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I fully agree. It's a hard sell getting people to switch from an evil but known cloud provider to an unknown cloud provider that claims to not be evil. What we

I fully agree. It's a hard sell getting people to switch from an evil but known cloud provider to an unknown cloud provider that claims to not be evil. What we do not need is more cloud offerings that can change, vanish or lock us out at the blink of an algorithm's eye. What we need, rather, are reliable and easy-to-use solutions that allow us to retain full control of our data (i.e. self-hosted and offline) while having feature parity with the big cloud-only solutions. I for one am convinced that there is plenty of money to be made that way. Perhaps not as much on autopilot as with the quasi-scam that is cloud computing, but people willingly paid hundreds or thousands for software before clouds and subscriptions. People will do so again, if you bring a convincing, unique or competitive product to market. That being said, I like, appreciate and support this project for its impetus, even though I think its distribution strategy is misguided and fad-driven (re-selling cloud space instead of selling software). It's not too late to change that...

vishnumohandas 5y ago
Hey, so the project had initially started off as a self-hostable software (with an option to buy a pre-configured device). We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such a product in the consumer space to the point where it can become self-sustaining. We don't have a problem with offering a self-hosted variant. But given our limited engineering bandwidth we had to take a call on who our target market should be, and we felt that it was more important to make privacy accessible to people like my mom and dad. Hence this direction.
- Youden 5y ago
  I get the decision but I think it misses part of the problem: how do you convince people like your mum and dad to start paying for backups and how do you convince them to pay extra for privacy? I suspect the way it usually happens is that somebody your parents trust (like you) tells them to sign up for a privacy-preserving backup service. But who's going to tell them to do that? Do you have the money to pay for advertising? Normally, I'd suspect it's the tech-savvy younger folks who'd tell them to buy something like this but with your pricing and lack of self-hosted options, I suspect you've alienated a large portion of the tech-savvy audience you need to advocate for your product.
  - pininja 5y ago
    If their service works well and is convenient to use, I’ll be recommending it by word of mouth. In the case of my parents, if I can finally consolidate and de-duplicate the photos from our 3+ Apple Photos collections by pointing the service at “library” folders from a few computers and devices, I’ll be a big fan.
  - vishnumohandas 5y ago
    > how do you convince them to pay extra for privacy? We are hopeful that we will be able to reduce the pricing as we scale up and hit a critical mass. > who's going to tell them to do that? We plan to implement a referral program, similar to what Dropbox did, to incentivize existing customers to spread the word. That said, you do bring up interesting points. To repeat, we aren't averse to the idea of maintaining a self-hosted variant. Just that due to our limited bandwidth we had to choose one direction over another. Having advocates is important and I suppose with time we will have clarity on how to best do this without stretching ourselves too thin.
    - Z_I_F_F 5y ago
      I really hope the self-hosted option becomes a thing, but unfortunately "we are not averse to the idea" means especially little in the tech world these days. That being said, really really hoping for your success! It finally fills a MUCH needed gap in 2021 consumer image viewing software. There are many many gaps in it right now. Synology is basically the only self-hosted photo solution that grandma could use. Honestly surprised that more people aren't taking advantage of the opportunity.
    - ignoramous 5y ago
      For our (nascent) product went the other way and prioritised self-hosting at the expense of stretching ourselves too thin, as that's always been #1 ask from folks looking for "consumer-first" alternatives. Time will tell if it was the right way forward, but I just went with "you can't fight gravity" and built it the way folks expect it to be (ex: supabase / posthog / gitlab).
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
- Radim 5y ago
  > We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such [self-hosted product] Spot on. We iterated on a similar product in this space: "privacy preserving", "self-hosted", "open source" etc. But focused on local AI indexing & search of personal videos and photos [0], rather than backups. We ultimately shelved VideoNinja because we weren't able to find a sustainable business angle: * Non-technical people simply don't care (happy locked into Apple / Google). * Technical people understood the proposition, but are super stingy. Case in point, see the responses in this very thread: "$10 per year max; I can buy a HDD for less!". That's one (cheap) restaurant meal per year. So I fully understand your decision to go "cloud". Although that immediately takes your product off the table for me personally. I want nothing of mine (of value) in the cloud. I feel there must be a way to square that circle, the market exists. [0] https://video-ninja.com/ https://video-ninja.com/
