Microsoft devalues its Microsoft 365 family subscription

andrew_12345

Normally I never read emails about changes in Ts and Cs, and such but something made me read this.

M365 gives a family of 6 up to 1TB each. Now, only 2TB is shared across the entire family.

This is 50% capacity reduction for a family of 4, 2/3 reduction for a family of 6.

Upcoming changes to your Microsoft 365 subscription

Over the coming months1, we'll be introducing updates to your Microsoft 365 subscription. Nothing changes today, and we'll email you with more details before each change takes effect.

What's coming: 

<snip>.

More flexible cloud storage: Your cloud storage allowance will change from 1 TB per person to 2 TB of shared storage so everyone on the plan can use the free space while keeping their own accounts and files private. This change will apply after your first renewal after May 2nd, 2027. Learn more about these upcoming changes.

<snip>.

flaneurs_lobster

Agree that in absolute terms this change is a reduction in the benefit given for the same subscription.

But I'd be gobsmacked if more than a tiny percentage of Family subscriptions manage to get anywhere near their full TB allowance.

MS will have run the numbers, the revenue lost from cancelled subs will not be greater than the (book) gain on storage costs.

SammyBoyd

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82168215#Comment_82168215

Marketing again…"More flexible cloud storage".Haha. Why not make it 6 TB shared?

They are simply aligning themselves with Apple.

Exodi

It's pretty obvious why - the price of memory has rocketed up over the past year.

For example: https://pangoly.com/en/price-trends/ssd/1tb-sata-6-gbs shows a tripling of the price of this particular memory in just the last 12 months.

While it obviously goes without saying Microsoft isn't paying retail prices or buying consumer hardware, inevitably they are not immune to the significant cost inflation of memory (ironically caused by their and others AI infrastructure buildout).

The ~50% memory reduction you speak of is likely their attempt at rebalancing to remain margin neutral. I don't think there's anything sinister or opportunistic about it, storage is unfortunately much more expensive than it used to be.

In reality, I imagine an exceedingly small number of households actually manage to use 1TB of storage each. I expect in practice most on this plan will be entirely unaffected (aside from the negative feelings of having something taken away from them).

Lorian

I think plenty of people in the UK would have dived on on the 'extremely cheap' family licenses on offer on Amazon on New year's day just for the storage for 6 years. Bad luck.

Peter999_2

To be fair to them, it doesn't apply until your next renewal so you know before you buy what the new terms are.

I've got a subscription until 2030 and it will not be affected until the renewal date in 2030. Obviously I will not be renewing again and I'll have to explain to everyone I share mine with exactly why not.