So in total: $10 + about $12 + $1.5 (30x connections per day) = $23.5 per month
Mullvad is $5.
Using the big 3 for a VPN is suicide. You do not want to host a business based on bandwidth on those.
A cool tech demo but definitely not viable as a business.
Also, why a California LLC?
$10 is your starting prepaid balance - that you consume by using UpVPN.
California LLC because I'm a resident.
For pricing I describe more in detail in these comments: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36512794 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36513552 -
I think honestly you should try to phase out the "per hour" pricing, and just somehow make it so that each connection doesn't need a separate server, as it is just routing in the end, I think it would be easier to market just as a "no BS subscription!" VPN service, which I think could have a market.
As for the California LLC, I just asked because the California LLC is kind of known for being a PITA, with the fees, privacy, etc. and from what I know, you don't actually have one unless you have physical presence, but then there's some tax filing implications if you file in e.g. Delaware or Wyoming so I don't know too well.
GL!
- work on minimizing the cost and carve out a margin
- go to VC and say "hey I have this VPN service, people seem to like it"
I know the pricing page says "Prepaid starting at $10" but isn't that just the minimum top up?
$10 is the minium you can add to your account, and then it deducts from there.
There is no per-month cost, opening account is free.
ProtonVPN still allows forwarding and is what quite a few fellow pie-rats are now using.
Mullvad is dead.
The privacy policy of UpVPN worries me.... Although they assert that protecting user privacy and data is a TOP priority, their logging procedures and data retention guidelines raise some red flags.
By the way, I highly recommend ValeVPN, which you used as an example, to anyone looking for a trusted VPN service to protect their privacy and improve their online experience. I've been a subscriber for over 4 months now, so I checked it out by myself!
Some of just don't like screwing with servers and are willing to pay a premium for that. I absolutly loathe managing servers.
You keep using that word...
More seriously, serverless has come to really mean “almost fully outsourced ops”. If all you need to do is check logs and your bill, but you can still run arbitrary code, then it is serverless.
It seems like you can't run any code at all on this service, though.
And if the service provider itself uses a serverless model to run their application which provides a service to me... Why do I care, as a customer?
Its a computing model people recognize .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing
To me, "serverless" means "you'd normally be setting up a server yourself in some way (whether low-level and manually, or via a standardized VM or container image orchestration solution), but here you don't have to".
As a VPN user (of this type of VPN in any case; corporate VPNs are a different beast), I've never had to set up a server myself – I'm paying to use somebody else's server!
In other words, we also don't call Gmail "serverless".
Honestly I feel vpns are just kind of like gym memberships, it's not expected for everyone who gets one to use it every day, even though they could.
The only real use case I can foresee this for is for people who might use a VPN for a few hours, a few times a month. With that kind of usage pattern $10 (The min topup value by the look of it) could last you a fair few months so works out cheaper than some of the other mainstream VPN providers who offer a flat fee service.
If I may use analogy to describe UpVPN - its like buying Milk - you pay upfront you bring it home consume it and go to grocery store and buy more.
UpVPN is an option in spectrum of VPN providers. Only you can determine based on your usage if this option makes sense for you.
What UpVPN does provide (unlimited devices without subscription and your never expiring balance stays if you come back months later) other providers do not. And vice-versa UpVPN for its pricing model does not provide unlimited usage.
My home country has TV networks that refuse to work on any of the known VPN providers. They've actually gone to the trouble of IP blocking known exits and the VPNs don't seem to change that often enough.
I know enough to buy a lowendbox and set it up as a VPN and use that and it works (provided the host is oddball enough not to be a known datacenter based IP). But i wonder if the above would work better than the more regular VPN providers.
Never ever would you want to pay to do that to yourself lol.
Perhaps you could present some common use-cases with example prices?
If you're avoiding doing that because it should show the pricing to be too high, then perhaps that's something that needs to be worked on. In general pay-as-you-go pricing should be lower for the same outcome than the all-you-can-eat version of the same thing, because you should be able to not pay for the downtime.
