Jungle Disk Beta No Longer!
After over a year of testing and feedback, we’re pleased to announced that Jungle Disk is now available for purchase.
We announced our pricing plans a few months back, and although many users told us we were crazy for offering the software for just $20 when they’d happily pay more, we’re sticking to our guns - but don’t wait too long, it may not be $20 forever!
Just to review, here’s what you get for $20:
- Jungle Disk software for all three platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux)
- Rights to install the software on an unlimited number of machines with a single S3 account
- Lifetime free upgrades
- A 30-day money back guarantee
Billing for Jungle Disk is being handled by the new Amazon Payments service. Read all about it in our Amazon Payments post.
We had originally planned to offer a subscription price as well, however user feedback showed a heavy preference towards a flat rate. We’re still considering a subscription offering as an option for the future.
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Todd said,
August 3, 2007 @ 6:55 am
Ah, here’s a payment link not using GAnalytics __utmLinker() (which is blocked by default by anyone using a number of Firefox extensions and Greasemonkey scripts…).
David Mackey said,
August 4, 2007 @ 9:55 am
Congratulations on the release! And yes, you are crazy with the $20 selling point - especially since you are giving free upgrades.
Oskar Austegard said,
August 6, 2007 @ 8:06 am
So I used JungleDisk for a while last year, but then stopped - I just didn’t have that big a need for it. I am therefore unlikely to pay even the modest $20 for the service.
What I WOULD pay for, probably more like $30, or the $20 plus some small monthly fee, is a web interface in addition to the WebDAV interface. Being able to access my files online (and better yet, being able to serve them up through a direct url) that would make for a killer app. I could then, for example, get a cheap, low-capacity hosting plan and use S3 for extended file storage, with drag and drop ease of file management.
DH said,
August 7, 2007 @ 10:29 am
Could we possibly see your business plan?
When I hear free updates for the life of the company it scares me that the company might not be alive too long. What is your incentive to continue to innovate once your new subscriptions rate starts to taper off?
Tim Read said,
August 7, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
Congratulations. I’ve been using your beta versions for a month or so and am very pleased with the results.
I has always admired the Winzip program - cheap and ubiquitous in its time. It didn’t cost much but it sold a lot. I suspect growing your market should be your first priority, you can revisit pricing then or more likely get an offer for your company.
Good luck - I’ve already paid the $20 - and tell people about your product whenever the opportunity arises.
Frankly I wish I’d thought of it.
Jungle Dave said,
August 7, 2007 @ 4:13 pm
The free updates is something we get a lot of questions about. The bottom line is that the online storage and backup market is virtually unlimited - there are millions of potential customers in the market over the next few years. Our success will be based on growing into the broad market, not milking a small user base for each minor upgrade.
Vacilando said,
August 7, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
You are right about the 20 dollar per life model. I’ve just paid. This program is meant for small users who will find it unacceptable to pay regularly, esp. in the age of free web apps from Google etc. You could say 20, 50, 100, with the 100 being for life, but that would just create bad impression, complicate things, you would not earn more, probably. What you’ve done is clear, clean, beautiful.
Moreover, if your product is 20 dollar for life or free, it is hard for others to compete with you. If you raise prices or introduce payment for upgrades, you will see others outdoing you with similar products.
One danger I see for JungleDisk though is that somebody comes up with block-level differential uploads and downloads. This will be the next breaktrough in S3 applications, I believe, greatly speeding up people’s work and making S3 and JD MUCH more useful. I am afraid if somebody does it before you do, your business will suffer, even if it were free. So, any news about the block-level diffs? Me, I can’t wait for it…
Jack Boyce said,
August 9, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
Regarding the one-fee-for-life model (importantly, with unlimited future upgrades): I see a big risk in this becoming an albatross. In every instance I can think of, companies that have offered these deals come to regret it. An example is the Tivo lifetime service fee — they used to offer lifetime guide download service for $199, but eliminated it last year despite its huge popularity.
The problem is if you want to add features that incur operating cost for usage, beyond the Amazon S3 fees paid by the individual. For example, say you add a feature that requires significant computing resources on the Amazon end, on a per-access basis. Your economics won’t work at that point, and you’ve eliminated your ability to change to a different pricing model. Then you are forced to choose from some unpleasant alternatives:
(a) Not roll out the great new feature,
(b) Roll it out as a product separate from Jungle Disk, in which case you lose your branding and user base,
(c) Revoke your lifetime subscription deal to the people who bought it, or
(d) Honor your deal, but lose money on the people who got in at the for-life rate (potentially a lot of money as there will be no disincentive for these people to limit usage)
It seems as though you’re heading for (d), on the assumption that you can grow your way out of any bad economics with the initial users. Perhaps, but it’s risky I think. Personally I’m fine with the model where minor (.x) releases are included, but major (x.) releases require a new license.
Vacilado said,
August 10, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
One fee for life is still good, IMO. Even if Dave does not have surges of money for the great new features, which is what the traditional money hoovering companies rely on, he will have tremendous popularity and little competition (if the product has all the necessary features, of course). I am sure that based on the popularity he can start a host of new services and products, he can derive money from ads and sponsors, etc, and so generate the surges. What I am saying is that popularity will get him the big money for new features, instead of regular charges to the software buyers! Conversely, if he starts charging, the popularity will go down as there will be (perhaps less good, perhaps as good) others providing the same cheaper or free.
Also, do not forget that this is not a rocket science software. A larger company, not speaking of Google and the like, would be able to release something like this very quickly and perhaps for free. Perhaps Amazon will do it once, why not. Perhaps there will be a perfect open source version of it. Again, the only chance for Dave is to do a perfect job asap (again, the block-level diffs are a must!) and definitely do not charge more than once.
Tom said,
August 18, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
Hi,
as i found jungledisk to be an excellent app, i’ve more than happily paid the $20.
I like jungledisk working as a virtual drive, which makes it easy to use 3rd party backup software — therefore I find the built in backup function a bit redundant and maybe even slightly confusing.
Here’s a list of stuff I personally would love to see in future versions:
— some sort of verify function (checksums or whatever) so I can be sure my data are archived completely
— improved user interface (on a mac Configuration should maybe go where the Preferences menu of each app is usually located — under the name of the app). View debug log and View activity log in separate View menu (or perhaps Window menu). Make the app even more ‘transparent’ and standardized in context of each platform’s design patterns.
— standard Help documentation
— ability to connect to multiple buckets at the same time (I understand I can achieve that now by running multiple jungledisk apps at the same time on different ports, but I think it would be really useful to be able to easily mount several buckets as several virtual drives using the app’s configuration dialog)
I hope this helps and I am looking for succesful future of this great application!
Tom
Jungle Dave said,
August 21, 2007 @ 6:39 am
Hu Tom -
Just wanted to let you know that the first of your requests already happens. Jungle Disk verifies the MD5 checksum of the uploaded data to ensure that everything has been uploaded successfully.