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Not technical per se, but I'm interested to know how the "unlimited plan for life" experiment worked out. Did many folks take you up on the offer? I didn't, but

Not technical per se, but I'm interested to know how the "unlimited plan for life" experiment worked out. Did many folks take you up on the offer? I didn't, but I strongly considered it (if I'm being honest I just procrastinated the decision until I realized the deadline had passed).

rsync 5y ago
Shhh ... :) It was, indeed, a very limited test promotion to some small subset of customers and I am still undecided on whether it makes sense to pursue or not. Generally speaking, I dislike "lifetime" offers and there is some bad history with those being badly abused - specifically by cloud providers. Was it Joyent that dishonored the strongspace lifetime offers ? I forget ...
- reaperducer 5y ago
  Generally speaking, I dislike "lifetime" offers and there is some bad history with those being badly abused Back when Sirius Satellite Radio started, it offered "lifetime" subscriptions. People eventually learned that Sirius meant the lifetime of the radio as long as it tied to the purchaser's account, not the human being. Many people got Sirius with their new cars. When they started trading them in three or four years later, they learned that their "lifetime" subscription not only didn't go with them to their new car, but the buyer of their old car also didn't get the old subscription. Today, it wouldn't be as big a deal because you can stream Sirius ($10/month), or some other radio service over the internet. But this was back before even RealPlayer, and the mass adoption of cell phones.
  - mattl 5y ago
    Sirius was early 2000s. RealPlayer was 5+ years before that?
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      Sirius was 1990. RealPlayer was 1995.
      - mattl 5y ago
        I’m not sure that’s true. Wikipedia suggests otherwise.
        reaperducer 5y ago
        I got those numbers from Wikipedia. FWIW, I got my first Sirius radio in 1998.
        mattl 5y ago
        The timeline for this seems all over the place. “The first confirmed music transmission from satellite to radio receiver for Sirius was September 1, 2000 in NYC at the current HQ of SiriusXM.” So what was on in 1998? A precursor to the Sirius service?
  - rsync 5y ago
    I remember this. This is why we’re hesitant - the bad behavior in this area of pricing and promotion makes any offer like this seem scammy …
    - secabeen 5y ago
      Honestly, when I'm buying backups, I want to be a paying customer; that aligns my providers incentives with mine. Being a will-never-pay-again customer means that they want to minimize the costs of serving me, and are happy to see me go. No thanks.
      - mkelly 5y ago
        This is a great way of thinking about it. Same goes for "unlimited" plans: the more I use, the lower their profit margins. I'd rather agree on terms and pay for what I use.
    - cvwright 5y ago
      I think Tivo did a similar thing too, back in the day. (I wasn’t a Tivo customer but I had friends who were.) Sadly, these things never seem to end well.
- selykg 5y ago
  Yes, Joyent was the one that totally screwed the pooch on that. I had a few lifetime plans with them. One was with TextDrive, before the Joyent acquisition/merger and that was their shared hosting plan back when they were doing everything on FreeBSD. Then after the merger they did a sort of pre-VPS type plan where it was using Solaris Containers. Those were really cool little boxes. I also had one of their Strongspace lifetime plans, and that still exists as Expandrive bought them and continues offering the lifetime plans. Edit: oh, and for how it was ended, Joyent was purchased by Samsung (I think it was) and to get the lifetime stuff off the books they basically forced everyone onto their VPS-like solution but only for ~2 years I think it was. So everything disappeared.
- amock 5y ago
  I haven't forgotten how Joyent treated the customer who had lifetime offers and I'll never do business with Joyent again.
- mkelly 5y ago
  I got the offer and really considered it as well! It was the fear of an acquisition that convinced me not to take the offer. I was a TextDrive customer before they were acquired by Joyent, I was a LastPass customer before they were acquired by LogMeIn, and it was CrashPlan's cancellation of CrashPlan for Home that drove me to find rsync.net. None of those other companies are rsync.net, so it's not really fair of me to consider them when making this decision -- but it made me think it's safer to just pay you guys regularly for a good service. Worst case, I spend a little more over the life of my account, but that money is going to a company I really like, so it's not much of a downside.
- tbe 5y ago
  I have two accounts in my name, one for me personally and one for work. I got the offer on behalf of my employer, and was like; what would this even mean for this account? I'm pretty sure I would take the offer had it been for my personal account.

