Syncplicity Pricing
The Short Story (for those of you in a hurry)
Update: We haven’t forgotten about those of you in our beta! If you had a Syncplicity beta account as of June 30th and you choose to convert to a free account, it will have twice the normal space (4 GB). If you choose to convert to an Individual Subscription, it will have ten additional gigabytes of space for 50 GB total. New beta accounts without an invite code will have 2 GB for free accounts and 45 GB for Individual Subscriptions.
Many of you have been asking for final pricing and giving tons of great feedback on our initial pricing plans. We’ve been working hard to understand and incorporate your feedback. I’m happy to announce that we’ve finished crunching all of the numbers. Below is Syncplicity’s pricing and account types:
Free: Free forever. Allows up to two computers, 5 revisions per file or 30 days of previous revisions (whichever is less), up to 10,000 files, and 2 GB of storage. The free account expires after 60 days of inactivity.
Individual Subscription: $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Includes unlimited computers, unlimited file versions, unlimited number of files, and 40 GB of storage.
Additional Storage: $9.99 per month or $99 per year for 50 GB of storage. You can add this to your account as many times as you’d like to have even more storage.
An important part of Syncplicity’s growth has been through word of mouth and friends inviting friends. I’m happy to say Syncplicity now has a referral program as well where you can get additional storage bonuses added to your account for every new person that you refer to Syncplicity.
Full details are available here.
What Happened to Unlimited Storage?
Initially, we started with a plan to charge around $20 per month for unlimited storage. The value of Syncplicity is the experience it provides and the fact that it makes your files “active”, not the “passive” storage you can get by using a USB hard drive or an FTP site. Our aim with unlimited storage was to move the worry and cost away from storage in order to focus on the experience being delivered.
With your help, we’ve come up with pricing that allows for a free account and a monthly price as low as $8.25 while still providing enough storage that the basic plan covers the majority of users.
We got lots of feedback from across the Syncplicity community that really boiled down to three themes:
- A trial isn’t enough. There needs to be a free version.
- Many of you felt you don’t have enough data to take advantage of an unlimited plan.
- There should be a lower initial price than $20 per month.
With these three pieces of feedback in mind, we went back to the drawing board to address it. While this new pricing may mean Syncplicity is more expensive for a few of you, for the vast majority of users, the price of Syncplicity is lower than before and we’re now able to offer free accounts.
We hope you like the new pricing. We worked hard to incorporate your feedback and we hope this new pricing addresses much of the comments you’ve given us!
Leonard
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I have to say I was looking forward to the $20/month for unlimited storage plan and would have signed up for that plan the moment it was available. You could have addressed both sides by offering the plan you have now, and still offer an unlimited plan.
Sad to say I will now have to find yet another online storage company because I really don’t want to feel pressured into a “do I really have room to back this up?” scenario.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Well not perfect but ok. 2 GB is not much for free (the 4GB for beta is ok in my opinion). But I would like something between the 10$ a month and free. I would not use unlimited but think of Kevin Ideas to add such an account too. There might be user who search for this. But really cool to have the free option.
THX
Tarses
July 4th, 2008 at 2:09 am
I found Syncplicity’s product very compelling and actually considered signing up for the beta. I’ve been using Mozy and haven’t been happy with performance. Before that, I used Carbonite and wasn’t happy with the performance. See a pattern? I don’t need all the features of Syncplicity (mainly, I just need backup), but it looked like you were going to have a very solid offering. But you’ve priced yourself out of reach for me — I’d immediately be in the $300/year camp. So, I just signed up for ElephantDrive.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I like your features, but since I need to backup/sync more than 40 GB, I will now have to continue my search for cheaper solutions.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I am VERY dissappointed by the decision to go away from the unlimited storage plan. I too would have signed up for $20 per month for unlimited storage. Now that same $20 per month (actually $19.98) will only get me 90 GB of storage - a lot, yes, but not unlimited and not what I was hoping for. It will mean I will still need a secondary backup solution - and that will run me an additional $50 for Carbonite (and your advantage was that you handle external drives, while they don’t). Tell ya what - for $250 per year - offer unlimited storage and you have both my sync and backup business. PLEASE!!
Lou
July 7th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Thanks for your comments guys. A few points of clarification for some of the posts:
1) Active synchronization is more expensive than passive backup. When you store data in a backup-only provider, it only needs to store your data on slow storage like tape. While tape is cheap, you give up the speed required to provide synchronization and anytime access. This is why providers like Mozy & Carbonite require you to submit a request to get your data and wait for an e-mail telling you when your data is ready to retrieve.