Could you clarify why this should be true? In the long run, given the costs are the same, then the income of the company also needs to be the same. This means that on average you'd pay the same. Some power-users would pay more with pay-as-you-go, some rarely-users would pay less, since they are cross-subsidizing the power-users in subscription models.
I can imagine some dynamics caused by power-users avoiding pay-as-you-go plans, so subscription plans see different usage patterns. But it's not at all obvious to me why this should be cheaper. On the contrary, all those on-demand resources need to exist and there needs to be infra for spin up/down etc, so I'd actually expect higher pricing.
Contracts/bundles/etc appear to charge less because they bundle together things on the assumption that consumption will follow a predictable distribution, however they are actually a mechanism for raising average selling price by giving people more than they need/want/use and charging them more for it.
They build in a margin on top of the average, or somewhere above it on that curve. This means the average user is likely paying more than for their share of usage. Sure, from the company's perspective they have to keep the resources around, but that's a scaling and cost-base issue for the company, not the concern of the user, and if the company scales well it shouldn't be much of an issue.
Ultimately with this service, the competition is $5/m for effectively unlimited usage. If this service costs the average user $10/m, then only a small fraction at the bottom end of the usage distribution are going to make a saving, and find it a compelling offering, all things being equal in terms of product quality etc.
This doesn't apply to everything of course, different industries, product categories, etc, are priced in different ways and have different customer expectations, but it's common and I think it applies here.
As of now, The pricing section on FAQ page provides examples of pricing https://upvpn.app/faq/#pricing
Moreover, If you like to see it visually the first picture of dashboard on landing page https://upvpn.app showcase real usage and real charges.
I provided addition info on pricing model here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36512794
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064305
My take is it's either a very quick copy, or the feds. Perhaps both.
I love Fly.io - they a building a great product.
The website https://upvpn.app is hosted on Fly.io as identified in the comments below. VPN servers are not hosted on Fly.io
If they used some sort of disposable or "trustable" DNS server, it would be awesome!
However, when you use Web Devices, a configuration file or QR code is generated with DNS=1.1.1.1 but you can change it before using.
Do you still share an IP address with the other users? One of the main ways a VPN grants privacy is because everyone shares a handful of IPs. There is still demand for dedicated IPs though, because they trigger blocking less.
I have a need for a good "residential"/"mobile" proxy/VPN service, but I have yet to see a company that I was confident that they were ethically sourcing the servers.
If your willing to manage/self-host it yourself, some ISPs do provide hosting as well, my old ISP provides a VPS at ~$10/mo with a completely clean IP identical to their broadband customers.
$10 is a prepaid balance you start with (which never expires) and consume by using UpVPN. One you run out of balance say few months down the line - you purchase again.
Even if someone can spin up VPN server, UpVPN makes it much much quicker and hassle free to do it with one click or one cli command.
Taking any feedback and criticism is part of being on Hacker News.
Very slow and actually quite expensive. However, works well with Wireguard app on iOS!
Your comment beautifully describes why upvpn exists: It saves you time and makes it hassle free if you're setting up VPN servers.
1. Someone who uses VPN very infrequently, likely a couple of times per year while using less than 500GB of traffic, and
2. Someone who doesn't use a VPN to bypass georestrictions, excluding most travelers, and
3. Someone who doesn't mind being classified as a bot
That must be an extremely tiny group of people, right?
Pricing is outrageous for daily VPN users, while your use of datacenter IPs means it's going to be almost useless for evading georestrictions.
Besides, I'm struggling to wrap my head around the concept of a "serverless VPNs". If you're actually spinning up a VPS for each customer then that seems like a very wasteful use of resources for no reason.
I'd rather just use Mullvad for €5/mo.
12 hours of average usage for me would cost $4
Also: you say "when you end your VPN session, we promptly delete the record from our database that links your session to the specific cloud server", does it also get deleted from the database backups? (assuming you do any)
In other words, the pitch is suspiciously light on details that actually matter to back their "serverless" claim. The only technical way to parse "serverless" is that their exit nodes are spread over end-user devices. So how did they end up there?
