There is a group of entrepreneurs who have noticed the ever-present and ever-growing cloud storage trend and set out to disrupt the paradigm set in the market segment. There are some great cloud storage options already available, but more often than not the price tags on the premium models of service are pretty big.
Hive, as the new platform is called, is billed as the first free, unlimited cloud storage service. It can handle documents, photos, music collections, and video libraries all on a massive scale. Last Monday, Hive was officially launched into beta, and in about one week they’ve seen around 5,000 registrations per day, which puts their user base near 30,000 and climbing.
During the beta testing phase, every option on Hive is free for users. When the platform launches out of beta, there will be a free model as well as premium models.
The driving purpose behind Hive is to connect users together so that they might, as the team says, mix, play, and share without limit: it’s socially rooted. Possibly the most hyped feature about Hive is the fact that the more friends you have, the cheaper your premium subscription option is.
With 10 or fewer friends on Hive, users will pay $9 a month for the premium subscription. However, as you go over 10 friends your premium drops to $6 per month. Then at 50 friends it drops to $3 a month, and when you cap 100 friends the premium subscription is subsidized for you as a user.
Regardless of what level of subscription you opt for, you won’t have any limits in terms of how much you can upload. The only difference between the free model and the premium model is that on premium users can stream music and video in HD, download and stream with no bandwidth restrictions, and enjoy Hive ad-free.
Pair that with the fact that users can add files from just about anywhere and you’ve got a shot at beating out the already established cloud storage services. Disruption is one of the entrepreneurs most powerful tools, and it’s refreshing to see a company take the pay-for-premium option and flip it on its head for a change. We’ll be following Hive closely as they continue to iterate during their beta phase and update you once they launch in full.