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That doesn't mean it's the wrong pricing, just that you're maybe not the customer they want. A business loses some customers at any pricing level, it's just a q

That doesn't mean it's the wrong pricing, just that you're maybe not the customer they want. A business loses some customers at any pricing level, it's just a question of whether the incremental revenue from the remaining customers makes up for it. When you charge a penny extra, that's all incremental margin from the customers you keep, but for the customers you lose, some of lost revenue is balanced by not having the costs associated with supporting them any more. Pushing the most price sensitive customers out the door isn't that bad, because they're also likely to be the least loyal down the road, and maybe the highest maintenance relative to their spend.

jacobr1 9y ago
Only if the product is competitively differentiated. If your product is a commodity you to find a value-add or niche. Then you can charge a premium.
ad_hominem 9y ago
Sure, that's a good point especially considering he's a one-man show so it probably makes sense to keep the user base as ruthlessly small as possible just for support reasons alone. It does make me curious though who the target customer is - somebody who's comfortable setting up a Unix CLI tool for their backups (creating a cron job etc.), yet who wants to cede bucket ownership to a 3rd party and pay a 25x markup for the pleasure? I personally don't mind having to click "Create Bucket" in the AWS console if I get to pay $3/mo instead of $75/mo on my 300GB of data. shrugs
- tomkarlo 9y ago
  If that customer exists - they sound like a great customer. $75 a month might be too expensive for your needs, but it's certainly not a ton of money if someone believes that product is the right fit for them.
- zeroxfe 9y ago
  But Tarsnap is much more than that -- it deduplicates, it encrypts, it has settings for restricting network, memory, and CPU usage, it caches and checkpoints, etc. I'm happy to pay the premium for the robustness I get from it.
  - ad_hominem 9y ago
    Glad you're happy with it. I went with BorgBackup which I'm also happy with. AFAIK it also does dedupe, encrypt, checkpointing, and can throttle upload speed (don't know about the rest).
    - MarkMc 9y ago
      One of the things I value about Tarsnap is that I can set a permission which does not allow data to be deleted. That is, if a hacker somehow gains access to my server, she cannot delete all the existing backups. More generally, I suspect you are underestimating the number of people who tick one or more of these boxes: (a) Impressed by Colin's security chops and the security focus of Tarsnap such as its Bug Bounty program; (b) Have never heard of BorgBackup; (c) Value customer support; (d) Are worried that an open-source project would not be maintained and prefer a vendor whose livelihood depends on the product (d) Have experience with Tarsnap on previous projects; (e) Only need to store 20 Gb and for whom saving $5 per month is unimportant; (f) Have revenue in the millions and for whom $75 per month is a rounding error. Even if there were no such people and Tarsnap's new user growth was zero, it might still make sense for Colin to triple the price of Tarsnap in order to maximise the income from existing users.
      - ad_hominem 9y ago
        > ... I can set a permission which does not allow data to be deleted. That is, if a hacker somehow gains access to my server, she cannot delete all the existing backups. With GCP/AWS, you can copy and paste a bucket ACL that only allows PUT operations, and enable versioning to ensure nothing can ever be deleted by overwrites. With tarsnap there is one person who can delete all your existing backups - Colin, because he owns the bucket. And he will for sure within 7 days of your account falling below a $0 balance.[1] That might be a feature in case you got killed in a car accident and you want some secret to be buried forever. But for me, I'm archiving my family photos/videos and I'd rather AWS keep charging my account and keep my data alive until my estate can sort out my digital data, which could take months. > it might still make sense for Colin to triple the price of Tarsnap in order to maximise the income from existing users And there's the rub. I don't like the idea of somebody holding my data hostage. I'll gladly contribute to a Patreon if an open source developer needs recurring support. [1]: https://www.tarsnap.com/faq.html#out-of-money https://www.tarsnap.com/faq.html#out-of-money

jacobr1 9y ago

Only if the product is competitively differentiated. If your product is a commodity you to find a value-add or niche. Then you can charge a premium.

ad_hominem 9y ago

Sure, that's a good point especially considering he's a one-man show so it probably makes sense to keep the user base as ruthlessly small as possible just for support reasons alone. It does make me curious though who the target customer is - somebody who's comfortable setting up a Unix CLI tool for their backups (creating a cron job etc.), yet who wants to cede bucket ownership to a 3rd party and pay a 25x markup for the pleasure? I personally don't mind having to click "Create Bucket" in the AWS console if I get to pay $3/mo instead of $75/mo on my 300GB of data. shrugs

tomkarlo 9y ago
If that customer exists - they sound like a great customer. $75 a month might be too expensive for your needs, but it's certainly not a ton of money if someone believes that product is the right fit for them.
zeroxfe 9y ago
But Tarsnap is much more than that -- it deduplicates, it encrypts, it has settings for restricting network, memory, and CPU usage, it caches and checkpoints, etc. I'm happy to pay the premium for the robustness I get from it.
- ad_hominem 9y ago
  Glad you're happy with it. I went with BorgBackup which I'm also happy with. AFAIK it also does dedupe, encrypt, checkpointing, and can throttle upload speed (don't know about the rest).
  - MarkMc 9y ago
    One of the things I value about Tarsnap is that I can set a permission which does not allow data to be deleted. That is, if a hacker somehow gains access to my server, she cannot delete all the existing backups. More generally, I suspect you are underestimating the number of people who tick one or more of these boxes: (a) Impressed by Colin's security chops and the security focus of Tarsnap such as its Bug Bounty program; (b) Have never heard of BorgBackup; (c) Value customer support; (d) Are worried that an open-source project would not be maintained and prefer a vendor whose livelihood depends on the product (d) Have experience with Tarsnap on previous projects; (e) Only need to store 20 Gb and for whom saving $5 per month is unimportant; (f) Have revenue in the millions and for whom $75 per month is a rounding error. Even if there were no such people and Tarsnap's new user growth was zero, it might still make sense for Colin to triple the price of Tarsnap in order to maximise the income from existing users.
    - ad_hominem 9y ago
      > ... I can set a permission which does not allow data to be deleted. That is, if a hacker somehow gains access to my server, she cannot delete all the existing backups. With GCP/AWS, you can copy and paste a bucket ACL that only allows PUT operations, and enable versioning to ensure nothing can ever be deleted by overwrites. With tarsnap there is one person who can delete all your existing backups - Colin, because he owns the bucket. And he will for sure within 7 days of your account falling below a $0 balance.[1] That might be a feature in case you got killed in a car accident and you want some secret to be buried forever. But for me, I'm archiving my family photos/videos and I'd rather AWS keep charging my account and keep my data alive until my estate can sort out my digital data, which could take months. > it might still make sense for Colin to triple the price of Tarsnap in order to maximise the income from existing users And there's the rub. I don't like the idea of somebody holding my data hostage. I'll gladly contribute to a Patreon if an open source developer needs recurring support. [1]: https://www.tarsnap.com/faq.html#out-of-money https://www.tarsnap.com/faq.html#out-of-money