Hi @kellytrinh thanks for the feedback, we appreciate that you’re looking at it critically before making up your mind.
What I can say is the product team has plans to make this much easier, smoother and automated. While that work is happening, it does mean that some tasks are being handled manually on the meantime. They are a relatively small team, but working around the clock to build all kinds of features and issues in our roadmap.
Although the situation the OP is describing isn’t the end-state, i know that doesnt take away from the frustration of feeling blocked, or feeling that the communication is not as fast/clear as desired. All of us who are developers can recognize that feeling of impatience (or to make it sound sweeter, “eagerness”) to hit the ground running on an exciting idea. Since we know exactly what its like to be in those shoes, we’re working our hardest to continue optimizing the experience. As we continue to hit our benchmark and goals, we will be communicating that to the community.
See that’s where you go wrong if you blindly trust a rant on the internet. It’s a single drop down and you’re perfectly free to select “other” and be done with it. This really isn’t an issue.
It shows.
Look, I’m not gonna say the manual step is great, but it’s a small form. It takes no more than a minute to fill in. And support has so far always been very quick to respond. I’m certain that they wouldn’t keep you waiting as long as you have payment information added (or STORJ). I’m sure this process will be improved soon, but so far they have focused on things that actually make the product better and make people want to pay. There have been significant improvements in the satellite UI, access rights management, performance etc. If I had to choose between those and automated project limit increases, it’s pretty clear where my priorities would be.
It’s 50GB because they can give you that without having to bother you about payment info. The new pricing gave them the option to give you this without using the form. They can’t just give you 200-500GB without making sure your payment info is on file.
I think you kind of inadvertently nailed it here. Right now Storj Labs is a company that takes making the best product seriously. And they don’t stop when the customer forks over the cash. First priority is to make the customer want to pay and then keep them happy they have paid. The making money part will follow later.
There are improvements that can still be made all around and if you keep an eye on the changelog you can tell that making the product better always gets priority over making more money. In my opinion, that’s the better long term strategy. The short development cycles sometimes hide how many improvements have been made already. If they would release an update every quarter it would be a massive release every time. But instead we’re getting a good set of improvements every few weeks. Going by what @jocelyn said, they’ll get to it. But as a (small) customer myself, I have no complaints about where the priorities are atm. I can deal with a small form. And for those who can’t deal with this… https://supportdcs.storj.io/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000683212
I have my doubts about this…
A rant it admittedly was, but I don’t think you read my post properly.
I was willing to submit the form (grudgingly) and I did so.
Maybe I’m just getting old and grumpy but I got on the wrong foot instantly when I was asked for the use case. That’s my business, not the company’s (unless I am wrong once again in assuming that STORJ is an agnostic platform). Call me old fashioned but there has to be a balance of power and that made me feel like the company had the power and I was asking for a favour. Not good if I’m the one paying.
If it’s to plan resourcing then simply ask what resources are likely to be and grow to.
Where they lost me was after a few hours having to go back and register with the ticketing system. I’m sorry, but these are unnecessary steps that lose customers. You may agree or disagree all you want about people these days giving up too quickly but that is the reality of the modern internet.
And quite frankly I’m disappointed that your solution was essentially to brand me a random internet ranter and dismiss my problem with this poor onboarding experience. I hoped you’d know me better than that by now.
I mean, sure, I can understand feeling like it’s none of their business, but I don’t really see what would be wrong with the “other” option in that case. You don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want. Or are you simply offended they asked the question in the first place?
I’m pretty sure this is just there to know what use cases are most common so they know how to develop the product in the future and what to optimize for.
Well I acknowledged that the manual step isn’t ideal. I just really don’t see the issue with a question you’re free to give as little information on as you want. Including no information at all. I feel like that’s driven more by moral outrage than any actual practical objection.
But yes, I do know you better than that and my comment was only referring to that particular objection and not you as a person or your other contributions here on the forum.
So 2 notes there. You have the 1TB as part of early exceptions when Storj Labs gave some additional trust to early adopters. But of course it’s not sustainable long term to offer that to customers without a method to pay for it.
We’ve already established that verifying that payment info for now requires this manual step. So what you actually got was a chance to skip that step as an early adopter. I’m in the same boat. I can see why that makes it a little more confusing. But I think that’s why we have the 1TB without going through these steps.
