3 ms·

The pricing model doesn't make sense to me. Their prices start at $0.025/GB/month, so renting 1TB of storage for a year would cost $300 - at that price, I could

The pricing model doesn't make sense to me. Their prices start at $0.025/GB/month, so renting 1TB of storage for a year would cost $300 - at that price, I could just buy my own disks and run ZFS myself. I kinda hoped they could offer lower prices using economies of scale. I checked the prices for Tarsnap, expecting it to be cheaper - it's actually 10x more expensive! Maybe someone can explain what I'm missing.

cat199 6y ago
DIY is way cheaper, true. but for comparison, aws is ~$100/tb/month
- generalizations 6y ago
  However, also for comparison, Backblaze is ~$5/TB/month.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  AWS Glacier is ~$4/tb/month. Getting data out of there costs extra, but for backups of last resort you don't expect to ever need, that may be a workable tradeoff.
  - bombcar 6y ago
    IIRC rsync.net doesn’t charge for bandwidth in any direction which for some use cases is nice - a set and forget billing type.
- thw0rted 6y ago
  For a backup use case, I haven't been able to beat the value of a Microsoft premium-whatever family plan. Routinely on sale for $60/yr, it gets you 1TB of backup plus an Office license for 6 users. Obviously you don't have as much control over it as "bare" cloud storage but it's hard to match the price.
anderiv 6y ago
Sure, you could purchase your own drives. But then it wouldn’t be offsite. And it probably wouldn’t be on a redundant internet connection. And most likely not have redundant power and cooling. And, and, and. Self-hosting at home (or in the office) is a great option for some if you’re not worried about needing an offsite backup. For those that do care about this sort of thing, though, the extra you pay to have someone else manage the thing is well worth it.
- Aachen 6y ago
  It can be off-site if you have a friend with Internet where you can stash that disk attached to a raspberry pi. Quite a few people do that and it means you're storing terabytes not at the steep $300/year but at $30/year for every terabyte. I can eat healthily for a month from that difference, that's worth a few minutes of effort setting up port forwarding and installing zfs if that's your thing (personally I'd leave it plain ext4 and dump something encrypted like Restic on it, taking all of 5 minutes to setup from downloading the OS to Pi Reporting for Duty). Calculation: pi 40eur, 1TB external disk 50eur, typical lifespan of a disk 5 years (when excluding including infant mortality which falls under the mandatory 2-year warranty for new electronics), ~8W power draw is ~€15/year. Let's say you also need to replace the pi after 5 years just for good measure. That's 15+(90/5)=€33/year for 1TB, which gets cheaper per terabyte with bigger or multiple drives.
8fingerlouie 6y ago
> Their prices start at $0.025/GB/month, so renting 1TB of storage for a year would cost $300 I came to the same conclusion. I was aware of rsync.net and tarsnap, and have checked their prices in the past, but for raw storage it's simply not competitive. Some of the other features they offer might make it worth it though if you need those. Personally i just need a place to dump a backup of my family photo albums and documents. A full backup is around 1TB (deuplicated, somewhat larger raw), and for that there are much cheaper solutions.
bombcar 6y ago
Offsite - no server needed - not paying for electricity. DIY is often cheaper if you ignore the cost of “doing it yourself” - and securely storing an offsite server is more than just the cost of a disk. Native ZFS is also a feature for those who can use it.

cat199 6y ago

DIY is way cheaper, true. but for comparison, aws is ~$100/tb/month

generalizations 6y ago
However, also for comparison, Backblaze is ~$5/TB/month.
dividedbyzero 6y ago
AWS Glacier is ~$4/tb/month. Getting data out of there costs extra, but for backups of last resort you don't expect to ever need, that may be a workable tradeoff.
- bombcar 6y ago
  IIRC rsync.net doesn’t charge for bandwidth in any direction which for some use cases is nice - a set and forget billing type.
thw0rted 6y ago
For a backup use case, I haven't been able to beat the value of a Microsoft premium-whatever family plan. Routinely on sale for $60/yr, it gets you 1TB of backup plus an Office license for 6 users. Obviously you don't have as much control over it as "bare" cloud storage but it's hard to match the price.

anderiv 6y ago

Sure, you could purchase your own drives. But then it wouldn’t be offsite. And it probably wouldn’t be on a redundant internet connection. And most likely not have redundant power and cooling. And, and, and. Self-hosting at home (or in the office) is a great option for some if you’re not worried about needing an offsite backup. For those that do care about this sort of thing, though, the extra you pay to have someone else manage the thing is well worth it.

Aachen 6y ago
It can be off-site if you have a friend with Internet where you can stash that disk attached to a raspberry pi. Quite a few people do that and it means you're storing terabytes not at the steep $300/year but at $30/year for every terabyte. I can eat healthily for a month from that difference, that's worth a few minutes of effort setting up port forwarding and installing zfs if that's your thing (personally I'd leave it plain ext4 and dump something encrypted like Restic on it, taking all of 5 minutes to setup from downloading the OS to Pi Reporting for Duty). Calculation: pi 40eur, 1TB external disk 50eur, typical lifespan of a disk 5 years (when excluding including infant mortality which falls under the mandatory 2-year warranty for new electronics), ~8W power draw is ~€15/year. Let's say you also need to replace the pi after 5 years just for good measure. That's 15+(90/5)=€33/year for 1TB, which gets cheaper per terabyte with bigger or multiple drives.

8fingerlouie 6y ago

> Their prices start at $0.025/GB/month, so renting 1TB of storage for a year would cost $300 I came to the same conclusion. I was aware of rsync.net and tarsnap, and have checked their prices in the past, but for raw storage it's simply not competitive. Some of the other features they offer might make it worth it though if you need those. Personally i just need a place to dump a backup of my family photo albums and documents. A full backup is around 1TB (deuplicated, somewhat larger raw), and for that there are much cheaper solutions.

bombcar 6y ago

Offsite - no server needed - not paying for electricity. DIY is often cheaper if you ignore the cost of “doing it yourself” - and securely storing an offsite server is more than just the cost of a disk. Native ZFS is also a feature for those who can use it.