  - pkursawe 5y ago
    Just put a price on it, ffs! Make it extensible with plugins. To gain 100% trust make it open source. I am happy to pay good money of a local, non-leaking AI based tagging software for video and photos.
    - Z_I_F_F 5y ago
      Very surprised no one has mentioned Synology yet. This has been done. And it's awesome! I currently have a self-hosted google photos clone and I only paid for the hardware. Highly recommend.
      - naasking 5y ago
        Synology's Moments is ok, but it has issues. Not mobile friendly at all, can only create one shareable link per album, and others can't contribute their pictures to your album. Those are the biggest issues in my experience.
    - tw04 5y ago
      > To gain 100% trust make it open source. I think until they've got a customer base and a proven model a happy median is to put the code in escrow and agree to give the source to paid licensees should the project be abandoned/more than x months without updates/whatever.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Can I suggest adding pricing tier(s) between 100GB and 1000GB? I have between 100gb and 200gb of photos, and £14.99/month seems like a lot considering I only pay £2.49/month for google storage. I'd definitely consider paying a premium for this service, but not 6x.
  - vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Drawing a direct parallel with Google will make this difficult, since they own their storage and network infrastructure and have ways to monetize your data. But here's an explanation on why there are large gaps between plans: - Our 1TB plan costs only 3x the 100GB plan. This model works under the assumption that the average utilization of a 1TB plan (across all customers) will be ~30%. - If we were to bring in an intermediary plan (say 500GB), we would have to increase the pricing of the 1TB plan (since at least 50% will now be utilized), and also set the price of the 500GB plan to at least 2x of the 100GB plan. Both plans now appear unattractive. - Since Apple and Google don't support per GB billing yet (which IMO would have been the fairest way to go), we had to pick buckets, and the current ones seemed like the fairest possible. I hope this makes sense.
    - unclebucknasty 5y ago
      >If we were to bring in an intermediary plan (say 500GB), we would have to increase the pricing of the 1TB plan (since at least 50% will now be utilized), and also set the price of the 500GB plan to at least 2x of the 100GB plan What happens if you start by pricing all tiers "honestly" (i.e. reasonably profitable even at 100% utilization)? Have you determined that the market won't bear that pricing? If so, is there any way to meet in the middle? In general, you may be erring a little too much on the side of asking some customers to grossly overpay for their actual utilization and, in practical terms, 100GB to 1TB is just an extremely wide gap, as evidenced by your parent's comment. So, it seems that most who tip over into the 100GB - 1TB plan will be there, overpaying, for a long time. And, obviously, most people who make it to 1TB will pass through that range. So, if you do see a higher concentration of users in that range than at 1TB (as intuituon would suggest), then you're essentially "punishing" a plurality of your customers by asking them to subsidize a smaller group's pricing. Failing other options, it may be better to do the inverse: raise the pricing of 1TB to accomodate a "friendlier" 500GB plan.
missedthecue 5y ago
What about Google photos is evil? I don't get it.
- SXX 5y ago
  Okay it's easy to downvote, but I'll elaborate instead. First of all Google is trainihg AI models on your data and also able to create shadow profiles for people including those who decide against using Google services. They also used dark pattern on Android for years by enabling cloud sync by default for everything. So a lot of people got all their photos uploaded while they had no idea about feature. So it's not any different from Facebook that constantly tried to collect as much data on you as possible. Do you know what is evil about facebook?
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    I don't really get what's evil about AI models and cloud sync. And I don't think anything is wrong about Facebook's business model. I think most people are uninformed about it and believe that they sell personal data, but if you understand the way they make money, it's very difficult to say that there is any particular issue with it.
    - istingray 5y ago
      Ah, what you really meant was "what's evil about selling my data?" which is a much larger question. And it sounds like you already have your answer.
      - fomine3 5y ago
        They actually don't "sell".
        krageon 5y ago
        They take your data and turn it into something that has value to them. With actual selling, that something is money. In this case it could be something else, but saying it that way will not help the general discourse of this problem at all. Much like being pedantic over terminology.

