> Pricing for Polycloud is only $0.004 per GB per month. There are no other fees as long as you do not egress more than 100% of your data during the month. If you do egress more than 100% of the amount of data you have stored then you will only be charged $0.01 per GB for any overages.
Looks like a hidden fee to me. Note that even the Pricing page [2] does not mention it, and the calculator does not allow to enter egress volume for calculation.
[1] https://crowdstorage.com/faq/#what-is-the-pricing-for-polycl... [2] https://crowdstorage.com/products/polycloud/pricing/
Storing a 250GB backup = $1.
Sending to 2 machines 500GB - 250GB = $2.5.
Sending to 10 machines 2500GB - 250GB = $22.5.
How is storing this data so much cheaper than sending it? Especially given that it's stored redundantly?
I can't wrap my head around the fact that electrical signals are priced higher than equivalent HDDs.
Example, HGST 4TB MegaScale -- $60, or $13.46 per TB. Storing 4TB at 0.004 = $16. Transferring it 10 times would be $400.
Total $416, or $356 more than an actual physial hard disk.
Imagine getting a 4TB HDD, transferring the data to 10 computers and then throwing it away.
Being able to pay for excess egress is better at least than risking getting your contract killed by Wasabi if your egress exceeds your traffic.
Storing a 250GB backup and sending to 10 machines: $1 for storage, $22.5 for egress.
Storing a 250 GB backup, 2250GB of /dev/zero, and sending your backup to 10 machines: $10 for storage, $0 for egress.
I think this is standard with cloud storage. Check out this comparison [1], showing 2-6x higher costs for downloads versus monthly storage in B2, AWS, GCP, and Azure.
[1]: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html
They aren't doing 20x replication. They do 20+20? erasure coding, so the overhead is 2x or less.
> Being able to pay for excess egress is better at least than risking getting your contract killed by Wasabi if your egress exceeds your traffic.
You can upload dumb storage as needed in Wasabi. I assume you can do the same here.
Pricing page [1]
> We have no hidden fees and the monthly calculator to prove it.
> Egress $0.00
> No charge for egress, ops, or retrieval.
> With Polycloud from CrowdStorage, you only pay for the storage you need. And we never penalize you with fees for accessing your data.
> No egress charges
> We keep it simple—access your data when you want it, without being nickel-and-dimed with hidden fees.
> Hot storage for cold storage prices.
> Don’t overpay to get the speed you need. Polycloud delivers quick access you data whenever you need it.
> Egress $0.00
Signup page [2]
> Everything you need to store your data for only $4 per TB/mo and no hidden fees.
Terms of service [3]
> 6.1 Device Backup. In the event that you subscribe to a paid version of the Device Backup Services, we will put you on a recurring payment plan that charges you for the fees set forth at https://app.crowdstorage.com/pricing in advance for each billing cycle. We will charge the payment method you specify at the time of purchase and, if you do not cancel the Services prior to the end of the current billing cycle in accordance with Section 7, you will automatically be charged the then-current fee for the Services at the start of the following billing cycle.
> 6.2 Polycloud. With the Polycloud Services, you pay only for what you use. There are no set-up fees or commitments to begin using the Polycloud Services. At the end of each month, you will be charged for that month’s usage of the Polycloud Services as further set forth at https://polycloud.crowdstorage.com/pricing.
[1] Pricing: https://archive.is/K3Dyf [2] Signup: https://archive.is/c3fAf [3] Tos: https://archive.is/xBKJL
We are currently redesigning our website and this will definitely be something we focus on making more upfront and clearer.
So it'll double in price after that. And that's on top of having to round up to the next terabyte or two. But if you want more bandwidth then it looks like it's worth considering.
Side note: It's interesting that above 2TB the deal gets steadily worse.
I think maybe the deal looks like it gets worse because the RAM provided increases significantly.
It scales up and handles PB of data as well.
Unfortunately, no. Users have to regularly back up the data themselves. " That sounds a little contradicting
[1] (Switch to 6*12 tb configuration) https://us.ovhcloud.com/bare-metal/advance/adv-stor-2/
Our website is right now being redesigned and your comments here are helpful to help us know where we need to improve!
For all we know the storage is coming compromised hosts that don't even know they're participating.
Storage comes from services that we offer to end consumers. In exchange for our services they agree to let us use the unused storage on device, i.e. (https://crowdstorage.com/products/device-backup/). We plan on expanding to many more devices.
Storage also comes from being able to transparently leverage more traditional storage that we purchase from various providers.
What region in particular interests you?
How is it different than any other market? To bitcoin nodes? To Torrents, Tor network? Wikipedia depends on donations of random nerds.
Like this is such a self-depreciating perspective, that nothing can be done or relied upon unless its done by a megacorp.
If anyone on this site has built a business that relies on wikipedia having accurate information at all times I'd call them crazy too.
