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801 points tnorthcutt | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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buro9 ◴[] No.7530017[source]
I would stop using the product if that was the pricing model.

I originally used Tarsnap for a small amount of really important personal data. Data I already have encrypted, and backed up. But data I felt strongly about having a trusted off-site backup for.

It's small data, my billing account shows me I spend around $0.20 per month on this.

Without having been able to try Tarsnap, use it, come to trust it... I would never have had my business sign-up for it and I would continue with home-baked solutions for disaster recovery.

For a startup, being able to translate that utility pricing model to the backups we initially made meant this was extremely affordable and increased with usage (and theoretically our revenue).

I wouldn't have dropped $50 or $100 per month and so would have delayed, avoided and built our own system that was nothing as good as Tarsnap but fulfilled the basic requirement.

Later I'd be in the realm of thinking Tarsnap was reasonably priced, but would I change everything? Probably, but only when it was overdue.

The proposed pricing model introduces a big cliff to climb.

I wouldn't climb that cliff until it was long overdue.

It is precisely because the pricing scales with our use that I could try it personally, and for the startup, without fear of a surprise.

Perhaps I'm no longer your market.

replies(2): >>7530076 #>>7536448 #
1. buro9 ◴[] No.7536448[source]
Apparently it's not the done thing (and will get downvoted) to state that I won't use a $50 per month service when my personal current fee and level of usage is $0.20 per month.

A 250x price rise isn't going to keep me though.

And my point was that it was the experience of the personal usage of Tarsnap that sold me on the business use. Because I knew it would start small and low cost, and scale with our needs just as a pure utility would.

Somehow, pointing this out deserves down votes.