We’ve got a lot of great stuff happening this week, including the planned launch of the new Jungle Disk Server Edition and Jungle Disk Simply Backup products, the release of Jungle Disk 3.0 Desktop and Workgroup Editions, as well as a whole new website redesign. As part of this rollout, we are making some changes to our pricing structure that I wanted to explain here first.
Before I get into the specific pricing, I want to make it clear that this pricing only applies to new subscriptions. We’re not changing pricing on existing subscriptions retroactively and have no plans to do so going forward.
After the 3.0 rollout, the pricing for new Jungle Disk subscriptions will be:
- Jungle Disk Simply Backup: $2/month, with 5GB of free storage
- Jungle Disk Desktop Edition: $3/month, with 5GB of free storage
- Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition: $4/month, with 10GB of free storage
- Jungle Disk Server Edition: $5/month, with 10GB of free storage
Although prices are increasing for Desktop and Workgroup edition, we’re including free Cloud Files or managed Amazon S3 storage that mostly offsets the pricing difference. The free storage is pooled across the entire account, so if you have multiple Workgroup or Server subscriptions the included storage can be used by any of your computers.
So why are we changing prices, and why include free storage with each subscription? There were several reasons for making the change:
- We’re beefing up our support operation, moving from 5 day a week business hour support to 7 day a week business hour support. We plan to expand support options further going forward. The new pricing structure helps us ensure we can continue to improve our support for all customers.
- We’ve found that many less technically savvy users have no idea how much online storage space they will need. Often times the only point of reference is that their computer has a 500GB or 1TB hard drive, so they think the service is more expensive than it really is. In reality, most Jungle Disk users have 10GB of storage or less. By including a healthy amount of free storage we help casual computer users better understand the amount of space they may expect to use.
- Many Workgroup administrators have complained about lack of predictable monthly costs for the service, due to the variable pricing on storage. While this change doesn’t eliminate that, it helps control it for many situations. We’re looking at offering quota support and other features in the future to give Workgroup admins more control over their storage costs.
While changing prices is never an easy decision, it’s important for us to have a pricing structure in place going forward that keeps the business healthy and addresses the needs of both customers and the business.
76 Comments
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Andrew said,
November 15, 2009 @ 8:53 am
I think that this is a good move. I have been using Dropbox but their cheapest plan is $100 per year and includes more storage than I will ever use. It will be nice to know that I have the same $2 a month coming off my account and makes it easier to budget.
I was getting a bit worried about the lack of action on Jungledisk’s side and that caused me to move to Dropbox. The new products and changes are really exciting and will see me probably moving back to Jungledisk. Keep up the good work!
Luka Kladaric said,
November 15, 2009 @ 9:15 am
so this will only affect new JungleDisk subscriptions?
I have a lifetime desktop license, monthly plus subscription and I use ~100 GB of cloud files storage…
Peter Urda said,
November 15, 2009 @ 10:10 am
Like the others… I too would like to know how this affects early adopters with lifetime license
Peter Urda said,
November 15, 2009 @ 10:15 am
Also I still think you should support Student “Career Length” licenses (Last as long as you are in college) or a reduced rate for students. I have a lot if friends at my university that see me use Jungle Disk all the time, and have inquired of the sort.
Robert Kosara said,
November 15, 2009 @ 10:35 am
Looks great! Simplifying things and making them less technical is clearly the way to go, or you risk becoming the product of choice for only a niche of technically savvy users. The included storage takes away a good part of the pain of having to pay for the server edition for those of us who are running small, noncommercial websites.
I assume the storage price also includes the charges for requests (for S3), not just the pure storage cost, right? Time to look into managed storage, I guess.
Jason said,
November 15, 2009 @ 10:37 am
I’m a lifetime subscriber without Jungle Disk Plus, how does this effect me? Will I still have the option of paying just $1 per month to get the equivalent of the desktop edition (without the free storage, I presume)?
Andre said,
November 15, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
So even if I don’t want managed storage (because I’m a user who prefers to use my own AWS/Cloudspace account) I’ll pay that amount and have my “free” storage unused?
