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They report 10k€ monthly costs and 1.5k€ revenue. I may be full of it, but I'm fairly confident I could reduce their server costs to below their revenue in a m

They report 10k€ monthly costs and 1.5k€ revenue. I may be full of it, but I'm fairly confident I could reduce their server costs to below their revenue in a matter of days or weeks. 6 million users is a lot, but it's not vast even if they have real-time connections and a lot of storage. I imagine that a lot of HN more experienced users could do the same. Assuming I'm not full of it, that suggests soup.io could be marginally profitable as long as nobody is paid to run it. At 1.5k€ MRR, it would still have to be a labour of love for someone. I couldn't afford to put in the time for free, but surely there are others who can.

fxtentacle 6y ago
I believe they sold exclusive servers as a benefit of their paid subscription. That'll quickly get expensive. Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace.
- jlokier 6y ago
  > I believe they sold exclusive servers as a benefit of their paid subscription. That'll quickly get expensive. Ouch. If they are selling servers that cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, that's foolish and difficult to back out of. If the servers don't cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, cost shouldn't be a problem as it's net income. Doesn't matter if it's expensive. > Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace. It's a lot of work to replace S3 if it's deeply embedded in all the code, and especially if people have been linking directly to S3 buckets. Depends how much data they are storing of course, but S3 migration can be done when there's a compelling need. It's not the cheapest storage around.
  - rzzzt 6y ago
    MinIO has an S3 compatible API: https://docs.min.io/docs/aws-cli-with-minio.html https://docs.min.io/docs/aws-cli-with-minio.html
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      So does B2 (Backblaze), since fairly recently.
    - nix23 6y ago
      Ceph too, would be much cheaper to operate your own server in a traditional server hosting company than AWS.
sosodev 6y ago
Do you think they might have explored options to reduce costs before deciding to discontinue the service?
- scrollaway 6y ago
  I'm usually pretty quick to dismiss such claims as well but in this instance I agree with GP jlokier. I do these kinds of massive emergency cost reductions fairly often with my clients and there's always a story of the current maintainers either missing some critical knowledge about what they're currently using / could use instead; or simply massive tunnelvision. Some key factors here: - Discontinuing expensive parts of the product is better than discontinuing the entire product. - I see the M word being thrown around and that… uh… potentially says something. - "We're not open sourcing because the product is too complicated" is also extremely telling. - VERY often, "I'll discontinue because I can't afford to run it anymore" hides an underlying "I don't want to run it anymore"; one the maintainer sometimes doesn't fully realize themselves. I've seen this a lot on GDPR day, people shutting off services because it's "too expensive to comply". Talked to a bunch of them, and after a lot of chatting it always boils down to "This will give me a much needed break from the stress of running this thing which doesn't pay my rent, and I get to dodge the blame". I'm going to go ahead and extend the offer GP can't make. soup.io maintainers, if you're reading this, are indeed spending 10k+ EUR on infra, and do want to keep your service alive and running, please reach out, I'll work pro bono. I also have some good contacts in the archiving world if it comes to that.
  - monoideism 6y ago
    What "M" word?
    - scrollaway 6y ago
      Microservices ;)
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    Any pain point will push marginal companies out, but it will also turn other non-marginal companies into marginal ones.
x0x0 6y ago
I'd focus on the 1.5k€ revenue. That is the problem -- even if you reduce server costs 10x, you still need someone who wants to run a charity to take over.
nicc 6y ago
> I'm fairly confident I could reduce their server costs to below their revenue in a matter of days or weeks. > I couldn't afford to put in the time for free, but surely there are others who can. OK.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
From my past experiences you could run a site (and we have) with 200k daily unique visitors for <1000$ in hosting costs if it doesn't anything demanding (like write heavy).

fxtentacle 6y ago

I believe they sold exclusive servers as a benefit of their paid subscription. That'll quickly get expensive. Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace.

jlokier 6y ago
> I believe they sold exclusive servers as a benefit of their paid subscription. That'll quickly get expensive. Ouch. If they are selling servers that cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, that's foolish and difficult to back out of. If the servers don't cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, cost shouldn't be a problem as it's net income. Doesn't matter if it's expensive. > Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace. It's a lot of work to replace S3 if it's deeply embedded in all the code, and especially if people have been linking directly to S3 buckets. Depends how much data they are storing of course, but S3 migration can be done when there's a compelling need. It's not the cheapest storage around.
- rzzzt 6y ago
  MinIO has an S3 compatible API: https://docs.min.io/docs/aws-cli-with-minio.html https://docs.min.io/docs/aws-cli-with-minio.html
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    So does B2 (Backblaze), since fairly recently.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Ceph too, would be much cheaper to operate your own server in a traditional server hosting company than AWS.

sosodev 6y ago

Do you think they might have explored options to reduce costs before deciding to discontinue the service?

scrollaway 6y ago
I'm usually pretty quick to dismiss such claims as well but in this instance I agree with GP jlokier. I do these kinds of massive emergency cost reductions fairly often with my clients and there's always a story of the current maintainers either missing some critical knowledge about what they're currently using / could use instead; or simply massive tunnelvision. Some key factors here: - Discontinuing expensive parts of the product is better than discontinuing the entire product. - I see the M word being thrown around and that… uh… potentially says something. - "We're not open sourcing because the product is too complicated" is also extremely telling. - VERY often, "I'll discontinue because I can't afford to run it anymore" hides an underlying "I don't want to run it anymore"; one the maintainer sometimes doesn't fully realize themselves. I've seen this a lot on GDPR day, people shutting off services because it's "too expensive to comply". Talked to a bunch of them, and after a lot of chatting it always boils down to "This will give me a much needed break from the stress of running this thing which doesn't pay my rent, and I get to dodge the blame". I'm going to go ahead and extend the offer GP can't make. soup.io maintainers, if you're reading this, are indeed spending 10k+ EUR on infra, and do want to keep your service alive and running, please reach out, I'll work pro bono. I also have some good contacts in the archiving world if it comes to that.
- monoideism 6y ago
  What "M" word?
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    Microservices ;)
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Any pain point will push marginal companies out, but it will also turn other non-marginal companies into marginal ones.

x0x0 6y ago

I'd focus on the 1.5k€ revenue. That is the problem -- even if you reduce server costs 10x, you still need someone who wants to run a charity to take over.

nicc 6y ago

> I'm fairly confident I could reduce their server costs to below their revenue in a matter of days or weeks. > I couldn't afford to put in the time for free, but surely there are others who can. OK.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

From my past experiences you could run a site (and we have) with 200k daily unique visitors for <1000$ in hosting costs if it doesn't anything demanding (like write heavy).