Live data from Hacker News

Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

element.io

31–40 of 169 posts

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#32
post #7

I would gladly pay $10/month to support Element and Matrix.

If you (or anyone else reading this) are okay with Patreon, they do have one at https://www.patreon.com/matrixdotorg . If you don't like Patreon for some reason, they are also on Liberapay, PayPal, and accept BTC and ETH. They have some minor benefits and flair, although the page hasn't been updated in awhile, so I don't know how many are still valid.

I was on their Patreon for a while, but had to hop off because of financial fun.

Sadly none of the rewards are updated and the flair is no longer given out; at this point it makes sense to just see it as a donation.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#34

I believe they are asking twice as much as they should be. Hear me out. At $1/month/user, they would make $12/user/year. I would say most people have extended ~10-20 family members they communicate with, at $20 -$40/month on the lowest priced plan, that would be a fair expenditure that would fall on one family member, because trying to get everyone to chip in if usually unrealistic. Now outside of the USA it begins t…

I agree. They're competing against free services. For many if not most family-and-friend groups there will only be one person knowledgeable about matrix and actively interested in using it (there might be more interested in using "something that's not Facebook", but matrix isn't the only option there). This needs to be priced low enough that one person can buy it without thinking and get their family and some friends on the thing. Maybe start at $40/year or $25/six months, up to 15 accounts.

Pay six months or a year to start so there's no subscription, then give an option to pay for another block or switch to monthly.

Also needs to include bring-your-own-domain (ie, let the customer point DNS at the service), because if you're interested in matrix and want to have your own homeserver then you know you also want to properly own the domain to avoid being locked into a particular hosting provider.

(All just my opinion, I have no relevant experience, etc etc)

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#35

This seems like a great move forward for Element, looks like this is angling to replace the New Vector offering they had a while back? The pricing is certainly odd, though. For 5 bucks a month I run my own server with almost a dozen folks on it, which requires basically zero maintenance (I can count the number of times I've had to go in and restart it over the past two years on one hand). Double that for a limit of 5…

I had the same thought, but do your dozen folks use video calls on your instance? Does it work well enough? I'd definitely expect to be able to host a text-only instance for $5, but maybe they also need to provision for more demanding features?

I only use Element / Matrix as an IRC replacement for now so I couldn't tell.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#37
not sure i understood from the article, is this supposed ot host a server locally on your device rather than use someone elses server? (that would make it function almost like a peer to peer system.)

or is it just a way for them to market their own hosting for matrix servers?

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#39

Is that the only base domain? ems.host (I assume element matrix service?) is so uninspired and sounds like a back end domain rather than what you want your identity tied to. Could they not have gone with something a bit more catchy and on brand?

Well i haven't really gotten used to the name "Element" yet, it's as bland as it gets.

Re: Element Matrix Services Announces Element Home

#40
post #35

This seems like a great move forward for Element, looks like this is angling to replace the New Vector offering they had a while back? The pricing is certainly odd, though. For 5 bucks a month I run my own server with almost a dozen folks on it, which requires basically zero maintenance (I can count the number of times I've had to go in and restart it over the past two years on one hand). Double that for a limit of 5…

I had the same thought, but do your dozen folks use video calls on your instance? Does it work well enough? I'd definitely expect to be able to host a text-only instance for $5, but maybe they also need to provision for more demanding features? I only use Element / Matrix as an IRC replacement for now so I couldn't tell.

AFAIK, Matrix does not support Video chat yet?

But the VoIP/audio chat is using WebRTC, so Matrix is only the signalling server and the audio is p2p between the participants. As such the strain on the hosting server should be minimal

Post reply on HN