rsync 5y ago

Shhh ... :) It was, indeed, a very limited test promotion to some small subset of customers and I am still undecided on whether it makes sense to pursue or not. Generally speaking, I dislike "lifetime" offers and there is some bad history with those being badly abused - specifically by cloud providers. Was it Joyent that dishonored the strongspace lifetime offers ? I forget ...

reaperducer 5y ago
Generally speaking, I dislike "lifetime" offers and there is some bad history with those being badly abused Back when Sirius Satellite Radio started, it offered "lifetime" subscriptions. People eventually learned that Sirius meant the lifetime of the radio as long as it tied to the purchaser's account, not the human being. Many people got Sirius with their new cars. When they started trading them in three or four years later, they learned that their "lifetime" subscription not only didn't go with them to their new car, but the buyer of their old car also didn't get the old subscription. Today, it wouldn't be as big a deal because you can stream Sirius ($10/month), or some other radio service over the internet. But this was back before even RealPlayer, and the mass adoption of cell phones.
- mattl 5y ago
  Sirius was early 2000s. RealPlayer was 5+ years before that?
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    Sirius was 1990. RealPlayer was 1995.
    - mattl 5y ago
      I’m not sure that’s true. Wikipedia suggests otherwise.
      - reaperducer 5y ago
        I got those numbers from Wikipedia. FWIW, I got my first Sirius radio in 1998.
        mattl 5y ago
        The timeline for this seems all over the place. “The first confirmed music transmission from satellite to radio receiver for Sirius was September 1, 2000 in NYC at the current HQ of SiriusXM.” So what was on in 1998? A precursor to the Sirius service?
- rsync 5y ago
  I remember this. This is why we’re hesitant - the bad behavior in this area of pricing and promotion makes any offer like this seem scammy …
  - secabeen 5y ago
    Honestly, when I'm buying backups, I want to be a paying customer; that aligns my providers incentives with mine. Being a will-never-pay-again customer means that they want to minimize the costs of serving me, and are happy to see me go. No thanks.
    - mkelly 5y ago
      This is a great way of thinking about it. Same goes for "unlimited" plans: the more I use, the lower their profit margins. I'd rather agree on terms and pay for what I use.
  - cvwright 5y ago
    I think Tivo did a similar thing too, back in the day. (I wasn’t a Tivo customer but I had friends who were.) Sadly, these things never seem to end well.
selykg 5y ago
Yes, Joyent was the one that totally screwed the pooch on that. I had a few lifetime plans with them. One was with TextDrive, before the Joyent acquisition/merger and that was their shared hosting plan back when they were doing everything on FreeBSD. Then after the merger they did a sort of pre-VPS type plan where it was using Solaris Containers. Those were really cool little boxes. I also had one of their Strongspace lifetime plans, and that still exists as Expandrive bought them and continues offering the lifetime plans. Edit: oh, and for how it was ended, Joyent was purchased by Samsung (I think it was) and to get the lifetime stuff off the books they basically forced everyone onto their VPS-like solution but only for ~2 years I think it was. So everything disappeared.
amock 5y ago
I haven't forgotten how Joyent treated the customer who had lifetime offers and I'll never do business with Joyent again.
mkelly 5y ago
I got the offer and really considered it as well! It was the fear of an acquisition that convinced me not to take the offer. I was a TextDrive customer before they were acquired by Joyent, I was a LastPass customer before they were acquired by LogMeIn, and it was CrashPlan's cancellation of CrashPlan for Home that drove me to find rsync.net. None of those other companies are rsync.net, so it's not really fair of me to consider them when making this decision -- but it made me think it's safer to just pay you guys regularly for a good service. Worst case, I spend a little more over the life of my account, but that money is going to a company I really like, so it's not much of a downside.
tbe 5y ago
I have two accounts in my name, one for me personally and one for work. I got the offer on behalf of my employer, and was like; what would this even mean for this account? I'm pretty sure I would take the offer had it been for my personal account.