In the same way I wouldn't call this "enterprise" as they have plastered all over the site. Using spare capacity on a bunch of random usb drives that users happen to have online gives me no guarantee of uptime. With a 20+20 they're betting that 21 users won't experience an outage at the same time, and that if a large portion experiences outages that they can rebuild faster than users fail.
Without knowing anything about where the users are coming from, or what kind of contract they've agreed to, you're just giving a company your data that has told you: it'll be secure, TRUST ME!
To just fill you in, Coffee growers grow coffee because the cost of growing coffee is less than the local wholesale price (most of the time.) It is possible to subsist on the profits of growing coffee(depending on where you are).
The price per TB being charged to the consumer is $48 a year. which is significantly less than the initial setup cost to become a data host. (pi + sd card + hdd) That's before we get to the opex of paying for an ISP, (and any bandwidth overages) plus power and general maintenance.
Thats assuming that the company is selling at the price it pays the "hosts". I'm assuming they have some ambition for profitability.
which leads me back to the original statement: you're reliant on a bunch of randomers Who didn't really think about the economics subsidising this company.
There are thousands (millions?) of coffee farmers, so they have no problem.
Unless it’s copied to basically every computer I don’t see how eventually someone would have a corrupted file just because they are unable to piece it back together with available computers.
If the devices storing data go offline we constantly monitor and refresh the pieces to maintain integrity.
The roach motel model would be considered making lemonaide by marketing types - not sure as a customer I'd readily agree :/
$0.005/GB/Month for storage
$0.01/GB for egress
The only "hidden" cost I'd say they have is they have a limit on some API calls. For example their b2_download_file_by_name is limited to 2500 calls per day and then $0.004 per 10k calls after that.
Hetzner storagebboxes/shares are great value - but no s3 api.
Storage is a foundational service in the cloud. There are huge advantages to having that storage sit adjacent to everything else. Such storage as a service somewhere else doesn’t make a lot of sense in many/most use cases. Now you’re having to pay to move data across comparatively slow networks links to where it’s actually needed. It’s a catchy headline but when putting this to the test in real world scenarios those numbers don’t pan out.
This is the "data back up" use case, where you store heaps of data, and hope to never need to access it. For this use case the conditions seem excellent.
> The encrypted data pieces are scattered across our community of users, using small portions of our member’s unused hard drive space
So it's not really comparable to S3 or B2. It's more like storj or sia.
- First, like you indicated is: you can take less margin (and believe me, there's still considerable margin).
- You can play with erasure coding policy. (n+10)/n makes that you can tolerate 10 failures. a higher n makes your storage overhead less. (which means more margin)
- you can use even fancier storage schemes (fe online codes will make your storage overhead something like 3%)
- you can use cheaper hardware.
- ...A couple of questions I have right off the bat are:
How do we know how secure this solution is?
Even if it were incredibly well secured - what are the laws around this setup?
If someone stores illegal materials on this system who is responsible? (The person who stored it? The company? The unsuspecting host?)
What happens if the hosts lose interest or it fails commercially? Does the data get lost without warning when hosts start uninstalling the software?
The problems with these systems is almost never the technology - it’s finding a way to negotiate the millions of different implications storing information on other people’s behalf brings.
We are working on getting as much content up on the website as we can and telling more about us!
Have you looked into the legal aspects of your setup as regards liabilities? It probably doesn’t matter as much from the customer’s perspective as it’s their data so they should know what it contains, but would be worth knowing where this leaves you as a company and/or the network of nodes if some other customer pushed data onto the system that was objectionable.
You say you would use "Standard Data Protection Clauses" if the data goes outside of the US ... but I don't want my data in the US in the first place, so is this really a US only service? How would those clauses be implemented? Does every node have a contractual agreement with you? How would you know if someone took their computer with them on holiday to another country?
Also, how is the data encrypted? "State of the art encryption" is just marketing fluff :)
We plan on launching regions outside of the U.S. that only store data outside of the U.S. soon.
> Also, how is the data encrypted? "State of the art encryption" is just marketing fluff :)
AES256 and/or xsalsa20poly1305.
You can also use SSE-C to provide our servers with a key to encrypt the data (which our servers then promptly forget). https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Server...
How do you handle the data leaving the country? With someone just taking their machine on holiday etc
I like the idea of this but do not yet see the competitive advantage.
Also your FAQ mentions your community of users. Is there a forum/discord where the community can discuss/learn?
It could have be laid out more clearly, though.
Which community is providing 300k devices? Is Polycloud building on top of IPFS or Sia?
There is a 'Contact Us' button at the bottom of the page you can always reach out.
Anyway my advice is giving people something to de risk the cost of migration. IDK maybe an abstraction layer that automatically keeps a backup copy inside s3 glacier . Or something else ...
I don't think this means Polycloud is GDRP compliant. It's my understanding the Privacy Shield Framework was struck down by the EU courts. Might be a bit careful here if you are a EU business.