G Suite’s unlimited Google Drive storage will be discontinued with Workspace

Ben Schoon | Oct 8 2020 - 9:42 am PT

Google Drive storage is very useful and, in the days of G Suite, business owners had the ability to get unlimited Google Drive storage. Unfortunately, though, unlimited Google Drive storage going away with Workspace.

Workspace is the latest change Google has made to its online productivity suite and, alongside branding and workflow updates, the company is also tweaking some of the capabilities.

As pointed out by Android Police, Google Drive storage on Workspace works differently from G Suite. On the old system, the “Basic” tier allowed each user 30GB of storage, but you could have as many users as you want. The “Business” tier, though, allowed not only an unlimited number of users, but also unlimited storage for each user as long as there were more than 4.

By comparison, Google Workspace has some pretty strict requirements on Drive storage and even users for that matter. The “Business Starter” tier offers only 30GB per user. “Business Standard” ups that to 2TB and “Business Plus” 5TB. All of those tiers, too, are limited to 300 people.

Apparently, the change was made because Google found that a “relatively small number of organizations” actually realize the full benefit of the unlimited storage space. Apparently, under the new plans, additional storage can be requested if needed. A Google spokesperson explains:

A relatively small number of organizations in a few specific industries actually realize the full benefit of unlimited storage. With the new editions, we’re providing more value with features that are useful to more customers, like Meet recordings in the new Business Standard edition, while maintaining pricing and plentiful storage. And with the Enterprise editions, available to customers of all sizes, more storage can be requested if needed.

Unfortunately, there’s no way around this. New business users can no longer sign up for G Suite plans, leaving Workspace as the only option. That, of course, comes with some added benefits of its own, but on the storage front, it’s certainly a bit disappointing.

If you’re a G Suite user who’s taking advantage of the high storage limits, you’ll probably have to get in touch with Google when the time comes to switch to Workspace.