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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

""Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc."

I wish that were the case and I wish that all customers were like you.

However, I have been tracking - and discussing - these rates with this target market for longer than Backblaze has existed and this market segment is pretty ruthless. They expect google-quality infrastructure at $0-$5 per month and are constantly shopping providers.

We don't market to them at all anymore ... although, I personally can't resist posting in /r/datahoarder from time to time because I like the group ...

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I think you may be overfitting to the backup enthusiast community which is likely a small fraction of their userbase.

Most users:

1. Realize they should back up their stuff.

2. Hunt around for a backup solution provider. At this moment, they are probably very highly price sensitive.

3. Pick one and set it up.

4. Forget about forever, or until the house burns down.

You will never ever see or hear these people on forums and stuff like they because they don't give a crap about backups any more than the average tooth-owner spends time discussing dental hygiene on the Internet. It's just a problem to be solved and forgotten as soon as possible.

This is me. I've been a Backblaze user for a long time, but I'm not sure how long, because I never think about it. I've never had to do a full recovery, but every few years I download a file.

This. I’ve been a Backblaze customer for years. I’m not a backup enthusiast. To me it’s a problem I want to solve and forget about. If I needed to save money on utilities, I’d probably have more to gain by switching my electricity provider, my insurance provider, or my internet provider. The possibility that there might exist a slightly cheaper backup provider isn’t particularly exciting to me, and hasn’t been on my radar.

What has been on my radar is that my laptop has a small SSD, and in addition I have an external hard drive containing files that I want to back up but I rarely use. Backblaze used to require that I regularly plug in that hard drive and then keep it plugged in for a few hours. This was a total chore, and meant that I couldn’t just forget about my backups. I seriously considered switching backup providers because of that. Luckily Backblaze eventually introduced a slightly more expensive plan where I don’t have to do that. So at the moment I’m a satisfied customer, and I’m not actively looking for alternatives.

I don't think /r/datahoarder is the target market at all. They're after the home user with a laptop full of documents and photos that they're vaguely aware isn't backed up, and maybe that's something they should do something about?

I was kinda upset when backblaze raised their prices again, but after doing a price and features comparison I realized they’re still way cheaper than the competition with (imho) a better product. The only thing they don’t have is name recognition and they’re not as ruthless about going after customers, if I had to guess, it’s for the reasons you mention, trying to court new customers is a losing battle in this space.

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