6 ms·

> $44 per month. That's 14.6% of Tarsnap's gross revenues; Hi Cpervia, Please, please, please, charge more for Tarsnap. Unbeknownst to you, I used you as an

> $44 per month. That's 14.6% of Tarsnap's gross revenues; Hi Cpervia, Please, please, please, charge more for Tarsnap. Unbeknownst to you, I used you as an example in a blog post a year ago: > If cpervia tripled the cost of tarsnap tomorrow I would not bat an eyelash.

cperciva 15y ago
Since your quote missed some important context: That's $44/month per TB of data stored on Tarsnap. Tarsnap's gross revenues are considerably more than $300/month. :-) > Please, please, please, charge more for Tarsnap. Funny thing is, I get lots of people (especially large users) saying exactly the opposite. The fact that there are lots of people who think I'm very wrong in both directions suggests to me that Tarsnap's pricing is about right.
- drx 15y ago
  Not sure if it's a question you'd answer publicly, but have you considered having pricing plans to capture both pies? I'm genuinely curious, not suggesting you should do it.
  - cperciva 15y ago
    You mean to offer a lower price, but say "if you want to pay more, feel free"? I have a feeling that wouldn't work very well.
    - underwater 15y ago
      He means offering tiered pricing.
    - qeorge 15y ago
      The reverse. Offer a high price, but make it easy to get a discount (i.e., by contacting sales and asking for one, or Googling for a coupon). Or offer an Enterprise plan and charge a ton for it. You might be surprised. Some customers may actually prefer it if you charged more, and might not consider Tarsnap if you don't. (Enterprise software is "supposed to be" expensive). At the very least its worth testing.
      - arethuza 15y ago
        Offering a dedicated Windows Server version might be one way of creating an "Enterprise" edition and charging a lot more for it.
        alexgartrell 15y ago
        This is an awesome idea. Do this.
      - nknight 15y ago
        I loathe companies that do this. It's deceptive and inefficient. Don't lie about your prices, and don't give breaks to people that intentionally cost you more by taking up the time of a sales agent.
        gwern 15y ago
        Inefficient? From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination > The effects of price discrimination on social efficiency are unclear; typically such behavior leads to lower prices for some consumers and higher prices for others. Output can be expanded when price discrimination is very efficient, but output can also decline when discrimination is more effective at extracting surplus from high-valued users than expanding sales to low valued users. Even if output remains constant, price discrimination can reduce efficiency by misallocating output among consumers.
        zcid 15y ago
        I fail to see any deception. A company prefers to get price A for their services so they advertise price A. However, the people in charge would be willing to accept price B rather than lose the sale so price B is made available when price A won't cut it. You are offended by it because you are unwilling to negotiate and so these prices aren't available to you. If you don't ask, you'll never know the answer.
    - papaf 15y ago
      You'd be surprised. I found a good introduction to this ideal in the book "The Undercover Economist": http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Economist-Exposing-Poor---Decent/dp/0195189779/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327345856&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Economist-Exposing-Poor---D...
- cletus 15y ago
  > The fact that there are lots of people who think I'm very wrong in both directions suggests to me that Tarsnap's pricing is about right. I have no opinion on Tarsnap's pricing but I will say this: there will always be people who think your server/app/whatever should be cheaper, even when it's free (then they'll complain about the support, uptime or whatever). What's more, the people who aren't willing to pay anything typically make the worst customers. Instead of being grateful for what they're getting, in my experience they tend to consume far more support "bandwidth". You might be doing yourself a favour by cutting such people off (effectively).
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    I don't know, SpiderOak costs $100/yr and I can use up to 100 GB. In comparison, tarsnap would cost at least $130/yr for the 36 GB I use now. It's not about cheapskating, it's about competition.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - rlpowell 15y ago
      As a large customer considering moving to tarsnap, there is one area in which they have no functional competitors I have been able to find: scriptable (i.e. command line based) remote backup with decent deduplication. All of the cheaper options I've found that have deduplication support are GUI based; we simply have too many VMs, and they change to often, for that to be tenable for us at all.
      - StavrosK 15y ago
        I'm assuming you mean deduplication among your own data, in which case, wouldn't compression take care of it? I haven't used tarsnap, what's the benefit over duplicity? EDIT: Oh, you mean deduplication of files between separate backup sets? That is a nice feature, true.
        15y ago
- ww520 15y ago
  Interesting observation. There are always people want lower price, especially the large users who are more cost-driven. However, the only real measurement is if they vote with their feet. Try raise price a bit and see how many people drop off and the impact of the signup rate.
  - cperciva 15y ago
    the only real measurement is if they vote with their feet. They do. I've talked to people who have decided against using Tarsnap because it's too expensive for them; and I've talked to people who used Tarsnap for a while and then left because they decided it was costing them too much. I don't understand people here. I know I'm not a fantastic businessman, but really, I think I might know something about the people who use Tarsnap...
    - MicahWedemeyer 15y ago
      I call these shodoos, as in, "You know what you should do..." My response is always, "Please, tell me your idea." but the response in my head is always, "Yes, I do know what I should do. I've been thinking about this for several years, not just the 10-20 seconds you have."
- sc68cal 15y ago
  Thank you for providing some revenue information about Tarsnap. I am very happy that Tarsnap is doing well financially, for my entirely selfish reasons: 1) This means I can continue using this great service. 2) I hope revenue from Tarsnap helps keep you financially secure, so you can continue doing excellent work on the FreeBSD project. Tarsnap has been bar-none, the best business service that I have ever encountered. Here's the kind of customer care that you get with Tarsnap: https://gist.github.com/1665597 https://gist.github.com/1665597 When there was a security problem with nonces, you quickly disclosed the problem and came up with a fix, so that existing data could be re-encrypted. I GLADLY paid the usage fees to re-encrypt my data, and refused to accept a credit to my account, because I was impressed with how well you took care of the situation. Thank you!

