Google Drops Extra Storage Prices For Gmail And Picasa
If you visit your Google Mail account you can look at the footer of the mail service's homepage to see how many free space is still available for that account.
The current free storage that most Gmail users currently get is 15,000 Megabytes which should be enough for the majority of Google users. Please note that the storage increases automatically over time. The storage of my personal account is at 19 Gigabytes currently for instance.
But there are some users who have made Gmail their second home, who receive large files as attachments on a regular basis, and who want to keep all of these emails and files in the Gmail account.
The solution for these users is to buy extra storage space for both Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos as these web services share the extra storage. This means as well that lots of files on Google Drive may impact storage of emails on Gmail.
Gmail users can visit the purchase storage page to take a look at the pricing for extra storage. If you don't want to click on a link to get there, open the Gmail website manually, and click on the "manage" link at the bottom of the homepage once it has loaded. The link takes you to the same page.
Gmail Storage Pricing
Prices start at $5 per year for a 20 Gigabyte increase in storage space, 200 Gigabytes are available for $50 per year and the maximum currently is a whooping 16 Terabytes for $4096 per year.
Update: Pricing has improved in recent time. You can get 100 GB for $1.99 per month and 1 TB for $9.99 per month currently. Options to get 10 TB, 20 TB and 30 TB are also available for $99.99, $199.99 and $299.99 per month respectively.
You may save some money if you pay annually. The 100 GB storage package costs $19.99 when paid annually, the 1 TB package $99.99 when paid annually.
Another solution that is more cost effective is to transfer old emails from the Gmail account to a desktop email client to create a backup of emails and attachments so that you can delete those afterwards on the site.
One program that does an excellent job at that is Mailstore Home which supports Gmail right out of the box. You can even use it to browse and search all emails from within the program.
While that is not always practicable, it could be a solution for users who do not want to buy extra storage space.
Now You: How much Google storage space are you currently using?
I used 4 GB / 7G already, well, a hard decision to make
141 Mb. So, I don’t need any extra :)
I’ve been using Gmail for 5 years now, I’m just now about to break the 1GB barrier. I use it pretty heavily, and I save pretty much all my mail …I guess I just don’t get that many large attachments.
Nothing for us normal users I suppose ;)