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Comment by bjeanes | Hacker News Reader

Very very very happy Picturelife user here. Your S3 support is the icing on the cake — but please charge me a flat fee for using your software with my own storage. I want to pay for this great storage but your pricing model only prices on usage.

You're not selling me a utility — you're selling me your fantastic product. Let me pay for it!

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I just signed for Picturelife to take a look at the interface. I said to myself "I'd use this if I could host the images myself" and closed the tab... then I came back to HN and saw your comment that it does support S3. A "host your own" plan would have been an instant purchase for me if it was available.

I'd like to second that opinion. It is a FANTASTIC product, and I would be more than happy to pay to use my own storage. Thank you innonate!

Ha! Thanks -- love that you're asking to pay for it. For now our custom S3 support is a gift. In the future we may change that (and grandfather folks in). In any case, thanks for being a fan.

I'm sure he is serious, and I'd actually take him up on it. That's out of self interest - if people can freeload, then it means you are less likely to survive in the long run. So how about a license fee? Maybe $39-69?

That's kind of the point of this thread, in fact. If you don't charge enough, then you won't survive, and your users lose. I would be uneasy using an important service without paying for it (but I do like the idea of my data living in my own s3 bucket).

Well, our company's PayPal address is linked to nate@picturelife.com -- if anyone wants to pay us for the custom S3 service they are already using, and we are giving away for free, they can feel free!

Like I said, as we take another look at pricing (we are in the middle of it now) we will think about what to do on a more formal level.

Thanks for the feedback.

I can't wait. I wouldn't expect to pay a fee related to the size of my library (I am doing that to S3) but wouldn't hesitate to pay a moderate monthly or one-time fee for the product.

I also once phone interviewed with Picturelife but it was cut off because the recruiter organizing our interaction was an asshat. I'm very happy where I ended up (Heroku), but would have loved to work on Picturelife, fwiw.

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