Or will there be a way to say “Thanks but no thanks” and somehow get the money back for that “free” storage?
Thanks!
Jason Rae said,
November 15, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Hi Jungle Dave, does this affect reseller pricing as well?
Jungle Dave said,
November 15, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
Jason – yes, for new sub-account subscriptions only. We’ll be e-mailing Resellers directly with more info on the upcoming reseller releases.
Jungle Dave said,
November 15, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
Andre – you’re free to use your on S3 account, but there is no discount or money back.
Jungle Dave said,
November 15, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
Jason – There is no change for lifetime users. No additional subscription fees (and no free storage of course). Jungle Disk Plus for lifetime users is still $1.
Cla said,
November 15, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
I strongly disagree wit this move; as first-time JD customer with the lifetime license I always received customer support on weekends (at least one answer on Sundays, a couple on Saturdays, near real-time on weekdays). Until Rackspace bought JD. The weekend support ended. The forum was abruptly closed (maybe another user could help me even on Sunday).
Now this move makes the service more expensive than other hi-level online storage competitors, considering that I don’t have to install anything on my computers to use it and I can access to the storage with any standard tool (rsync, ssh, webdav-https, and more) and ACL for evey file/folder (basically a “workgroup edition”-like service).
And , as far as I know, rackspace storage is NOT geographically replicated as with S3 (I’d be glad to be wrong on this)
I made my company move to JD for workgroup, but I think that from now on any additional user will cost us twice the previous amount. This is killing your future, imho.
My family members won’t use JD for their backups, I guess.
Jasper said,
November 15, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
Cla — that’ very insightful. I didn’t know that Rackspace had bought JD, but I guess I should have figured it out from the link to Rackspace at the top of the page. This would certainly explain why there seems like a constant push to new products and new business models, rather than a focus on making the existing products bug-free and better (see discussions re: beta).
I feel like this should become a case study for Jim Collins.
mds said,
November 15, 2009 @ 5:16 pm
What the meaning of managed Amazon S3 storage?
The main advantage of JD so far has been data access independent from the Jungle Disk client itself (independent Amazon S3 account, source code example for decryption available – it actually works, I created my own access tool just to be read in case …)
Is my understanding right that JD is about to become one of the many cloud storage providers where customers not only depend on closed-source proprietary software but also have to trust the provider with regard to data access?
Jungle Dave said,
November 15, 2009 @ 6:15 pm
Jasper – Please don’t jump to any conclusions about Rackspace somehow being “behind” the products and pricing changes. The current product roadmap was established before the Rackspace acquisition and they have been nothing but supportive in helping us get where we’re at today. Regarding support, we’ve always tried to at least keep an eye on support on the weekends, but coverage has been spotty. We are now going to have full time staff on the weekends. As for the forums, they weren’t closed, they were just moved into different software and are still quite active (access them via http://support.jungledisk.com).
Jungle Dave said,
November 15, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
mds – We’ve offered the Managed S3 storage option since March. You still have the option of using your own S3 account and we’re not planning on removing that. However we found that the _requirement_ to set up an S3 account with separate credentials and a different bill was far too confusing for most users.
Cla said,
November 15, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
@Jungle Dave:
there’s nothing wrong offering the managed S3 storage.
What in my opinion you are wrongly doing is disclosing that doing it this way the users are using an account registered to Jungledisk, therefore their data, albeit encrypted, are exposed to a potential security risk: I don’t own the keys of my S3 account.
Moreover, you bill me $0.15 what you pay around $0,10, benefiting of the Amazon’s volume discounts (the same is for JD+; i protested about that a while ago because with 20GB of data traffic/month my JD fee would pay off for itself: no reply from you). There’s nothing wrong with that (unless, as in my case currently, the transfer bandwidth to and from JD+ server is very slow for one month every three months), but users should know it. I see this as an added cost just to be able to use rsync or other tools.
Last but not least, the current support system is in no way a forum, because it’s closed: I can’t see the questions of other users and I can’t contribute to them. The current system is NOT a forum, it’s a ticketing support system.
