Everpix is Shutting Down
everpix.com
everpix.com
The truth is, handling photos and backups is hard and time consuming. I was so happy when I started using Everpix just last month. I was so sure that I will never have to worry about backups and storage and that my photos would be always safe. Naive, I know, but I wanted to believe.
Have they charged me $20 a month, I would have been more than happy to pay.
I kept telling every single friend every time I see them post data loss grief status update on Facebook - use Dropbox, use CrashPlan, use iCloud, etc etc. And yet it seems like they either think that their data is not worth $5 a month, or that once accident happens to them it can't happen for the second time.
What the world really needs is an education of how important it is to backup our data.
I'd warn you to not rely on any startup and to make sure your data, if its critical, is dispersed between different services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Sky Drive. I've not used it yet, but you can sync files between cloud services via CloudHQ; https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox
I was pretty happy with clipboard.com for bookmarks. They didn't charge anything. The service got shut down after Salesforce gobbled them up.
It's actually a case where "growth hacking" would have been good for them because they needed more users to justify their fixed costs.
Here's the current crux of the startup world cost structure - it's not variable based on business solution, but rather technical solution - and this is problematic. Here's the general group-thought - the more money we put into a company the quicker it can sustain growth.
Let's say (none of this following data is accurate, just giving an example) it costs $20k to run the servers for Pinterest (which can make $5 per user on advertising) and it costs the same $20k to run Everpix (which is a freemium service, that makes on average $1.50 per user). As long as profit margins are sustainable both companies can survive. The problem is, no tech startup today I know of really assesses their cost structure today because "its cheap". We get the "scale as we grow" cost structures of providers and just assume that economies of scale mean that the more users we get the cheaper it gets. However, it's often is the case that the things that don't scale (humans and human costs) are not entirely sustainable and nearly as predictable.
Very generally speaking, I believe this means a few things:
1) One business model will tend to outweigh others (today this is advertising)
2) Shovel sellers are the more sustainable winners here.[1]
3) I think we'll slowly start to see a re-shift to offshore development as the ecosystem of "get code out the door technologies" (Rails, Node, PaaS-plays, etc) become much more mature in other markets (as it happened during the first .com burst).
One of my favorite Drucker quotes resonates well:
"For the problem of any business is not the maximization of profit but the achievement of sufficient profit to cover the risks of economic activity and thus to avoid loss."
[1]-http://startupsunplugged.com/startup-data/selling-shovels-in...
Only thing I cannot figure from their website is how to upload pictures and albums in bulk. Does someone know if this is possible?
I guess I need to find an alternative... what are they?
Do any of those do that? I guess Dropbox is the most established... I'd hate to be in this same situation in a year from now with Loom...
Everpix was really really easy and I would have been happy to pay double what I was for it, its a real shame to see it shut down.
I have friends that are happy with the smugmug app that uploads to a private album..
The bump would have to been at least something like tenfold to solve anything. According to the article they were -$2,294,818.17 south at the end and their subscription revenue was only $254,060.57. I'm quite confident that would have eaten their 12.4 percent conversion ratio badly.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-d...
Even more amazing to me is why someone like Apple didn't purchase Everpix. They're in desperate need of competent web services, and god knows they have the cash. Of all possible futures for Everpix, I could never have seen outright shuttering as a possibility.
Tools for private photo collections are important, but don't have the same sort of explosive viral growth curve of, say, a public social network. Even private social networks have a more difficult time scaling up quickly compared to the more open but less privacy-respecting alternatives.
Maybe I'm still in mourning, but if I ran a VC fund, Everpix seems like a sure investment. You certainly had much more potential for growth -- and steady revenue -- than another Instagram clone or internet radio service. And once your growth eclipsed your fixed costs (which could have been reduced further by running your own servers when you reached an appropriate size), you'd be consistently profitable. And since Everpix provided such a valuable service, your customers would advertise on your behalf.
However, even I discovered Everpix only a few weeks ago, just before The Verge published a write-up about cloud photo backups -- and crowned Everpix the winner. You were just reaching a critical mass of followers... I can't help but think Everpix would have been a wild success if it stuck around for just another year.
It also strikes me as ... odd? I guess that we have these examples of companies declaiming they will be around "forever", they even put it in their name, and yet only surviving for about 27 months. It reminds me of teenagers in "love".
It'll be nice when, if ever, the industry matures out of this state.
The 'other' benefits is something that sets us apart, with our service you get to choose some photos each month and we will mail 3x5 copies to you (or you can have them sent to someone else like parents or grandparents), monthly merchandising deals like 75% off a photo book or calendar.
I am also a Flickr Pro member. I always thought Flickr+Everpix was a great combination. You can always create a set of apps (desktop/mobile) and have users connect with Flickr accounts to store the pictures. I won't mind paying one time $50-100 for a good Flickr uploader that works more like Everpix.
Edit: I purchased the yearly $40 plan and would definitely have continued paying / using.
As an alternative I'll probably switch to Dropbox, who have been improving their 'photo upload' features, one of which is the ability to automatically upload from iPhoto (similar to how Everpix did it).
One of my favourite features in Everpix was the "1 year ago today" emails they sent, which picked a few random photos from a year ago and dropped them in my inbox. That was a really nice touch.
I used it as my photo library in the cloud. I have far too many photos to put on my phone, but it was nice to be able to look them up to show people when I'm out. Not sure what to use now! Flickr? To be honest, there isn't another service I trust to keep my photos private, and that's what Everpix was billed as.
From the comments, there seems to be a consensus on not charging enough. It'd be interesting to hear from the team why they didn't try charging more or even going thru the crowd funding route.
Will need to hunt down a new alternative.
Pricing is here: https://www.thislife.com/pricing
Disclosure: I work at SFLY
EDIT: I read some of the comments on the Verge's page and it seems that the salaries were over a few years, and apparently that isn't bonkers money! I must be out of touch.