On Thursday, Amazon.com announced that it will now offer unlimited cloud storage on its Amazon Cloud Drive platform. As of the announcement, unlimited cloud storage is available on two new storage plans that cater for a range of content and media, including photos, videos, movies, music and other files.

Customers can pick between the Unlimited Photos Plan at $11.99 per year and the Unlimited Everything Plan at $59.99 per year. Both plans offer a three-month free trial.

The Unlimited Photos Plan, as the name suggests, allows users to store an unlimited number of photos in Cloud Drive. Most notably, the plan also includes 5GB of additional storage for videos, documents and files. This is significant as users effectively get to store unlimited photos AND 5GB of other files and media for $1 per month – a very competitive price.

The Unlimited Everything Plan is an all-you-can-eat plan for photos, videos, files, documents, movies and music.

“Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don’t know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up,” said Josh Petersen, Director of Amazon Cloud Drive. “With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers don’t need to worry about storage space — they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place.”

How do other consumer cloud storage providers compare?

Dropbox: Dropbox Pro costs $9.99 per month for 1TB (1,000GB) of space and has a free tier, Dropbox Basic, that offers 2GB.

Google: Google Drive offers plans ranging from $1.99 per month for 100GB up to $299.99 per month for 30TB. It also has a liberal 15GB free-tier.

Apple: iCloud plans start with a free tier that gives users 5GB of storage and goes up to $19.99 per month for 1TB.

Microsoft: OneDrive also offers a 15GB free plan and plan tiers go up to $6.99 per month for 1TB. It is worth pointing out that included in the $6.99/1TB plan is a subscription to Office 365 and, if users subscribe to Office 365 at $6.99 per month, they get 1TB of OneDrive storage included.

All things considered, the 15GB free plans offered by most cloud storage vendors are most likely adequate for those who store normal amounts of photos and files. However, $5 per month for the assurance that you never have to worry about running out of space again is a very attractive offer.

Image credit: StockMonkeys.com via Flickr under Creative Commons License