I had in mind the example of some German mobile providers that offered supposedly unlimited plans, only to cancel customers who used them too heavily. But yes, if this is a customer that generates a better visibility for the product, brand or company or additional revenue via Followers or recommendation, thus creating additional value, then it would be another picture.
Finished reading the post… yeah, the same ideas as the others mentioned come to mind as well: different plans for different usage scenarious. One plan for everyone isn’t optimum, not for the clients and not for the provider. I’m all for keeping everyone in the network, even the small customers; one short example for “why”:
If you play games on Steam, you are familiar with those ratings for each game - very positive, mostly positive… mostly negative, etc. The upvoting and downvoting is done in an equal mesure by each player, no matter how many hours they played the game, if they baught the game, played a demo, or some free levels, or baught any DLCs. Those ratings influence many people, including myself, to click or not to click Install/Buy the game. I think you see the picture, why every client matters.
Make that at least $1.00 minimum & top-up, otherwise I’m sure you’ll find a whole new category of bot-net, automation, trial, etc. abusers wriggling around the margins; all the while you’re at least attempting to be doubly supportive of that level of tokenomics. Although, I guess the situation is pretty bad, that - that’s the threshold you’re willing to endure. Nevertheless, it is what it is.
2 tokens,
Julio
We know: they are using a gateway (which isn’t charged to the client) and that trickles down to storj to pay for the gateway’s usage. Storj does what every company would do in this case, instead of charging for the gateway’s usage (something that should have been done since day 0), they are charging everyone else to compensate for it.
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While this sounds promising, hopefully it will not end like with that other client who decided to switch to the Select network at the very last second. I hope you have already made them aware of the potentially significant differences between the 2 networks so that they can make an informed decision at an early stage.
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If it is the gateway then you are right with this:
Either pay Storj for the gateway usage or self-host the gateway. I believe this would be a straightforward and reasonable approach…
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Thanks for the update, even if it means some Storjlings having to work over the weekend 
The general tone is concerning, I was actually completely ok with $5 minimum charge, as my data is worth that! and the fiddle in moving elsewhere, giving this solution just works wasn’t worth the effort.
However, the update below is now concerning, you’ve highlighted that there are “small” users effectively still abusing the system, to a point where it’s clearly not profitable.
I’m not sure a discount for using STORJ$ tokens will remove this issue, these abusive users will just move the problem and this $160 user will still be costing over $140.
I would sooner see a flat $5 minimum charge for the use of the Storj hosted S3 gateway, across credit cards and Tokens - hosting this is a cost - there were discussions years ago about giving this away for free was a bad idea (someone might be able to link) - you’ve now confirmed that these 80% small operators aren’t driving business, so giving them Enterprise features isn’t working.
Normal users storing a few hundred GB’s using Native client, or Self hosted S3 should at this stage face no minimum charges - that way SNO’s and small operators have options, that mean we don’t have to see a mass leaving and delete cycle.
If this relates to TTL abuse by setting an expiry of 1 minute, and continuously uploading data, please tackle this directly without this blanket change on the loyal users - you again could put fair usage limits on TTL’s - 1 day feels like a reasonable limit for a home user, although I struggle to think of a valid user case for that - 7 days would be more realistic.
Obviously, as a business you need to take measures to protect the brand, if $5 fixes this easily and we see 80% user drop who only pay you 2% it’s a very quick win - as an SNO I hate all these constant deletes of TTL data, and if that helps remove this, please continue, my nodes stand ready to take all the data from SNO’s who choose to leave 
CP
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Different prices for gateway usage was suggested several times like here:
and here:
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I think I was one in some smaller way. I had (have) an account that I set up to function as a cloud drive for some personal files. I utilize Mountain Duck to mount it on a couple of systems. Sure, it basically functions as Dropbox, Proton Drive, OneDrive, etc… but it was Storj.
Anyhow, this account only had a few MB on it. As it stands, this account never saw any billing. I hadn’t really noticed it, as I just feed Storj into it from my SNO–set it and forget it.