Syncplicity is about active data with instant access. It’s a different type of service which requires your data to be stored on fast (and more expensive) hard drives.
2) The unlimited plan originally discussed was for all users. To keep prices as low as possible, like any buffet, users who don’t use much storage help subsidize the costs for users who use lots of storage. At $20 per month, we could offer unlimited storage if everybody was on the unlimited plan, but it’s impossible to do so without it.
Syncplicity was created with the goal of ensuring you always have the data you need before you know you need it. This has lead to instantaneous synchronization, sharing & collaboration, website access, web application integration which is really more about a data management solution to replace multiple apps rather than just simple backup.
Leonard
July 8th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I will be the contrarian and say that I like your model and it seems very fair to me. I am afraid that so many people are used to getting a free ride they don’t seem to realize that in order for you to stay in business, you have to price the product such that you make a good profit. I’d rather the company I eventually use for this type of service be profitable so that (1) they stay around, and (2) have the resources for R&D so they can continue to make the product better. Unlimited plans are often abused by a few to the detriment of the more reasonable many. Once I see some of the features I need, you’ll have a new client in me.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Instead of “Unlimited”, why not have a plan that prices data by the Terabyte?
$20/mo unlimited = $240/year
In that model your thinking was “those who use a terabyte are offset by those who use a gigabyte but pay the same price.”
Expecting to have a $20/month unlimited plan I set out at a measly 768kb upload rate which has been working for a couple weeks to upload my 250GB’s of meticulously ripped/tagged lossless music collection (along with the rest of my other files which don’t use nearly as much space) thinking I would FINALLY have a cost effective backup/sync solution with room to grow. Now, once the data is synced I’ll need to pay $300/yr with hardly any room to grow.
OK, so $20/mo was never really in the cards, but I thought you guys would come up with a reasonable high end limit for a high end $20/mo account. I’m sure the same users that were looking forward to unlimited would be happy with 500GB-1TB.
The feature-set of Syncplicity is great and I can sync/backup my important documents with the free or lower level account. When it comes to music, family photos, and other important but less “needed for access anywhere” files, Syncplicity suggested they would be a force to be reckoned with on price. Now, it’s just one of many in a growing crowd. Most users will go back to using a simple $160 terabyte backup drive or a Windows Home Server or something else that is local and comparatively cheap.
I’ll be back in a couple years when “active” storage hardware doesn’t cost so much.
July 8th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I agree with Jeremy. Set the pricing and offerings different from the crowd. I think everyone was drawn to the Unlimited offering, and now some aren’t too happy. Throw ‘em a bone.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I’m using ElephantDrive plus Foldershare for a backup/sync solution.
Elephantdrive is interactive storage, just like Syncplicity. Have been using it for a couple of weeks, and it works great. Keeps file versions and archives. It also lets you mount the drive if you like, and/or access your files over the web. Downloads are pretty quick (also using S3). $5/mo unlimited storage for one machine, $10/mo for up to 4 machines. I’ve got about 160gb of personal documents and photos.
I was really looking forward to replacing ED and FS with Syncplicity… wonderful implementation. But since I can get everything I need for $5 a month, why would I pay $40? I love what you are doing… you’re ahead of the pack. But 8X the price just won’t seal the deal.
July 13th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Just another beta tester that has been sticking this out because of your dual ‘unlimited’ philosophies: both storage size, and number of backup versions. Just pay up and forget it, you’ll take care of my data, period: this was a revolutionary concept. With your now-standard pricing model, what does your service offer above the others?
I have 60GB or so of music and photos that I want to preserve. I can see that this will become 120GB at some point. I do not consider myself a power user, or this usage pattern to be at all unusual. Seems everyone will need this type of system eventually.
Is it really true that most people aren’t willing to pay more than $5 for something, even if it’s a miserably small amount that requires constant manual fiddling to stay under the limit? That you couldn’t get enough customers by simply offering what we all know will eventually become the norm? And that you couldn’t make a profit if you offered both types of service?
As for your comment about tape (delay) vs hard drive (instant, but expensive) being the distinction you offer: I don’t think it’s that simple. Lots of the services offer instant access for much less. I use Mozy, for example. $5/mo unlimited, one computer. Instant backup. Instant file access. I’d gladly pay $5 per computer, if they offered sync as well as backup.
And form looking at the new capacity info in my control panel, I wonder if you plan to meter per computer? Meaning $10 for 50GB is really a cap of 25GB for each of two computers? I’m possibly misunderstanding that, but obviously that would be even worse.
I’ll try and work the numbers, and look more closely at your higher-end pricing. But I do fear that I too will have look elsewhere for the amount of storage I need. I’d be sorry to not be able to join your community on a paying basis. If I can’t figure out how to make this work financially, I do wish you the best of luck with your very interesting system.