Regards
Jungle Dave said,
November 15, 2009 @ 7:42 pm
Cla – The Managed S3 option isn’t about us making money, if we’re lucky it’s a break-even proposition. Although we do get volume discounts on storage, we have to pay the credit card processing fees, bad debt, and other billing costs.
As for the forums, note that that is separate from our ticketing system. You can find the forums linked on the right-hand side of the support site.
Cla said,
November 15, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
thank you jungle Dave for the explanations. I appreciate them.
Glad to see a “JD Executive” replying on the forum, as in the old days.
Jim Jones said,
November 15, 2009 @ 8:12 pm
Hi,
I don’t think Luka’s question was answered – and mine is similar.
I have a lifetime desktop license as well as the $1 monthly plus subscription. I have about 10GB stored on S3 via JD.
How will the new pricing affect me?
Thanks.
Jungle Dave said,
November 15, 2009 @ 11:26 pm
Jim – it doesn’t at all. What you pay won’t change.
Thinking about Online Backup | Gadget Wisdom said,
November 16, 2009 @ 2:42 am
[...] Jungle Disk will be changing its pricing scheme this week, according to its blog. [...]
mds said,
November 16, 2009 @ 6:14 am
@Jungle Dave: Thank you!
oliver said,
November 16, 2009 @ 7:02 am
Will there still be lifetime desktop licenses available for new customers after the switch or should I get one right away. I really don’t need the JD+ Services so wouldn’t be too happy to pay a monthly fee.
Jungle Dave said,
November 16, 2009 @ 10:28 am
oliver – the perpetual license option was discontinued earlier this year
Michael Green said,
November 16, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
Adding to Jim Jones’ question:
I have the $1 plan. Are my upload/download/storage fees unchanged?
Second question:
for the user who signs up today, if the first 5gb is free/included, does that apply to upload/download/storage, or just storage?
thanks,
Michael
I really enjoyed coming here with my questions and seeing Jungle Dave so involved. Thanks!
Jungle Dave said,
November 16, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
Michael – No changes to the Jungle Disk Plus subscription pricing or any of the usage fees.
The included storage just includes storage costs. If they choose Amazon storage they’ll still be responsible for the request/bandwidth fees. Rackspace Cloud Files has no bandwidth/request fees.
Cyril said,
November 16, 2009 @ 7:31 pm
Hi JD team (and JD Customers),
Normally I always left a note like “Good job”, “Nice developpement” , etc … for all evolutions you’re realising on your product as I tested them. But unfortunately, as a reseller, there’s a huge gap between the technologies used by a desktop/server/workgroup version and the reseller version.
You’re pointing the 3.0 and the new web site access … but for resellers, we still have the 2.62b and the old site (hard to sell by the way). So I am not really happy with this news. For a reseller point of view, this changing price is not justified.
Also you point out it’s important to have a priicing structure in place … don’t you think it’s important to us too ? We can’t change the business plan every month otherwise we will be descredited by your clients.
I’ll suggest you to adopt those new prices with the new version (3.0 and website), it will be fair.
Thanks for your attention,
Cyril
Jungle Dave said,
November 16, 2009 @ 7:40 pm
Cyril – Resellers will be getting the new reseller software shortly after the 3.0 release. Note that the “new” pricing also includes 10GB of storage, which offsets most of the price increase in any case.
M said,
November 17, 2009 @ 1:40 am
Look, I don’t mind all of that. I just want to know one thing: Is JungleDisk 3.0 going to run any faster? Because JungleDisk 2.62b is so freakin slow on all my computers (and it slows down the whole computer, not just itself), even with the high-end one that’s running on a 64-bit Windows 7 with 4 gigs of RAM.
Please please PLEASE address this performance issue.
Rich said,
November 17, 2009 @ 5:09 pm
I’m glad that you aren’t changing the pricing structure for existing users. “Bucket pricing” is only a bargain for the consumer who uses the whole (or nearly whole) bucket. Sure, there’s some value in cost-certainty, but if workgroup people use 10 GB, they are looking at a 33% price hike – for people using less than 10 gigs, the increase is substantially higher. I would rather have seen you raise the monthly sub to $3 and keep the usage on an actual use basis.
