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Backblaze IPO

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Re: Backblaze IPO

#141

Post by cbhl »

rsync wrote: post #38

I find this part interesting - of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000 are B2 customers and 430,000 are "backup" customers ... which are flat-rate "unlimited" users. These flat-rate users are very fickle and price-sensitive. If you peruse subreddits related to cloud storage or online backup, etc., they are filled with very picky users who expect the product to be free - or close to free. It's a fools errand to pursue this…

Their "backup credits" system has helped mitigate churn from price increases (and they've gotten very good at using it), but agreed that there are a lot of turned down / discontinued offerings in the unlimited backup space.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#142

Post by johnsoft »

kdasme wrote: post #6

Good luck Backblaze! It is a tough market for sure, especially with recent announcement from Cloudflare.

Backblaze B2 is significantly cheaper than R2. I don't think Cloudflare will be stealing many of their customers.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#143

Post by vxNsr »

rsync wrote: post #73
matthewmcg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc.

""Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc." I wish that were the case and I wish that all customers were like you. However, I have been tracking - and discussing - these rates with this target market for longer than Backblaze has existed and this…

I was kinda upset when backblaze raised their prices again, but after doing a price and features comparison I realized they’re still way cheaper than the competition with (imho) a better product. The only thing they don’t have is name recognition and they’re not as ruthless about going after customers, if I had to guess, it’s for the reasons you mention, trying to court new customers is a losing battle in this space.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#144

Post by pxx »

ehsankia wrote: post #131
robbiemitchell wrote: post #127

Apropos of nothing, I'll share one of the reasons why I've been a loyal customer since 2010. In 2013 I booted up a dormant 2006 Macbook to prep for lending to a friend. Shortly thereafter I received the following email: === Hi Robbie (first name guessed from email address)- This is NOT an automated email, I'm typing this live. You have the very very last computer on earth running an ancient version of Backblaze (vers…

I'm confused here. How does a threat of deleting your data in less than 7 days and not even canceling your billing makes you a loyal customer? That seems quite awful, miss the email and your data is gone, and you end up paying without them even storing any data.

Yeah, this is awful. I don't understand why they would also delete the data from that machine even if new data weren't flowing. What if you had needed the data from years ago? Isn't that part of the whole point of backup??

Re: Backblaze IPO

#145

Post by oh_sigh »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #133
ehsankia wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused here. How does a threat of deleting your data in less than 7 days and not even canceling your billing makes you a loyal customer? That seems quite awful, miss the email and your data is gone, and you end up paying without them even storing any data.

I already had other (newer) computers being backed up, and this was a courtesy email to tell me I had failed to stop paying for monthly backups for a computer I had not opened (and thus synced) for years. He emailed me because the version running on that computer was considered so unstable as to be unreliable. Yes, they could have proactively canceled my bill. Maybe they would have! We'll never know, because I respon…

Geez, this guy really is a genius.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#146

Post by jffry »

jlmorton wrote: post #125

I don't understand how Backblaze doesn't charge for PutObject B2 calls. I'm not complaining, I just don't understand it. At work, we have a use case where we store tens of millions of small files and mostly forget about them, never to read them again. (We later read maybe one out of a thousand, but we don't know what we'll need to read ahead of time, and the value of the files is substantial). Amazon charges us somet…

It could work if B2 customers use the service in a diverse enough variety of patterns to where the economics still work out in aggregate.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#147

Post by Dylan16807 »

Matthias1 wrote: post #99
rsync wrote: post #38

I find this part interesting - of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000 are B2 customers and 430,000 are "backup" customers ... which are flat-rate "unlimited" users. These flat-rate users are very fickle and price-sensitive. If you peruse subreddits related to cloud storage or online backup, etc., they are filled with very picky users who expect the product to be free - or close to free. It's a fools errand to pursue this…

Are you affiliated with rsync.net, competing with BackBlaze? Is the major difference with rsync.net that they charge per GB?

Well, they compete in some ways with B2 but B2 isn't the thing being criticized here.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#149

Post by Dylan16807 »

caf wrote: post #112
matheusmoreira wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They said "yeah, we lose a ton of money on every user like you." Such an interesting statement. It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. Like ISPs with their "unlimited" plans, they market that stuff and then they get mad if you actually saturate their link 24/7. I actually emailed backblaze about this years ago. I asked them if they…

It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. Well, yes, it's like a all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant that nonetheless isn't going to let you bring in a giant cooler and fill it up to take home.

I see it as almost the opposite of a buffet. A really big meal isn't that much bigger than a median meal, but personal data varies a lot.

If you look at BackBlaze's histogram, 1/3 of the users are under 100GB and 2/3 are under 500GB. BackBlaze makes a nice profit on those users. But let's say I have just one moderately large drive that's mostly full. Looking at the sales at Best Buy right now, let's say that's a 14TB drive. BackBlaze would lose a ton of money on that, even though it's really hard to argue it's unreasonable in any way, completely unlike a cooler at a buffet.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#150

Post by Dylan16807 »

deanCommie wrote: post #104
matheusmoreira wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They said "yeah, we lose a ton of money on every user like you." Such an interesting statement. It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. Like ISPs with their "unlimited" plans, they market that stuff and then they get mad if you actually saturate their link 24/7. I actually emailed backblaze about this years ago. I asked them if they…

> It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. I didn't sense that they were bitter about it. But in both cases I do have some sympathy for the business. There is "unlimited" in the sense of what a regular average p50 user would consider reasonable ("every photo i've ever taken with my cellphone of my grandchild") Then there is "unlimited"…

I wonder if people would be scared away by a cap phrased in terms of entire hard drives.

That would still allow some pretty heavy users, but it would stop the people trying to dump hundreds of terabytes onto the service.

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