. Whether you’re a global corporation, a small business or a freelancer, the key to competing is being able to securely share, manage and access your content anywhere, on any device.”
Details on the new plans are as follows:
—Personal (Free): Expanded 10GB of free storage for Personal accounts.
—Starter ($5/month): 100GB of storage and a 2GB file size limit to make it easy for SMBs to get started on Box.
—Business ($15/user/month): 1000GB of storage and a 5GB file size limit, as well as one premium enterprise application integration (such as Active Directory or Salesforce.com), basic admin console functions and device pinning for added security.
—Enterprise ($35/user/month): Unlimited storage and a 5GB file size limit, as well as unlimited external collaborators and enterprise application integrations, full group Active Directory support, access to the full Box admin console, security reporting and content management services, and the Box Content API (for 3 custom apps).
—Elite (price available on request): Includes the full features in enterprise plans, as well as the highest level of Box support, a free test environment and unlimited use of the Box Content API for custom internal apps.
Box currently reports that more than 20 million individuals and 180,000 businesses use its services to share and manage content in the cloud. Box claims it pioneered “freemium” cloud adoption in the enterprise with its personal plan in 2006.
Levie has said that Box grew sales 150 percent in 2012 and is on pace to more than double sales again in 2013. The Los Altos, Calif.-based company claims major global customers such as Discovery Communications, Proctor & Gamble and Nationwide insurance.