I’m not against price increases; indeed, you have reached the holy grail of cloud storage where a folder can selectively exist both locally and in the cloud, or just the cloud. That’s significant, no doubt. However, I think it is unfortunate that you abandoned a fairly distinctive pricing model.
MB said,
November 17, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
I have been using JD on a Linux server up until now. If I want to use the new Linux software that allows remote management (Server version, I guess), that means I would need to buy the new version or would I be able to download it for free? Or does the Linux “desktop” version have remote management capabilites as well?
Andrew said,
November 17, 2009 @ 5:34 pm
I’ve have some questions regarding the new pricing structures & reseller edition.
1. Will users who signed up for the server beta edition simply be charged the $5 per month from today or will we have to sign up for a new subscription?
2. What is happening to the reseller product, I presume it will be brought up to version 3 soon.
3. I know trhat existing reseller accounts can’t be migrated to the new reseller Server edition, so for those customers that I wish to move to the Server edition, will it be a matter of creating new accounts & reuploading their data.
4. With the new pricing structures & the different storage options available, I think a storage cost calculator or at least a table showing the different costs for a typical, say 20GB, user would be a good idea.
BTW. Is there a FAQ anywhere that explains the differences between a Shared S3 Account, a Managed S3 Account, Rackspace Cloud Files & now a Backup Vault?
Thanks,
Andrew
Jungle Dave said,
November 17, 2009 @ 11:00 pm
MB – if you want the remote management capability you’d need to move to the Server Edition.
Jungle Dave said,
November 17, 2009 @ 11:02 pm
1. As mentioned in the Server Beta blog post, we’re going to keep the beta free for another 30 days, after which it will convert to a paid subscription (unless you cancel).
2. Yes, very soon. (FYI, I’ve edited the product name from your post, as we try to keep it generic and not associated with JD for the benefit of resellers).
3. They won’t need to create new accounts, but will need to re-upload data in the new format once the reseller version of server edition releaed.
I’m not sure what a “shared” S3 account is, but it’s probably the same as a managed account. Rackspace Cloud files is simply another storage option. A Backup Vault is just the term we use for the new storage format used for backups (with either provider).
JungleDisk goes 3.0 at Scrufus said,
November 19, 2009 @ 9:51 am
[...] comes out with a new pricing structure and updates their software to 3.0. Everything now looks very Rackspace, which recently became their [...]
Gennaro said,
November 19, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
I am really ENORMOUSLY disappointed by the new pricing plan.
Several months ago you wrote that the acquisition from Rackspace would mean only to have more options for online storage (the addition of Rackspace to Amazon).
Now we see how different the harsh reality is, and I doubt I will ever opt for Rackspace if I ever need managed online storage.
I just hope that my subscription for the desktop edition will really remain a “lifetime” subscription and I will never be compelled to switch to the monthly subscription.
best regards
Jungle Dave said,
November 19, 2009 @ 3:01 pm
Gennaro – the pricing changes were made by the Jungle Disk team based on the needs of our business and customers, not based on some directive from Rackspace. We aren’t planning on making any changes for lifetime subscribers.
Gennaro said,
November 19, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
Thank you for your answer Jungle Dave, I am happy to know there are no planned changes for lifetime subscribers.
At the risk of looking harsh, I must confess that I don’t understand how reducing the options for subscription can respond to the needs of customers.
It is great to have new possibilities available, but why have you eliminated a type of subscription which was obviously perfect for a number of us?
regards
Gennaro
Rob Weis said,
November 19, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
We have over 100 work group accounts and still growing. This is going to really impact our back cost structure. Without any prior notification and after a phone call with Jungledisk it was “confirmed” that there would be no changes moving forward with rackspace. I’m very disappointed in this change. We may have to find another provider…
Jungle Dave said,
November 19, 2009 @ 11:13 pm
Rob – this does NOT affect the price of any of your existing subscriptions. It does affect any new subscriptions you add, but note that the price change is mostly offset by the free storage included.
