This is discouraging. My personal website (just my contact information) is hosted on Storj, and I got on my account to check the status:
Stored data: 60kB (yes, kB, not MB or GB…)
Download (last month): 2.04MB
$5 is way too much for me. Even 50 cents is too much. Paying 50 cents for 60kB is costing $8.53 per MB.
Sadly, I will offboard…
And that’s fine. Why would you pick storj for such a tiny web side? You are not taking advantage of any benefits storj can offer. Seems like you picked an ill-fitting product for what you need, even before cost is considered.
Use cloudflare pages to host your web site. It’s free for personal use and it’s an actual CDN.
It kept me involved with the platform. I wrote some PoC programs that needed refining but worked: backup scripts, a photo export app, CCTV backup… Having my site on Storj kept me working with Storj: when you have a hammer…
Now I don’t have much free time to thinker with those projects as much, and offboarding Storj means I probably won’t resume working on them: when I do have more free time or ideas, thinking about reopening the account, buying tokens or funding the account, create API keys again, download the SDK and everything else will make the idea of resuming the projects feel a lot less enticing…
You never know which customer will become your next cash cow. Could well be the guy(s) costing $160/month - testing before he makes a deal.
Just to help give me a general idea, I’ve been running some approximate numbers to compare costs between Storj and S3, given the new minimum usage fee to consider.
Cost Comparison: S3 Cheaper Until vs. Storj
Presuming ~5% Egress (retrieval & outbound data transfer, us-west-2)
| S3 Storage Class | $5 Storj Fee | $0.50 Storj Fee |
|---|---|---|
| S3 Glacier Instant Retreival | ~887 GB | ~88 GB |
| S3 Standard-IA | ~380 GB | ~38 GB |
| S3 Standard | ~215 GB | ~21 GB |
I could be wrong, but it’s fairly close I suspect. Big caveat is the ~5% egress presumption, totally will depend on usage, but seems appropriate to me for backup type scenarios in my experience. These seem to be about the breakpoints as far as I can tell (S3 cheaper until around these amounts).
If a customer would be happy paying cash cow amounts, it’s rather unlikely they will not be able to spend five bucks (plus some hundreds or thousands of dollars of software engineers’ time) on testing.
FYI: I added the following to the original post.
UPDATE:
Based on the feedback from the community we have decided to move forward with two adjustments:
Official communication about these changes will be coming in the next day or two via email to account holders.
With that path following suggestions:
With the root causes unsolved, will there be new changes on the horizon soon?
Thank you for a quick reaction. This makes me back down from account deletion. I’ll reenable backups and other application data within the next few days.
Great, just made a deposit for enough STORJ to keep my usage funded for the foreseeable future 
Looking forward to continued dialogue on possible solutions. As you can read from many of the reactions, the community seems very committed to a solution.
Oh so you are just here to argue? Well please continue that part without me. If you have more questions I am happy to help.
Edit: You might still be reading the announcement wrong. You paniced because you thought the June invoice will contain the 5$ minimum fee. That was never the case. The only thing that has changed is that according to the new announcement even the July invoice will not contain the 5$ minimum fee. The first invoice that will contain it will be the August invoice that should go out around the 4th of September.
This is very puzzling. The reasons $5 was deemed necessary are supposedly still there. But now anyone can just pay in tokens and not only avoid $5 fee but get 10% discount on top. And now everyone has a strong incentive to do so, unlike before, when people would overpay 10% just to avoid messing with crypto.
So all you did now is ensure you will get paid 10% less 
Then what’s the point of having that $5 in the first place? It can’t be just cost of payment processing — and yet that’s the only variable now.
This is very inconsistent. The right approach would be to address the root cause, such as
What’s for sure, solving the issue by arbitrary imposing different surcharges on different payment methods cannot be a long term solution
Awesome decision, we truly appreciate your generosity and the fact that you’ve listened to the community!
sadly… any company i worked for that has been working with vc or has been taken over completely has gone to shit. and … i hate it when that happens to good companies…
I’ve worked with a couple companies that did well after selling to VCs: so I could see them expanding Storj so they were selling enough used-space to survive.
I kinda want Storj to be bought by Amazon: and rebranded to “S3 Community Edition”. Then pay all the SNOs with Amazon Gift Cards/Credits instead 
Great company funeral plan (
As a customer, I use Storj primarily for backups, and as an operator, I cover my monthly usage fees using the earnings generated from operating Storj. So this particular update doesn’t directly affect me.
However, I find it encouraging and reassuring that the Storj team takes the time to explain plans in detail and genuinely listens to user feedback.
Of course, no service can cater perfectly to everyone’s preferences, but I truly appreciate your ongoing efforts to create a better environment for all users. I’ve recommended Storj to several of my colleagues in the medical field, and a few hospitals have already adopted it based on my suggestion. Please continue providing your excellent service for a long time to come — thank you! 
Hi,
Please clarify the following:
I’m the existing customer since 2017 and participated in early tests when storj storage was slow and glitchy. I upgraded my account to paid in 2022 and added $200 via cryptocurrency and Storj tokens (which you converted to USD).
I use Storj as very long term backup of my personal projects data (~50GB).
I only update my backups once a month so it doesn’t put a strain on your resources.
My monthly payment is around $1 and I expected to use storj for years with my current balance, but enforcing $5 monthly will ruin my backup strategy and centralized S3 storages would cost me less than storj. I am technically experienced and do not need your support, as the forum and knowledge base are enough for me.
So, I have the following questions:
I’ve never used any recurring payments or credit card, I only once refilled my balace with crypto in 2022 adding $200. Will you start draining my balance with $5 per month starting from August?
I’ve also added STORJ tokens via “Add STORJ Tokens” option in billing panel, but you automatically converted it to USD, will this amount be charged $0.5 per month instead of $5 ? If not, what the point of token option in billing ?
Do you feel that my use of Storj (as described above) is generally a burden to you?