vishnumohandas 5y ago

Hey, so the project had initially started off as a self-hostable software (with an option to buy a pre-configured device). We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such a product in the consumer space to the point where it can become self-sustaining. We don't have a problem with offering a self-hosted variant. But given our limited engineering bandwidth we had to take a call on who our target market should be, and we felt that it was more important to make privacy accessible to people like my mom and dad. Hence this direction.

Youden 5y ago
I get the decision but I think it misses part of the problem: how do you convince people like your mum and dad to start paying for backups and how do you convince them to pay extra for privacy? I suspect the way it usually happens is that somebody your parents trust (like you) tells them to sign up for a privacy-preserving backup service. But who's going to tell them to do that? Do you have the money to pay for advertising? Normally, I'd suspect it's the tech-savvy younger folks who'd tell them to buy something like this but with your pricing and lack of self-hosted options, I suspect you've alienated a large portion of the tech-savvy audience you need to advocate for your product.
- pininja 5y ago
  If their service works well and is convenient to use, I’ll be recommending it by word of mouth. In the case of my parents, if I can finally consolidate and de-duplicate the photos from our 3+ Apple Photos collections by pointing the service at “library” folders from a few computers and devices, I’ll be a big fan.
- vishnumohandas 5y ago
  > how do you convince them to pay extra for privacy? We are hopeful that we will be able to reduce the pricing as we scale up and hit a critical mass. > who's going to tell them to do that? We plan to implement a referral program, similar to what Dropbox did, to incentivize existing customers to spread the word. That said, you do bring up interesting points. To repeat, we aren't averse to the idea of maintaining a self-hosted variant. Just that due to our limited bandwidth we had to choose one direction over another. Having advocates is important and I suppose with time we will have clarity on how to best do this without stretching ourselves too thin.
  - Z_I_F_F 5y ago
    I really hope the self-hosted option becomes a thing, but unfortunately "we are not averse to the idea" means especially little in the tech world these days. That being said, really really hoping for your success! It finally fills a MUCH needed gap in 2021 consumer image viewing software. There are many many gaps in it right now. Synology is basically the only self-hosted photo solution that grandma could use. Honestly surprised that more people aren't taking advantage of the opportunity.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    For our (nascent) product went the other way and prioritised self-hosting at the expense of stretching ourselves too thin, as that's always been #1 ask from folks looking for "consumer-first" alternatives. Time will tell if it was the right way forward, but I just went with "you can't fight gravity" and built it the way folks expect it to be (ex: supabase / posthog / gitlab).
- robertlagrant 5y ago
Radim 5y ago
> We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such [self-hosted product] Spot on. We iterated on a similar product in this space: "privacy preserving", "self-hosted", "open source" etc. But focused on local AI indexing & search of personal videos and photos [0], rather than backups. We ultimately shelved VideoNinja because we weren't able to find a sustainable business angle: * Non-technical people simply don't care (happy locked into Apple / Google). * Technical people understood the proposition, but are super stingy. Case in point, see the responses in this very thread: "$10 per year max; I can buy a HDD for less!". That's one (cheap) restaurant meal per year. So I fully understand your decision to go "cloud". Although that immediately takes your product off the table for me personally. I want nothing of mine (of value) in the cloud. I feel there must be a way to square that circle, the market exists. [0] https://video-ninja.com/ https://video-ninja.com/
- pkursawe 5y ago
  Just put a price on it, ffs! Make it extensible with plugins. To gain 100% trust make it open source. I am happy to pay good money of a local, non-leaking AI based tagging software for video and photos.
  - Z_I_F_F 5y ago
    Very surprised no one has mentioned Synology yet. This has been done. And it's awesome! I currently have a self-hosted google photos clone and I only paid for the hardware. Highly recommend.