When we said there would be “no changes” after the Rackspace acquisition (which was over a year ago now), we simply meant there were no immediate changes as a result of the acquisition. We didn’t mean that the business would stop moving forward, and adjusting pricing is part of keeping our business healthy and moving in the right direction. The decision was made by Jungle Disk, not Rackspace.
Jeff Doering said,
November 20, 2009 @ 1:47 am
I’m glad Jungle Dave is so upfront and responsive on the changes. That said I would have been very unlikely to pick JungleDisk in the first place if they’d started with their new pricing model. Of course attracting early adopters and transitioning to real maintstream revenue generation may be very different beasts.
Pay what you use + management of my own S3 options were critical featurs in my mind. Increasing the fee and offsetting with flat-rate + managed account storage is not a change I value at all.
Fortunately my lifetime license is locked in although I’m sad to see it go this was as new options (NAS support?) would probalby force me to the new pricing models. Maybe open source will catch up on wrappers around S3 one of these days – maybe I should check if they have.
Still like the product; but I’m skeptical about the direction.
-Jeff
Gennaro said,
November 20, 2009 @ 6:24 am
Jungle Dave – I don’t see any free storage at all for those who opt for the Desktop Edition on S3 rahter than on Rackspace.
Can you confirm that?
Furthermore, I don’t store large amounts of data online, and S3 storage costs to me an average of 0.06 eur/month on one account and about 1 eur/month on another. The small offset offered by free storage is even smaller for people like me.
Why should people not pay just for what they are using?
Finally, it is not clear where Rackspace would physically store the data. Do they have any server in Europe?
regards
Jungle Dave said,
November 20, 2009 @ 8:02 am
Gennaro – The free storage is available for Rackspace or Managed S3 accounts. It doesn’t apply to personal S3 accounts as we don’t bill for that data in the first place. It does cover Amazon EU storage.
We’ve outlined our reasons for the price change in the post. I don’t deny that some users, especially those with hardly any data, would pay more than under the previous pricing, but we felt that was balanced overall by the other objectives we were trying to achieve. We intentionally decided to not make the price change apply to existing subscriptions to ensure this wasn’t perceived as a “price hike” for our current customers.
Rackspace currently only has Cloud Files in the US, but we expect them to expand to other regions in the future.
Jungle Dave said,
November 20, 2009 @ 8:11 am
Jeff – I think you’re right in the sense that our early pricing model targeted tech savvy, early adopters. However the complexity of a purchase price, plus optional subscription (JD+), plus usage charges billed by Jungle Disk (plus/webaccess), plus the requirement to sign up for an Amazon account, plus a separate bill from Amazon, plus long, confusing keys that you had to copy & paste was just way too much for mainstream consumers and businesses. In fact confusion over pricing/billing was the #1 support issue. We clearly needed to simplify.
For a period of time we attempted to offer both options, but more options made it even more confusing and in the end only a small number picked the lifetime option anyway. We think the SaaS model is a good fit to the type of support & upgrades we provide with Jungle Disk. It’s clearly something where we provide ongoing value above and beyond a single purchase. The pricing is simple and easy to understand, even for casual users.
Dylan said,
November 20, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
I’d like to put in my 2 cents.
I’m not sure how I feel about the changes, but it doesn’t really matter for me because my lifetime license is being honored. So that is great.
On the other hand, I think it is great in some cases. My parents happen to be in the online backup market. I’m likely to set them up with the new Simple Backup. I don’t think I would have done that with the old desktop version.
Joe said,
November 20, 2009 @ 3:30 pm
As someone considering getting into the storage reseller space using this product, I’m concerned that JD did has killed the revenue stream for many resellers with this change. What do you existing resellers think about the changes and any advice for someone considering getting started here. Is JD the way to go?
Thanks,
J
Jungle Dave said,
November 20, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Joe – since the new pricing includes 10GB of storage, the actual price for the subscription hasn’t changed much. Also note that since the free storage is pooled across all users on your account, you don’t need to worry about it going to “waste” if you have some low-volume customers.
