Box.net Upgrades Storage Capacities, 5 GB For Free

Box.net, the cloud sharing and collaboration platform, has announced a bump in storage capacity for all account types, from Personal to Enterprise. Personal users now get 5 GB to store their files for free, albeit with some limitations, business users get 500 GB and enterprise users get unlimited storage.

"Today, we’re announcing 5GB of free web storage for our personal subscription plans," the Box.net blog reads.

"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," the announcement added.

For the Free offering, it's a five time increase in storage space. It's not the biggest amount of free space offered by this type of services, but it's a decent figure.

Unfortunately, the other limitations make Box.net a non-starter for personal use. File sizes are capped at 25 MB for free. You can share files up to 1 GB, but you'll have to pay.

You'll also get no desktop sync app, no Google Apps integration, not much of anything actually. All you get is share links and access through the mobile apps. Dropbox-killer, it is not.

Of course, Box.net is aiming at a different market than Dropbox, its real interest is in business users. For them, the offering is significantly better.

The first paid tier, Business comes in at $15 per user per month and brings 500 GB of share storage, a 2 GB file size limit, desktop sync, Apps integration and a host of other features.

Up to a certain number of users, the Business plan is actually quite attractive, compared to its competitors. However, if 500 GB is not enough, you can move up to the Enterprise tier which comes with an unlimited storage amount.

Enterprise also adds encrypted storage and transfer, Salesforce.com integration and other perks. The price apparently starts at $35 per user per month, but there's probably some leeway depending on the size of your business.