WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model? • Hacker News Board

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#11

Post by darrenkopp » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

I had about 50GB of backed up data with mozy for that last 3 years, growing from ~20GB when i started. I've been paying $5 per month for almost 3 years now, which means I have paid ~50 a year (very rough to take out transaction fees and bandwidth fees, etc). That should buy them at least 320GB of average sata disk drives per year (assuming all money going into storage).

This means for "unlimited" they can recoup 6x the storage i was using per year through my fees. So the question becomes why it's not sustainable? Too large a company and not sustainable due to employee salaries? Not economical enough storage prices (ie using enterprise SAS disks rather than cheap SATA)? I'm guessing since they buy large quantities of disks, they could get drives for even cheaper than what you get on NewEgg.

This is why I believe that this model _is_ sustainable, assuming that it's done right. Also why I switched from Mozy to Backblaze because I felt that Mozy was gouging me by taking away their unlimited plan and replacing it with a tiered plan.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#12

Post by wickedchicken » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:18 AM UTC

I think this (and SpiderOak in general) is pretty instructive for a company starting out and looking to find a way to generate revenue. I plan to roll out a service (unrelated) later this year and will be looking at SpiderOak for a compelling delivery/pricing model.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#13

Post by wickedchicken » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:20 AM UTC

ssmoot wrote: post #9

wickedchicken wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference between 'unlimited' and 'absurdly high.' Many hosting providers offer 'unlimited' storage but limit how fast you can upload -- this effectively caps their storage but makes it high enough for most users to never care. Instead of dubious 'unlimited' marketing I would prefer up-front pricing. GMail tells you exactly how much storage it offers for free with the idea that this is much too hi…

I've backed up a few hundred GB with Backblaze. I think the implication being made here is unfair. I'm much more likely to believe any issues with my upload were caused by shady AT&T QoS. You know the kind. Goto any speedtest site and somehow you're getting exactly 12MB down, 3MB up, but it never really seems to add up that way anywhere else. Even to my own office, which I know has an extra 100MB to burst, yet someho…

The model I had in my head was web hosting providers with "unlimited" data storage vs. ones with 1TB of storage. Even though a normal user would probably get nowhere near 1TB, it gives the company a fallback on what 'acceptable' usage is. If the price ever does go down, they can always adjust the limit.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#14

Post by latch » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:26 AM UTC

darrenkopp wrote: post #11

I had about 50GB of backed up data with mozy for that last 3 years, growing from ~20GB when i started. I've been paying $5 per month for almost 3 years now, which means I have paid ~50 a year (very rough to take out transaction fees and bandwidth fees, etc). That should buy them at least 320GB of average sata disk drives per year (assuming all money going into storage). This means for "unlimited" they can recoup 6x t…

Just playing devil's advocate, since I largely agree with you. I do think you are missing 3 key costs: redundancy, power (including cooling) and people.

I actually don't think bandwidth is in the same ballpark as these three items.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#15

Post by wvenable » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:42 AM UTC

darrenkopp wrote: post #11

I had about 50GB of backed up data with mozy for that last 3 years, growing from ~20GB when i started. I've been paying $5 per month for almost 3 years now, which means I have paid ~50 a year (very rough to take out transaction fees and bandwidth fees, etc). That should buy them at least 320GB of average sata disk drives per year (assuming all money going into storage). This means for "unlimited" they can recoup 6x t…

I'd stick with mozy, but 50GB is too small. I have about 89GB in Mozy right now and if I could get that for the $5 per month, I wouldn't go anywhere. Mozy is pretty slow, so backing up even more data isn't very practical. Also, their system doesn't handle large files very well. My 89GB is just pictures, personal movies, documents, and source code.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#16

Post by SageRaven » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 6:14 AM UTC

Pardon the somewhat OT question, but do any of these services offer standard protocol support so that any OS can store data? I know DropBox supports Linux, and some services support OS X, but I haven't seen anything generic enough for my FreeBSD workstation, though the concept of cloud storage sounds great.

Give me NFS or SMB access if you must, but I'd love to get in on this cheap consumer cloud storage thing without resorting to lame hacks like using VMs or emulation due to lack of native access for my platform.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#17

Post by mauiuku » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 7:22 AM UTC

SageRaven wrote: post #16

Pardon the somewhat OT question, but do any of these services offer standard protocol support so that any OS can store data? I know DropBox supports Linux, and some services support OS X, but I haven't seen anything generic enough for my FreeBSD workstation, though the concept of cloud storage sounds great. Give me NFS or SMB access if you must, but I'd love to get in on this cheap consumer cloud storage thing withou…

spideroak has a cli linux client.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#18

Post by mauiuku » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 7:33 AM UTC

I didn't read the article but wanted to comment on spideroak:

Really love their "realistic" pricing model, even cheaper with a .edu email address.

Had a lot of problems with CPU usage, may have been the thousands of files in my .git directories...

This leads me to support, they have been overwhelmed and it has been difficult getting then to review my logs. they gave me multiple months free due to my non usage but I decided to cancel when I found arq for mac.

I asked then to cancel my account and give me a years credit so I can give it a try in the future and they credited my account for a year... pretty cool.

Wish them the best of luck!

Written from my mobi...

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#19

Post by SoftwareMaven » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 7:34 AM UTC

Given the change Mozy just instituted, my backup costs are going to go from $4.99/month to $23.99/month. This is an intolerable jump, regardless of the reasons they have for it. I don't expect something for nothing, but bait-and-switch is BS.

Looks like I'm in the market for a new backup solution.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#20

Post by limmeau » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 8:33 AM UTC

SageRaven wrote: post #16

Pardon the somewhat OT question, but do any of these services offer standard protocol support so that any OS can store data? I know DropBox supports Linux, and some services support OS X, but I haven't seen anything generic enough for my FreeBSD workstation, though the concept of cloud storage sounds great. Give me NFS or SMB access if you must, but I'd love to get in on this cheap consumer cloud storage thing withou…

Strato claims to offer WebDAV and CIFS support on HiDrive:

http://www.strato-hosting.co.uk/online-storage-hidrive/index...

(not a Strato customer myself)