Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

horizon.pics

11–20 of 221 posts

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#11

This looks pretty cool, does it work with ShareX? Where you can directly screenshot and upload the images from your desktop?

Yes! While Horizon Alpine isn't ready for Windows yet, ShareX support is built in. Simply sign up, visit Settings, and download the configuration files under General > App Configuration. There are configurations for both files and links/pastes uploads.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#12
post #7

Congrats, it looks great, love that you have Linux app support. Question, have you done the business analysis to know how long you can afford to run the system when giving away 500MB? Even your paid model seems really inexpensive. Do you have enough margin to immediately not go broke? I am not trying to throw shade, I am just curious because it almost seems too good to be true since you aren’t running any ads and you…

Yes. Over the past 3 years I've been researching and re-iterating different monetization strategies. While I don't want to divulge exact operating costs, I can tell you that it's sustainable to provide free storage and the amount on the paid Everest plan.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#14
Congrats on the launch! But, something that stops me from using a number of services is the sale of fixed size plans where I'll typically either under utilize them (e.g. do I have 100 GB of screenshots to upload) or I'll over utilize and might not have an upgrade path immediately available for more storage.

I tend to toss my photos in backblaze or S3 for this reason -- UX is severely lacking but I pay for what I use. I'm curious how you landed on the subscriptions you chose + whether you'd consider usage based plans?

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#16

Congrats on the launch! But, something that stops me from using a number of services is the sale of fixed size plans where I'll typically either under utilize them (e.g. do I have 100 GB of screenshots to upload) or I'll over utilize and might not have an upgrade path immediately available for more storage. I tend to toss my photos in backblaze or S3 for this reason -- UX is severely lacking but I pay for what I use.…

I understand where you're coming from.

Most people do not have 100 GB of media on hand, nor will they probably in the next 5 years. As a result, it's basically unlimited from a reasonable usage standpoint. Before adding a 100 GB cap, I actually experimented with having "unlimited storage", but this can go wrong in many ways. I've spoken to companies in the VPN and cloud storage industries and having unlimited anything can go very wrong, especially if your service is promoted in a problematic context. e.g. unlimited cloud storage in a data hoarding community. By at least adding a cap, I can calculate a maximum cost for every user to influence my financial decisions and restrict abuse.

As for pay-per-use, no plans for now. Kagi's CEO had a really nice discussion about this on their forum and on HN. Simply put, for the demographic I'm targeting, which is quite broad, the typical user would likely get turned off by a pay-per-use model.

I've also priced Everest lower than other paid services, such as Vimeo and Gyazo, while including extra benefits.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#17
post #15

Very clean and easy to use. 90% of my coworkers with “decades of experience” and “senior” in their titles would not even be able to build something like this in their full time. Let alone part or spare time.

Thank you! It took quite a few iterations to get here. This time I tried to focus on reducing friction as much as possible, learning from other successful apps along the way.
Post reply on HN