Is it possible to use Amazon Kindle without signing to a non-free unlimited cloud storage plan?

Question

I got used to "Send to Kindle" service to populate my Kindle with e-books from external sources. I can see the files in "Manage Your Content and Devices → Docs" section in my Amazon account.

Today (Mar 27, 2015) I received an e-mail from Amazon that states

Your 5 GB plan is no longer available and has been replaced with a free 3-month trial of one of the Unlimited plans. Access to your existing files has not changed. You can continue to download and view your content. In order to upload new files you will need to pick one of the free 3-month trials.

I cannot find any information on whether I can continue to use the storage for free or I need to apply for some unlimited plan.

Answer 1

The Amazon Send to Kindle service has been around way before the Amazon Cloud Drive was introduced. Amazon automatically adds any personal documents sent through "send to kindle" to its cloud drive (which is included for Amazon Prime members and fire device owners).

This supplementary feature would not be anymore available without an Amazon Cloud Drive subscription. Nevertheless the actual send to kindle feature is not affected by this change and would still work without such an additional subscription. Some months after switching to the paid subscription, kindle documents aren't any longer included into the amazon cloud quota.

An extensive disucssion about this notification email and the resulting consequences can be found on mobileread.com