Keep in mind that with a 1TB limit you can burn through that $5 in less than a month. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a little higher requirement if you used Storj to pay only. But if you meant that your credit card info is on file as well, that shouldn’t be an issue.
yes my credit card info is on file too, not just the $5 storj. I guess the main problem in my case is that one project has 1TB limit and any new projects will get 50GB. For me projects are irrelevant, they are just “names”. I can create as many buckets within the project as I need. For all I care, projects could be removed as they are unneccessary in my case. I just like to do things properly and doing backups into a project named “Test” feels weird…
I’d prefer it if the limit was per account, not per project.
(And/Or as mentioned higher than 50GB, especially with credit card information on file. But jocelyn already said that they are aware of this).
Projects is aimed at larger organizations which will have multiple departments and projects that have to stay within their own quotas. It’s pretty necessary if you want to support larger use cases. For what it’s worth, you can rename projects by clicking the three dots next to the project name in the menu on the left and then edit details. So if you want to swap the large “test” project out, you can do that with a name change.
Absolutely. Only in a single end-user scenario like in my case (and most private backup scenarios) it’s not needed.
Oh thanks a lot! It was a bit more hidden than your description but I found it! Thought the project name was “for life”… That solved my biggest problem The UI still is a bit “difficult” but that’s a known problem too.
Granted, there may well have been a sense of moral outrage. I don’t think there is enough of that going around these days, if I’m honest.
But in that case, if the information is voluntary then it is mostly irrelevant. Why even ask for it?
Anyhoo, I accepted earlier that this may be more of my own problem insofar as I’m not the target audience of the product as an end consumer.
I probably did come across overly ranty but the barrier to product adoption is there and I still believe it needs to be very carefully reconsidered by the people who actually run the thing.
And my apologies if I got riled by your comment, I look forward to reading more of your insightful posts.
Drinks all around and all that!
I haven’t noticed that… may I introduce you to Twitter?
Either way, nothing wrong with taking some moral stands. Just don’t let it get in your way. In this case there was an easy out.
Because plenty of customers will likely gladly explain their use case if that helps getting Storj devs more focused on what’s important to them. It does have a genuine use.
Sure there are things that can be improved. I tend to judge a company not by what still needs improving, but by the rate of improvement. And so far I’m pretty happy with that rate for Storj Labs. I’m sure they’ll get to this manual step soon too.
No need to apologize my friend. I fall into that same pitfall from time to time and could have done better to make clear you’re not some random internet ranter.
Drinks with this awesome community does sound like a great idea. Cheers!
Agree … I’ve read the chain below and I’m not feeling loved … having gone out of my way to set up a node and getting paid pennies for the privilege of funding this operation with hardware and power, I feel like the “attitude” is less than stellar …
The correct answer is “Thank you for your contribution AND we greatly appreciate your TIME and MONEY funding our project! Your ideas and feedback are CRITICAL to the improvement of this product and we value every single message. Please go to ‘this link’ to choose your preferences for future development AND don’t forget to join our Discord channel where we have live discussions with Devs who cannot wait to answer your questions and help you problem-solve your installation … THANKS AGAIN!!!”
Hello,
I apologize that you are not feeling the love. We greatly appreciate support of our platform
It is also true that ideas and feedback are critical to the improvement, and the team strives to convey that in our dealings with community members.
We do not currently have resources on this small team to staff a round-the-clock Discord support channel with live Devs. However we do have a support site, and this forum.
One benefit of the forum format is that problems which are solved are also searchable by other people encountering similar issues in the future.
To be fair, you’re on a community forum and most responses here have been from community members, node operators and customers like me. The responses from Storj Labs here have been pretty much exactly as you describe.
Your beef is probably more with me (and other community members) than it is with Storj Labs.
That said, I do stand by my comments and think that so far the development priorities have been spot on for the most part. What I can say is that community discussions like this have previously led to the exact improvements that have been asked for.
I do take some issue with the suggestion that questions go unanswered or problems unsolved. This is one of the most supportive communities around and if it isn’t a community member who helps out, there is a great Storj community team that works very hard to answer questions and help people out with any issue they may encounter.
That said, we also have lively discussions from time to time and we might not always agree. All that feedback from all sides of the discussion helps Storj Labs with figuring out what the priorities should be. But community responses shouldn’t be misconstrued as representing the opinion of Storj Labs.
The UI still is a bit “difficult” but that’s a known problem too.
I fall into that same pitfall from time to time and could have done better to make clear you’re not some random internet ranter.