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Amazon adding unlimited photo storage for Prime members

Online retail giant Amazon has just added another perk for members of its Prime program: Free unlimited photo storage.

November 4, 2014

Online retail giant Amazon has just added another perk for members of its Prime program: free unlimited photo storage. The service was previously available to owners of the Fire Phone, but has now been extended to everyone with a Prime membership.

This joins a growing list of Prime features, including free two-day shipping on more than 20 million items, unlimited streaming of TV shows and movies, and free access to millions of songs and e-books. A Prime membership currently costs $99 per year. According to the company's letter to shareholders published in April, Prime now has "tens of millions of members worldwide."

According to the company, photos can be uploaded from any device, including iOS devices, and can then be accessed on almost any screen with access to the Web, including select smart TVs.

So, what happens to all those photos if a customer lets their Prime membership lapse, either intentionally or accidentally? We reached out to Amazon and they gave us this response:

... if a customer’s Prime membership expires, they will continue to have 5 GB of free storage for photos, videos, documents, and other files, and they can purchase additional storage at any time by visiting www.amazon.com/clouddrive/manage. If their Prime membership ends and they are over their Cloud Drive storage limit, they will no longer be able to upload new photos or other content but can continue to view and download them. The customer will be notified of their over-storage limit status via email, in-client messaging, and in the Manage Storage section of their Cloud Drive account. If their Cloud Drive account continues to be over its limit after three months, we will send a link to an archive of the customer’s Cloud Drive content to the email address we have on file and close the Cloud Drive account. All content will be retained in the Archives for an additional three months, and then deleted.