Tell HN: In 1 week Filepicker forces paid signup or lose S3 & image conversion | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: In 1 week Filepicker forces paid signup or lose S3 & image conversion

12 points3pt141595 comments

I've used filepicker pretty liberally for clients, since I knew they only wanted to upload 1 to 5 images a month. For one client I even just set it up on my own filepicker account, since I was sure that they would never use much of my S3 bucket. It's pretty annoying to either bill me 100 bucks a year per install or have to talk to past clients and either get them to transition away or sign up for a paying account, all within the week.

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I think Filepicker have a good service that is worth paying for, but I have two problems with the change of their model:

1. At one week's notice projects that are using S3 storage out in the field will break and need recoding. If any of them are for example built by freelancers where clients have little knowledge of what's going on, the service will be the scapegoat.

2. It probably is not, but this sounds like a desperate search for sudden revenue. If this does not work out and the company abandons the product, then will all my Filepicker URLs and all my code stop working? In this case I would pay for the service, but right away migrate away from them.

Before making the switch you might consider https://uploadcare.com

Benefits of UploadCare:

- Free Tier includes cropping and S3 storage

- Better UI

- Better API (cropping doesn't require a query string which breaks cacheing on some proxies)

Disclaimer: I haven't used UploadCare nor am I affiliated with them

Got an email from them saying that they didn't mean to trick us, and that they had sent a different email giving 30 days warning, which some users may not have got (and which is far more fair).

The only mail over the last months that I got from them was about the Mongo breach... I feel tricked in the way that I am not sure if they are viable in the long run and that I should migrate as soon as possible.

Yes, this is the email I got from them on October 25th:

Hi, Thanks for supporting Filepicker. We recently changed our pricing plans, and wanted to let you know directly.

Today, we support over 30,000 developers and serve over 200 million files per month. As we grow, we continue to invest in our infrastructure & engineering so that we can continue to deliver a superior experience. Therefore we are changing the pricing plans.

Changes: We are reducing the free tier to 500 file uploads per month & the max file size is revised to 20MB. Image conversion, uploading files directly to S3, analytics, adding logo & custom CSS are no longer offered on the free plan. The paid plans start at $ 19/month for the Starter Plan and are available at: https://www.inkfilepicker.com/pricing/

What does it mean for your account: We are grateful for your support over the last year. As an early supporter of the product, we are offering you an opportunity to upgrade to the Enhanced Start plan for just $9/month, 50% off the Start Plan. And, the Enhanced Start plan gives you more benefits than the Start plan: • Up to 5000 files uploaded per month • Max file size of 100 MB • Up to 150000 files converted per month • Upload files directly into your Amazon S3 bucket • Analytics into how your users are uploading files • Add your logo and custom CSS to the dialog

Further, we are offering you a 30-day window to upgrade (till Nov 25th). If you decide not to upgrade, at the end of 30 days, we will work with you to migrate you to the regular Start plan.

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