To this end, there is clearly some sort of threshold of operability under which billing is not triggered. I wonder how many of the “outliers” have figured this out and operate under that threshold. I only realized I was at $0 billing by looking more closely at my billing on that account yesterday–because it would have clearly been subject to the $5 minimum as initially enacted.
Or would it have? Would it still have fallen under this magic threshold? Will it still fall under it at the $0.50 (USD) minimum? If it’s not triggering billing then it wouldn’t even do that.
Or, I’m just completely wrong.
If this is true, it’s both concerning and should be cause for further investigation?
Please share details of this with relevant parties (Storlings) without exposing too much more in public. @Alexey
It should be treated similar to a critical bug or security finding and only first be fully disclosed once fixed.
I’ve been thinking about buying a Supermicro 1 PB dedicated server for the Storj Select network, and placing it in our EU DC, that is ISAE 3402 certified (not a SOC2 certification, but more like a EU version of it)
But reading this and other threads, I get the feeling that it might be better spending the money on dedicated SM compute hardware than storage, and offer it for a free one or two year period to Storj in our DC. Dedicating it for running some repair and delete services for the public network, hoping to lower the monthly cost for Storj, and maybe more “Storjays” for public SNO’s in the long run
Th3Van.dk
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There are plenty of SNOs that would happily run satellite services, with the proper compensation of course. Last time this was suggested, the response was that the SNOs would sell customer data on the black market, because those services would have access to sensitive customer info.
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first of all… ChatGPT dashes everywhere… no… man… you have to reread it and make it presentable. second… you run the network for years…only now finding out the small ones are making it unprofitable? this is what you get trying to be the cheapest and not letting customers pay for what they use. this wil be another blow to us SNO’s… another trash round… another unprofitable year. wait… and al the small and medium SNO’s are also gone… then the promise of spreading out your files geographical will also get worse and worse.
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if this is true… the business case has been wrong…
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It looks like you could strip a PB of drives from your public setup: as you still wouldn’t be filling half of what remained? EU Select may have the demand to fill quickly.
Maybe Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc could pull that off for a “new technology”. But Storj is a company most have never heard of, that’s difficult to find concrete details about, never seen any advertising for from.
Is there a referral program?
How do you know that 0% of your billable customers are not referrals from existing SNO/Storj user?
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I think the way I read this is different than the way most of you appear to be reading it. The company is looking at outside investing. Investors look at the books and may have concerns about losses in some areas. The company is lifting these numbers up by charging this fee. Changing the model on how to charge for excessive S3 usage on small accounts might happen one day, but it would likely take significant time to build something out, and the company has been more focused on stability and performance for the customers they are gaining. In the short term, they likely need to address the numbers shortfall for interested investors. So, on paper, charging this minimum fee will likely raise up the numbers to be more acceptable for venture cap.
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And that’s where it all goes down the drain.
Show me one, just one company, that after receiving VC money did not get enshittified, sold, or gone public (because that’s what VC want, that’s the whole point, “growth at all costs”, with pressure to sacrifise long-term user value for short-term financial gains) – at which point the company has fiduciary duty to shareholders, and customers and product become byproducts of the money making machine.
Very sad.
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Well, I think that is a negative outlook, there are certainly mamy companies that have grown and prospered under investors. What they want is to see growth, and that is what everyone wants. It can’t become profitable by losing money, the two things are mutually exclusive. I think whenever change happens around here, we get a lot of FUD but the wheels keep on spinning, the service keeps on growing, and everything continues moving forward. I think the team is doing the best they can, and as mentioned there looks to be even more data adding to the public network soon.
I look forward to seeing Storj turn profitable. For over a decade I’ve been hearing the questions about what happens when the tokens run out? I want to see this company stand on its own, profitable with good stewardship and succeasful products. It will justify the years of work that everyone has put into the company SNO’s included.
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I’m all for VC money. Sure they’ll probably trim SNO payouts… but… they’ll also try to 100x used-space. Bring it! 
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