3 ms·

That’s why you create a free Dropbox account or just use your free iCloud account. This is even what 1Password used to recommend as part of its setup, if I reme

That’s why you create a free Dropbox account or just use your free iCloud account. This is even what 1Password used to recommend as part of its setup, if I remember correctly. I’d it was simply storage, the. It would be an add on, but it’s not. It seems like it’s more of a strategy to increase cash flow by converting to ongoing subscriptions instead of one time purchases. This is the same motivation that switched MS Office and Photoshop over to subscriptions. There’s no compelling reason to upgrade, so you get people to fork over a credit card and forget about their reoccurring charge. Cash flow becomes more predictable and possibly increases as well. This why service contract / subscription businesses are popular among investors. I don’t blame them for trying it, but let’s not pretend this is good for users.

UncleMeat 7y ago
Man you aren't thinking deep enough. Just set up your own FTP server! The truth is that my grandmother needs a password manager and she barely understands what minimizing a window does. "Just store your vault in dropbox" is friction and that matters much more to the huge majority of users than the fact that the vault is stored on a cloud service.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- signal11 7y ago
  > Dropbox... is friction Yes, completely agree. Dropbox sync has lots of gotchas and edge cases, and was particularly bad if you edited files on multiple systems (my workstation and laptop, for instance -- I use both interchangeably depending on what I'm doing). I can understand why 1Password built their own sync service instead of playing whack-a-mole with different cloud storage providers' quirks.
awinder 7y ago
So what 1password used to do was charge a higher application fee (think it was like 40 or 50 bucks?) and then also would charge again for larger version releases. Apple (which was/is the largest part of the user base) does not provide a way to do discount pricing on upgrades, and they do provide discounted cuts on their take for subscriptions after the first year. So they absolutely were able to drop the cost to end-users after all of that was factored in, although there are users who have to pay more (people who would stick on old versions). But that’s a nightmare / costly to support, and creates misalignment. Anyways all of that said, the 3rd party sync solutions all suffered from varying degrees of funkiness that just don’t exist with the native solution. Their switching to monthly pricing was, objectively, very successful and didn’t cost majority of users more money. But there are a small number of people who it rubbed the wrong way, clearly, but any business action is bound to piss some small number of people.

UncleMeat 7y ago

Man you aren't thinking deep enough. Just set up your own FTP server! The truth is that my grandmother needs a password manager and she barely understands what minimizing a window does. "Just store your vault in dropbox" is friction and that matters much more to the huge majority of users than the fact that the vault is stored on a cloud service.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
signal11 7y ago
> Dropbox... is friction Yes, completely agree. Dropbox sync has lots of gotchas and edge cases, and was particularly bad if you edited files on multiple systems (my workstation and laptop, for instance -- I use both interchangeably depending on what I'm doing). I can understand why 1Password built their own sync service instead of playing whack-a-mole with different cloud storage providers' quirks.

awinder 7y ago

So what 1password used to do was charge a higher application fee (think it was like 40 or 50 bucks?) and then also would charge again for larger version releases. Apple (which was/is the largest part of the user base) does not provide a way to do discount pricing on upgrades, and they do provide discounted cuts on their take for subscriptions after the first year. So they absolutely were able to drop the cost to end-users after all of that was factored in, although there are users who have to pay more (people who would stick on old versions). But that’s a nightmare / costly to support, and creates misalignment. Anyways all of that said, the 3rd party sync solutions all suffered from varying degrees of funkiness that just don’t exist with the native solution. Their switching to monthly pricing was, objectively, very successful and didn’t cost majority of users more money. But there are a small number of people who it rubbed the wrong way, clearly, but any business action is bound to piss some small number of people.