Then you likely a customer of the Community satellites at the moment:
Storj cannot subsidize small customers anymore. You may say “thank you” to the AI hardware boom.
As @arrogantrabbit said many times everywhere and in this thread too, race to the bottom regarding the price will not help.
But that doesn’t seem to be what Stor is saying at all – otherwise why would tokens be accepted for less than $50/mo? The issue seems to be the cost in handling CCs as a form of payment, no?
If storj.io had come back and said, sorry, we can’t have anyone on the system for less than $50/mo regardless of payment method, I wouldn’t have liked it – but at least it would have been consistent. The decision would have been easy (bye bye) and this thread would have been shorter. 
because
Not what others are imagined
To make sure I get your point… you’re saying that Storj is losing money on any user at less than $50/mo worth of storage/egress, but since you’ll put up with it for node operators (for obvious reasons) you’ll allow it for everyone?
It seems more logical that you would charge everyone whatever your actual storage/egress costs are plus a fair profit – and that node operators would get enough of a discount (or even excess payment if they contributed a ton) to make it worth their resources to stay in the network. Payment method should be irrelevant (except for the issue of having periodic CC charges higher to offset whatever nonsense you’re getting from your payment processor).
Not quite so, however, the service fee for payments using STORJ is currently somewhat lower.
I expect that in the future, the rules for verifying whether a client paying for services with STORJ tokens is a royal SNO will be tightened.
Yeah, I asked about that possibility indirectly in a support case I have open. I would be worried that after jumping through hoops to make STORJ token payments, that might suddenly be ripped away as suddenly as the effective 5x increase was thrust upon me as a “small” user. storj.io is very appealing for its architecture, but users need some long term predictability and stability. Everyone expects inflation at least annually (sadly), but huge changes like this are very disruptive.
I understand you perfectly, but we can no longer tolerate negative profits from small clients; that’s life.
If you’re really losing money on small clients, then of course – storj.io is a business, not a charity. So clearly, there’s some fixed overhead cost per customer plus their use of storage and bandwidth. Are you saying that sum (plus a fair profit) is a minimum of $50/mo? I find that shocking (I can understand that you cost more than B2, but at least 7x more if only storing 1TB? Really? The fixed overhead is over $40/mo per customer??) – but at least it would be consistent.
The fact that you allow less than that if paid with tokens is what undermines that assertion. You’re allowing node operators to use the infrastructure at a loss to you as payment for their resources – which makes sense. But why not just discount their bill rather than issue payment in a currency available to everyone?
If storj.io comes back in 6 months or whenever and says, no, only node operators get that effective discount by paying with tokens – sorry small user, you’re back on the hook for a minimum of $50/mo, we’ll be right back where we are now.
I’m just having a hard time believing that the cost per user (plus fair profit) really is $50/mo. I mean are B2, Wasabi, etc. really bleeding THAT much money?
I do not have enough information to say this. I know, that the payment processor is costly enough because of small customers, who may decide to open a dispute instead of deleting their account. And this is not dozens, hundreds. We pay for that more than they pay for the usage, e.g. a single dispute fee of $15 covers three small customers with $5 usage. Or 30 with $0.5 usage.
Big customers from another side doesn’t bring this problem, instead, they bring money.
Pareto Principle.
Yep, as someone who had to deal with Stripe for a small business, I COMPLETELY understand. But again, that sounds like it’s a payment method issue, not a cost of resources issue. So hopefully your management will take one of these ideas about direct ACH debits or top-ups with a CC in $50 chunks to heart – or at least assure us that token payment is here to stay for everyone.
ACH are only USA. USA not the only country in the world.
Apologies – whatever the equivalent is for direct bank withdrawals in various locales. Anything that removes the risk and overhead fees for storj.io and isn’t agony for small customers – hopefully there’s a middle ground here better than crypto.
(That said, it is definitely nice that storj.io offers the 10% bonus to make up for some of the grief with the tokens.)
there are 123 direct bank withdrawals, with 123x20 different papers attached. No way.
Thus payment processors are exist and shave their profit for every single movement.
it doesn’t exist at the moment. The alternative is projects like this:
They will operate in the known circumstances, limits and sanctions.
Of course, it might be not an option for 80% of other world, except EU, and maybe, in some extent, for US.