    - naasking 5y ago
      Synology's Moments is ok, but it has issues. Not mobile friendly at all, can only create one shareable link per album, and others can't contribute their pictures to your album. Those are the biggest issues in my experience.
  - tw04 5y ago
    > To gain 100% trust make it open source. I think until they've got a customer base and a proven model a happy median is to put the code in escrow and agree to give the source to paid licensees should the project be abandoned/more than x months without updates/whatever.
nicoburns 5y ago
Can I suggest adding pricing tier(s) between 100GB and 1000GB? I have between 100gb and 200gb of photos, and £14.99/month seems like a lot considering I only pay £2.49/month for google storage. I'd definitely consider paying a premium for this service, but not 6x.
- vishnumohandas 5y ago
  Drawing a direct parallel with Google will make this difficult, since they own their storage and network infrastructure and have ways to monetize your data. But here's an explanation on why there are large gaps between plans: - Our 1TB plan costs only 3x the 100GB plan. This model works under the assumption that the average utilization of a 1TB plan (across all customers) will be ~30%. - If we were to bring in an intermediary plan (say 500GB), we would have to increase the pricing of the 1TB plan (since at least 50% will now be utilized), and also set the price of the 500GB plan to at least 2x of the 100GB plan. Both plans now appear unattractive. - Since Apple and Google don't support per GB billing yet (which IMO would have been the fairest way to go), we had to pick buckets, and the current ones seemed like the fairest possible. I hope this makes sense.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    >If we were to bring in an intermediary plan (say 500GB), we would have to increase the pricing of the 1TB plan (since at least 50% will now be utilized), and also set the price of the 500GB plan to at least 2x of the 100GB plan What happens if you start by pricing all tiers "honestly" (i.e. reasonably profitable even at 100% utilization)? Have you determined that the market won't bear that pricing? If so, is there any way to meet in the middle? In general, you may be erring a little too much on the side of asking some customers to grossly overpay for their actual utilization and, in practical terms, 100GB to 1TB is just an extremely wide gap, as evidenced by your parent's comment. So, it seems that most who tip over into the 100GB - 1TB plan will be there, overpaying, for a long time. And, obviously, most people who make it to 1TB will pass through that range. So, if you do see a higher concentration of users in that range than at 1TB (as intuituon would suggest), then you're essentially "punishing" a plurality of your customers by asking them to subsidize a smaller group's pricing. Failing other options, it may be better to do the inverse: raise the pricing of 1TB to accomodate a "friendlier" 500GB plan.

missedthecue 5y ago

What about Google photos is evil? I don't get it.

SXX 5y ago
Okay it's easy to downvote, but I'll elaborate instead. First of all Google is trainihg AI models on your data and also able to create shadow profiles for people including those who decide against using Google services. They also used dark pattern on Android for years by enabling cloud sync by default for everything. So a lot of people got all their photos uploaded while they had no idea about feature. So it's not any different from Facebook that constantly tried to collect as much data on you as possible. Do you know what is evil about facebook?
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I don't really get what's evil about AI models and cloud sync. And I don't think anything is wrong about Facebook's business model. I think most people are uninformed about it and believe that they sell personal data, but if you understand the way they make money, it's very difficult to say that there is any particular issue with it.
  - istingray 5y ago
    Ah, what you really meant was "what's evil about selling my data?" which is a much larger question. And it sounds like you already have your answer.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      They actually don't "sell".
      - krageon 5y ago
        They take your data and turn it into something that has value to them. With actual selling, that something is money. In this case it could be something else, but saying it that way will not help the general discourse of this problem at all. Much like being pedantic over terminology.