Most of our resellers sell the product as a managed service to their clients, at a price point far higher than $4/mo.
Joe said,
November 20, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
Jungle Dave,
Thanks. I’d like to arrange to have a conversation with someone on your team about your reseller model. I’m evaluating a number of platforms to base my offering on and I have questions about JD which would clutter up this forum. I don’t want to waste my time/JD support time establishing an account before understanding the administration model, scalability, etc. I would also love some sample financial models either developed by you for your reseller program or scrubbed models used by current resellers. Can you have someone contact me at the address I provided with this post so I can discuss directly?
Thanks in advance.
Joe
Jungle Dave said,
November 20, 2009 @ 5:09 pm
Please contact reseller@jungledisk.com
Edward Reid said,
November 20, 2009 @ 6:21 pm
Just want to add my support for the changes. While I’m tech-savvy and plan to keep my lifetime subscription, the changes made (previously and now) make it far easier for me to recommend JD to less tech-savvy friends and family.
And if the current price model had been in place when I first signed up? I’d have happily accepted it. The quality of the product has made it a great value; the changes in plans are pennies and the improvements are good moves.
For me, one of the most important deciding factors was knowing that even if JD failed, retrieving the data would be possible — not easy, but possible. That remains important.
Edward
CL said,
November 20, 2009 @ 9:59 pm
Desktop pricing has upload and download reversed.
http://www.jungledisk.com/personal/desktop/pricing/
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing
Jungle Dave said,
November 20, 2009 @ 11:20 pm
CL – good catch! We’ve got that fixed. Thanks.
Andrew said,
November 21, 2009 @ 5:55 am
Which is it: the 5 gigabytes referred to in the pricing plan is (a) 5 gigabytes of material on the subscriber’s hard drive, or (b) 5 gigabytes of (compressed) material on Jungledisk’s disks?
Jungle Dave said,
November 21, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
Andrew – it’s 5GB of data stored, so you get the benefit of the compression and de-duplication.
Cyril said,
November 21, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
Hi Jungle Dave,
Let me quote you ” Resellers will be getting the new reseller software shortly after the 3.0 release. Note that the “new” pricing also includes 10GB of storage, which offsets most of the price increase in any case.”
As I checked on your website, I found the first 10GB free is only for the resellers using Rackspace CloudFiles. But I’m using the S3 (Europe) for the storage as I don’t see any storage in Europe from Rackspace.
So for the european resellers like me, it’s harder to accept the rising prices than US resellers.
Regards,
Cyril
Jungle Dave said,
November 21, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
Cyril – the first-10-gb free applies to both Cloud Files and managed Amazon S3 storage – in US or Europe. Let me know where you are seeing otherwise.
Cyril said,
November 22, 2009 @ 3:22 pm
Hi Jungle Dave,
Here the link of the 10GB free for Rackspace but not the others :
http://www.jungledisk.com/business/workgroup/pricing/
Cyril
Jungle Dave said,
November 22, 2009 @ 9:36 pm
Cyril – thanks, we’ll clarify that. The first 10Gb is free for any of the choices.
Daly said,
November 23, 2009 @ 2:09 am
So does my lifetime license transfer between versions? I purchased a lifetime license and am currently using the Desktop version. I am in the process of setting up a home server. Can I continue to use my lifetime license with the server edition when I download it, or do I need to purchase it under the new pricing scheme?
Thanks.
Jungle Dave said,
November 23, 2009 @ 10:53 am
Daly – the lifetime license only applies to the Desktop Edition. It applies to future versions of the Desktop Edition, but not other products.
Rob Weis said,
November 23, 2009 @ 11:25 am
Dave, thanks for the response. That clears up my concerns about existing sub account costs.
Is there any future plans for the workgroup edition to have “enterprise” policies and monitoring? Having over 100+ sub accounts, we really need something that “enforces” that certain folders get backed up and that backup schedules can be “snoozed” but not disabled. I think some of the current reporting will allow us to see who’s using the storage, but it would be nice to have some locked in policies.
Keep up the good work on the product, we really enjoy Jungledisk.
