Gblobal media and technology company that provides a range of online services, including a web portal, search engine, email, news, finance, and more, Yahoo has announced that its mail users globally will now pay monthly for storage as the company slashed the free storage cap to 20GB.
Yahoo, in a notice sent to users yesterday, said the change takes effect immediately. The notice urged all users to check their current storage and consider paid upgrade options.
Checks showed that prior to the announcement, the American firm virtually offered almost free storage limit, but Yahoo is now capping free accounts at 20GB, bringing it closer to some of its rivals, including Gmail, which offers 15GB of free storage shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos.
However, Yahoo’s new free tier is exclusive to emails, which could be considered an advantage for those who don’t use cloud services as extensively.
According checks by The Guardian, Yahoo is reported to have over one billion people globally using its various services, which include Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, and other web properties.
Yahoo.com receives around 3.5 billion visits per month globally, while Yahoo Mail remains a significant player, with 225 million active users worldwide.
In the U.S. alone, Yahoo is projected to serve over 300 million users monthly by 2024, up from 274 million in 2020. It’s also the sixth most visited website in the U.S.
Further on the notice, Yahoo explained that once users reach the 20GB threshold, they will no longer be able to send or receive emails unless they either delete old messages or upgrade their account.
According to it, access to the mailbox itself will remain, so users will have time to clean up or choose a paid plan.
The company has introduced two new storage subscription options:100GB for $1.99/month and 1TB for $9.99/month.
For users, who want more than just extra storage, Yahoo is also pushing Yahoo Mail Plus, a premium offering that includes 200GB of storage, an ad-free interface, and other perks.
However, both the new 100GB and 1TB plans will still include ads, a point that may not sit well with paying customers.
To cushion the transition, Yahoo is also rolling out enhanced mailbox management tools. These include real-time storage tracking across web and mobile apps, a usage dashboard, sorting tools for large emails, and an attachment manager to help users clean up storage hogs.
While these tools aimed to make managing shrinking free space less of a headache, the abrupt change could still catch many users off guard, especially those with large inbox histories dating back over a decade.