July 13th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I’m a huge fan of how Syncplicity (I’ve tried several other solutions and Syncplicity is the only one that worked out of the box behind my work firewall/proxy), although I have to agree with some of the other replies here about pricing - I don’t synch too much and seriously doubt I’ll ever even come close to the free limit but I realise storage isn’t free (I pay a dollar or two a year for storing stuff on Amazon s3) - so I would rather pay for support or a smaller subscription fee for the space I do use - maybe $10 a year for some kind of enhancement to the free offering? Just a thought…
July 14th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Syncplicity Free is ” free forever. Allows up to two computers, 5 revisions per file or 30 days of previous revisions (whichever is less), …). 5 revisions per file? What do you mean? If I’m working on a paper and have to change it 10 times, waht will happen? And 30 days of previous revisions? Please explain.
July 17th, 2008 at 8:58 am
It would actually help if you had a different pricing plan with lower storage space but no restrictions on file revision etc. I was previously using sugarsync (I like their pricing system) but I’m going to give syncplicity a go as it is more full-featured. I however find your pricing system too rigid.
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:43 am
Its working great as it is now guys! Good stuff, although taking away unlimited storage might prove to be unpopular, it just makes business sense for now i guess.
But i truly believe its far from gone, right now for things to churn you guys would need some cash to plow back into the model…. so hopefully when things get moving, bring back the unlimited storage!
oh yeah… whatever do you mean by 5 revisions per file or 30 days of previous revisions… i hope it just means limited access to the individual revisions and not stopping access to the actual file itself. coz that might just kill take up rate…
cheers!
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
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July 31st, 2008 at 8:27 am
I agree with Tarses and Lyon that I would like to see more flexible pricing plans. Especially something between the Free and $10/month plan. Maybe it’s just me, but there are A LOT of cool web sites/services out there that I would like to use, but I don’t like subscription pricing models. I just can’t bring myself to pay $10, $15, or $20 a month for some service that, although helpful, isn’t critical and isn’t something that I absolutely depend on every day. Sure, it’s only $10 a month, but if you also have several other monthly subscriptions it’s really easy to end up paying hundreds of dollars a year to all of these services.
Anyway, I’d like to see something like a $3 month plan that offers syncing with 3-4 computers and 5 GB storage. I basically want to sync with more than 2 computers but don’t need everything the $10 plan offers and don’t want to spend $10/month for the service either.
August 5th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I think there is a group you are scaring away. I have very low data requirements (less than 2G) but it is essential that I can link 3 computers. $100/year is way too high just to add 1 computer.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I have read the several use cases being discussed here relative to storage and pricing, and I have another one; I am looking for a cloud-based backup/sync solution for my firm’s two dozen consultants, each with a laptop with 1 to n drives, each drive in the 100 GB range.
Syncplicity has appeal except for a couple issues:
- I need my staff to be able to reliably back up everything with no concern for individual file size or aggregate amount.
- The bit or block level updates is mandatory. We deal with many “normal” files, but we each also deal with multiple virtual machine file sets - looking at one of my directories, I see .vmdk and .vmem files ranging from 500MB to 5,000 MB. These are valuable files, but copying 10+GB after each VMWare session is out of the question.
Am I willing to pay for this? Of course.
We currently use iFolder from Novell. This is a very capable product that has none of the weaknesses discussed in the blog or any of the forum threads for Syncplicity. We just want to move the service outside our data center.
I’d like to see you publish some detail relating to what use cases you plan to support as well as where you have no plans. I can accept a statement from you that says “…hey, you have needs we aren’t planning to fill. We are aiming at the low end and you are outside our sweet spot…”. Naturally, I would prefer a different statement that says “Welcome aboard! Your business is exactly what we have been looking for…”
September 17th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Hi
You shoud be the journalist with your great talent
September 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I too have been using MozyPro for a while and am on the unlimited plan. I was hoping to find a solution that offered better performance at the similar pricing point.
With digital photos even in Jpeg from a DSLR in the 4MB range it’s quite easy to use up 50GBs in photos alone.
Take your collection of music - another 30-50GBs.
Now your ‘regular’ documents & presentation stuff - maybe another 10GBs.
In this scenario you’re already at $30 per month ($360 per year).
I really hope what could be an elegant solution be rethought with an unlimited plan for power users.
Until then - I can use Live Mesh for 5GBs. Windows Live One Care 2.0 Beta has 50GBs of photo storage in the cloud backup -included. And after reading these comments I’ll be checking out Elephantdrive too.