Rick Harris said,
November 23, 2009 @ 1:28 pm
Please help me understand where continuing to resell JD would be profitable? 10GB is nothing anymore. I have clients that have 10GB in emails alone. Are we still going to get bills from Amazon? Why would you sell your resellers at the same price as “joe client” that stumbles onto your website?
Please make this more clear.
A Very Concerned Current Reseller!
Jungle Dave said,
November 23, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
Rick – the 10GB is just the free storage that is included, you still can get as much more as you need for $0.15/GB.
Our reseller pricing has always been the same as retail. Our reseller program is designed for value-added resellers who typically sell the product as a managed service, not simply reselling it like retail software. As such, the expectation is that there is money to be made in charging for the service provided.
We may offer an affiliate program in the future that would offer bounties for referring users to Jungle Disk. That would be more suitable to resellers who want to offer their clients a backup solution but don’t want to do it as a managed service.
Daly said,
November 23, 2009 @ 4:22 pm
Thanks for the clarification.
I’m content on my desktop lifetime license for now. I’ll have to reconsider the Server edition if/when I set up my home server. I’ve been more than happy with Jungle Disk for the past few years, but $60 per year plus data storage charges seems a bit steep to me. There is a point where it may not be practical anymore.
Jungle Dave said,
November 23, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
Daly – we certainly understand. The pricing is more geared towards business users with business critical data. We’re looking at offering a separate product for Home NAS type servers in the future.
Daly said,
November 23, 2009 @ 10:03 pm
That’s good to hear. I’ll be looking forward to it!
It seems like there will be a significant market for this as the popularity for home servers grows.
Thanks
Julian said,
November 26, 2009 @ 1:19 am
As I understand, resellers only can sell “Reseller edition” version of software who equeals “Workgroup edition” of JD offer.
Are there some plans to include Symple Backup or Desktop Edition for resellers?
Jungle Dave said,
November 26, 2009 @ 2:55 am
Julian – no, however the Reseller edition can be re-sold to individuals and function much like Desktop would. You can also turn off the sync/network drive functionality in it so that it works similar to Simply Backup if you prefer.
Julian said,
November 26, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
Thank you Jungle Dave.
yes, Reseller edition can be configured to work similar to symple backup but the price gap is 2 a month. Even more.. that configuration makes that product far from “Symple”. A final user dream is to install, select files to backup and forget. That can’t be reached with reseller edition without customer be obligated to read manuals and learn how to do that.
Milan Cole said,
December 8, 2009 @ 3:42 pm
While I’m excited to see rackspace offer this product, I personally don’t think the pricing makes sense for most small businesses. If you look at the pricing for your e-mail product, you might realize that the incredible success of that product is driven by the pricing model. Why not offer $1 / user for 1GB of file storage with a $10 / month minimum just like with the e-mail product. At that price point, this product would be much more compelling.
Jungle Dave said,
December 8, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
Milan – quite simply, Jungle Disk is a much more expensive product to develop and support than e-mail. Being based on client-software is one reason, however the amount of storage typically used is another – 1GB would not be enough for very many of our customers. 10GB is far more typical.
mds said,
December 9, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
Why is Jungle Disk considerably more expensive than other Amazon S3-based cloud storage providers?
Dropbox for example charges USD 9.99/month for 50 GB storage including traffic, requests, etc.
Jungle Dave said,
December 9, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
mds – not sure why you would consider dropbox less expensive. Even if you used exactly 50GB it would come out to $0.20/GB. Jungle Disk only charges for what you use, whereas with DropBox you’re paying for 50GB even if you only use 10 (at which point it’s costing you $1/GB).
Milan Cole said,
December 10, 2009 @ 2:42 pm
@Jungle Dave- That is a good point. Client software is generally more expensive to support. You might consider offering a lower-cost hosted-only file services as an add-on to rackspace e-mail clients? Then the jungle disk client product cold be an upgrade for those who want it.
Jungle Dave said,
December 10, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
A web-only file manager for Rackspace E-mail & Apps is something we’re considering. That said, we think most of the value in Jungle Disk comes from what the application provides that a website can’t.