cperciva 15y ago

Since your quote missed some important context: That's $44/month per TB of data stored on Tarsnap. Tarsnap's gross revenues are considerably more than $300/month. :-) > Please, please, please, charge more for Tarsnap. Funny thing is, I get lots of people (especially large users) saying exactly the opposite. The fact that there are lots of people who think I'm very wrong in both directions suggests to me that Tarsnap's pricing is about right.

drx 15y ago
Not sure if it's a question you'd answer publicly, but have you considered having pricing plans to capture both pies? I'm genuinely curious, not suggesting you should do it.
- cperciva 15y ago
  You mean to offer a lower price, but say "if you want to pay more, feel free"? I have a feeling that wouldn't work very well.
  - underwater 15y ago
    He means offering tiered pricing.
  - qeorge 15y ago
    The reverse. Offer a high price, but make it easy to get a discount (i.e., by contacting sales and asking for one, or Googling for a coupon). Or offer an Enterprise plan and charge a ton for it. You might be surprised. Some customers may actually prefer it if you charged more, and might not consider Tarsnap if you don't. (Enterprise software is "supposed to be" expensive). At the very least its worth testing.
    - arethuza 15y ago
      Offering a dedicated Windows Server version might be one way of creating an "Enterprise" edition and charging a lot more for it.
      - alexgartrell 15y ago
        This is an awesome idea. Do this.
    - nknight 15y ago
      I loathe companies that do this. It's deceptive and inefficient. Don't lie about your prices, and don't give breaks to people that intentionally cost you more by taking up the time of a sales agent.
      - gwern 15y ago
        Inefficient? From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination > The effects of price discrimination on social efficiency are unclear; typically such behavior leads to lower prices for some consumers and higher prices for others. Output can be expanded when price discrimination is very efficient, but output can also decline when discrimination is more effective at extracting surplus from high-valued users than expanding sales to low valued users. Even if output remains constant, price discrimination can reduce efficiency by misallocating output among consumers.
      - zcid 15y ago
        I fail to see any deception. A company prefers to get price A for their services so they advertise price A. However, the people in charge would be willing to accept price B rather than lose the sale so price B is made available when price A won't cut it. You are offended by it because you are unwilling to negotiate and so these prices aren't available to you. If you don't ask, you'll never know the answer.
  - papaf 15y ago
    You'd be surprised. I found a good introduction to this ideal in the book "The Undercover Economist": http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Economist-Exposing-Poor---Decent/dp/0195189779/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327345856&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Economist-Exposing-Poor---D...
cletus 15y ago
> The fact that there are lots of people who think I'm very wrong in both directions suggests to me that Tarsnap's pricing is about right. I have no opinion on Tarsnap's pricing but I will say this: there will always be people who think your server/app/whatever should be cheaper, even when it's free (then they'll complain about the support, uptime or whatever). What's more, the people who aren't willing to pay anything typically make the worst customers. Instead of being grateful for what they're getting, in my experience they tend to consume far more support "bandwidth". You might be doing yourself a favour by cutting such people off (effectively).
- StavrosK 15y ago
  I don't know, SpiderOak costs $100/yr and I can use up to 100 GB. In comparison, tarsnap would cost at least $130/yr for the 36 GB I use now. It's not about cheapskating, it's about competition.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - rlpowell 15y ago
    As a large customer considering moving to tarsnap, there is one area in which they have no functional competitors I have been able to find: scriptable (i.e. command line based) remote backup with decent deduplication. All of the cheaper options I've found that have deduplication support are GUI based; we simply have too many VMs, and they change to often, for that to be tenable for us at all.
    - StavrosK 15y ago
      I'm assuming you mean deduplication among your own data, in which case, wouldn't compression take care of it? I haven't used tarsnap, what's the benefit over duplicity? EDIT: Oh, you mean deduplication of files between separate backup sets? That is a nice feature, true.
      - 15y ago
ww520 15y ago
Interesting observation. There are always people want lower price, especially the large users who are more cost-driven. However, the only real measurement is if they vote with their feet. Try raise price a bit and see how many people drop off and the impact of the signup rate.
- cperciva 15y ago
  the only real measurement is if they vote with their feet. They do. I've talked to people who have decided against using Tarsnap because it's too expensive for them; and I've talked to people who used Tarsnap for a while and then left because they decided it was costing them too much. I don't understand people here. I know I'm not a fantastic businessman, but really, I think I might know something about the people who use Tarsnap...
  - MicahWedemeyer 15y ago
    I call these shodoos, as in, "You know what you should do..." My response is always, "Please, tell me your idea." but the response in my head is always, "Yes, I do know what I should do. I've been thinking about this for several years, not just the 10-20 seconds you have."
sc68cal 15y ago
Thank you for providing some revenue information about Tarsnap. I am very happy that Tarsnap is doing well financially, for my entirely selfish reasons: 1) This means I can continue using this great service. 2) I hope revenue from Tarsnap helps keep you financially secure, so you can continue doing excellent work on the FreeBSD project. Tarsnap has been bar-none, the best business service that I have ever encountered. Here's the kind of customer care that you get with Tarsnap: https://gist.github.com/1665597 https://gist.github.com/1665597 When there was a security problem with nonces, you quickly disclosed the problem and came up with a fix, so that existing data could be re-encrypted. I GLADLY paid the usage fees to re-encrypt my data, and refused to accept a credit to my account, because I was impressed with how well you took care of the situation. Thank you!