People often think of “retention” as a good thing when it comes to cloud and object storage—after all, the point of storing data is to retain it

Let’s Be Honest—Retention Minimums Are Delete Penalties

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2022-01-13 17:30:03

People often think of “retention” as a good thing when it comes to cloud and object storage—after all, the point of storing data is to retain it. But retention’s only a good thing when you actually want to retain data—that nuance is sometimes hidden from people, and yes, I say hidden intentionally.

A number of cloud storage providers from big to small are doing their best to hide the darker side of retention—retention minimums. They loudly promote attractive storage tier rates while making little mention of their data retention minimums that allow them to charge those rates for as many as 90 or 180 days after bytes uploaded have been deleted.

We don’t believe in charging you for data you deleted. Today, we’re explaining more about what that means for you, and highlighting some real-world stories of discovering these hidden fees.

First, let’s call retention minimums what they really are: delete penalties. We stand against delete penalties. We don’t charge them. We see them as the enemy of every use case in which data is intentionally replaced or deprecated in hours, days, or weeks instead of months. Delete penalties go against agility and flexibility. We also think it’s despicable when a vendor shouts about how they don’t charge fees for things like data egress, while quietly padding their topline with hidden retention penalties.