But, if there would be a satellite operator(s) in all other 122 locations - that can solve the problem.
Wasn’t suggesting storj.io bypass a payment processor … definitely outside any business’s wheelhouse to deal with that for just the reasons you cite. So yes, there is a cost for using a payment processor at all that you must pass onto the customer. But your risk and cost with them are also lowered if you allow them to handle direct bank debits on your behalf – that was my point.
And the community satellite sounds like a great idea – but until it’s reality, small users like me are faced with what to do with our data before July 1.
I can’t even get reassurance that the policy allowing use of tokens to bypass the minimum will stay long term (just as you intimated).
I really like storj.io – but this is getting harder and harder for me to afford or justify, sadly.
Direct bank transfers are available for clients with a contract. It’s not a perfect process, and it’s lengthy. I specifically mentioned 20 attached documents; that’s not an exaggeration, but rather an understatement. Just try it, and you’ll understand. And it also has a cost.
It would be wonderful if you left your feedback there. Perhaps we will finally find the satellite (or satellites) of our dreams.
I don’t know where @kocoten1992 is from, but if they’re from the US, you have a great chance of jumping on the last car of the departing train.
But your existing payment processor (Stripe?) can already do this, for even your small customers, by you just flipping a switch (they charge an administrative fee of course, but it’s not nearly as bad as accepting a CC).
Done.
Saw their post – but not sure what “train” you are referring to.
Removed comment here. For those who read this comment, my bad… UI was terrible… told me my plan is changing with a side by side I assumed was the difference. Only glanced at the right one… really poor UI design for that particular use case!
Funny thing… I actually just started using Storj as a convenient and relatively low cost backup solution after shutting down my ~250TB of Storj node data about a month ago. But after seeing Storj go from $5 > $50/mo well… just another newcomer bait and switch like literally every other company ever. Start low, attract customers then eventually just keep raising prices until your right up there with your competitors and you only end up keeping customers because it’s to much of a pain in the ass to switch. Typical… they’ll push more and more to datacenters… Storj will eventually be just like any other provider but with a little better redundancy. Totally fine for the big guys, but bad for literally everyone else.
I get it… it’s smart for Storj… but as a former SNO I feel a little used because of it. I’ve dedicated over 400TB to Storj for many years typically about 60-70% utilized and sure, it was profitable… But I never really had a reason to USE Storj until now… but I only need it for critical backup stuff… maybe 20-30GB right now… I was fine with a $5 minimum, but as soon as I start using it they pull a 10X on the minimum payment? Storj paid me $1.50/TB and now I have to pay $50 for a few GB? Or even basically nothing just to have an account? And I know… just pay with Storj tokens right? How long do you think that will last? We started out with ‘only pay for what you use!’, then ‘only pay a $5 minimum’ and now ‘only pay a $50 minimum’ but of course pay in tokens and no minimum… which only exists because of the pushback from SNOs when they felt betrayed by implementing the $5 minimum… guess what… that’s temporary too. If they eliminated that now, SNOs would probably revolt! But once they don’t need SNOs anymore… no more pay in token exemption… which means those users will get screwed eventually too. Most likely Storj token will be phased out completely. No SNOs = no need for token = no token exemption. Even if they still use crypto for payments, the logical thing to do is just use existing stablecoins… why don’t they? Probably because it would piss off the SNO community just like when they added the $5 minimum… or if they dropped the minimum payment exemption right now.
And on the $50/mo to ‘maintain’ an account… you can get a whole f*****g VPS with 1TB of storage for $50/mo! Like a decently powerful one too… so trying to justify $50/mo as a maintenance cost is absolutely ridiculous!
And to SNOs… Storj will never be what your hoping it will unless you can pass a SOC2 audit… which itself is a 5 figure yearly cost if you can even meet the requirements… most of you definitely can not.
Goodbye Storj, it was… interesting while it lasted.
Removing my posts again? What is it this time? I corrected my mistake and you removed it anyway!?
This is incorrect. Only accounts that are currently already on the US Regional /SOC2 tier will be migrated to the new Advanced tier which also is SOC2 compliant. The new Standard tier applies to all other account and uses our public global network.
My bad, I corrected that part.
Seconding this, the public network is incredibly important and the vast majority will use it. The SOC2 compliant option exists for when it is required by an enterprise customer or a customer with a more legacy security need.