ReadyNAS Vault : great but overpriced!

Hi Tim,

I just wanted to add a bit of clarification on the S3 pricing comparison. A large part of the value proposition of the Vault services is the software that allows you to schedule/automate backups, recreate a hierarchical file structure, archiving of versions, and access via simple interfaces. This are features and functionalities that S3 does not offer by itself and you would need to rely on third party software (or your own programming) to provide. The $5.95/month license fee is actually a license to use the software with 5 GB thrown in for free - certainly your math is accurate, but the $1.19 does not take into account the additional functionality.

You may feel it is semantic, but the alternative view is that you pay:

- 5.95 for use of the software
- 5 GB for free
- All other GB are $0.40/month (including the transfer in and out)

It certainly depends on how frequently you access your data (since the access charges are variable), but with any substantial amount of data in your account, the price relative to S3 is more like 2.5 X if there is no access and closer to dead even in a month where you upload and download a file (as opposed to the 6-8x, which would only hold for very small data sets with minimal access).

Lastly, if you opt for one of the yearly pre-paid plans, the pricing gets down to about $0.25/GB-month on average. With any significant access during the time period, you will actually come out ahead. In short, it seems that for an individual who is a) storing a modest amount of data, b) not planning on a lot of access, and c) willing to foresake some of the functionality, using S3 directly may make more economic sense.

We welcome the feedback and will try to make pricing more transparent as well as work on becoming more efficient so we can offer lower prices.

TimSee wrote:

About a year before ReadyNAS Vault was announced, I suggsted on the Feature Request sub-forum adding Amazon S3 as a backup destination in FrontView. As some others have mentioned, ReadyNAS Vault is based off of Elephant Drive. In turn, Elephant Drive is based on Amazon S3. So basically, there's two additional "middlemen" taking their cut of the action and ReadyNAS Vault turns out to be 6 to 8x the price of what Amazon offers to their own S3 customers. Amazon S3 = $0.15 per GB/month for storage + $0.10 per GB/month for transfer in + $0.17 per GB/month for transfer out ReadyNAS Vault = $1.19 per GB/month for storage (first 5GB) then $0.40 per GB/month thereafter I love the elegance of ReadyNAS Vault but it's a complete non-starter at the current price. I might pay double what Amazon charges for the convenience of integration but no more.

fish wrote:

Lastly, if you opt for one of the yearly pre-paid plans, the pricing gets down to about $0.25/GB-month on average. With any significant access during the time period, you will actually come out ahead. In short, it seems that for an individual who is a) storing a modest amount of data, b) not planning on a lot of access, and c) willing to foresake some of the functionality, using S3 directly may make more economic sense.

fish,

Thanks for the context. I understand that there is a premium to be paid for seamless integration. I still feel the premium is too high. For me, I'm willing to pay less and deal with a lesser degree of integration and a reduced feature set.

I would still like to see S3 offered as a standalone option for the reasons you mention above as well as the one that's most important to me - the fact that, with S3, I own the backup data. If ElephantDrive goes out of business or my NAS crashes, I can access the remote file store directly from my PC.

take a look at www.livedrive.com which offers not only secure backup, but also full syncronisation, and remote access. it is also a lot faster than carbonite. i have used both and I prefer livedrive.

and it offers unlimited storage including photos, music etc. and it's reasonably priced for all of the above at about $100/year.

they alos have an iPhone app that really does work!
best

kerry

kbr88> regarding livedrive, can you tell me how seamless it is as far as connecting with your readynas? Do you need to run it off of a local pc separate from the nas?

I'd love to hear about an add on that can allow successful direct access to a readynas from one of these third party providers. Well, on second thought, what I'd prefer is for Netgear to price the Vault service more competitively and not try to hold us all captive.

I love Netgear's ad for Vault- "Can your data survive a disaster?" ...it's more like, "Can your wallet survive an explosion?"

I love ya Netgear, but it's time to get real....

i am backing up from pc hard drive but there is probably no reason why it won't back up the NAS. it also provides remote access by creating a "new" L: drive that allows remote access (similar to NAS remote). i also don't see any reason why it also couldnt sync the files that are on the NAS with other pc's since it just another hard drive.
check out livedrive site and see what it says and post back here if you discover anything intersting.

agree that it would be great if netgear simply charged a reasomnable price--if livedrive can charge 99 euros per year for unlimited storage (inclding photos, music etc), why can't netgear? just being greedy i suspect but also missing a great opportunity to build a strong, loyal community that will renew every year!

kbr88 wrote:
take a look at http://www.livedrive.com which offers not only secure backup, but also full syncronisation, and remote access. it is also a lot faster than carbonite. i have used both and I prefer livedrive. and it offers unlimited storage including photos, music etc. and it's reasonably priced for all of the above at about $100/year. they alos have an iPhone app that really does work! best kerry

Here's three reasons for starters why Livedrive is not worth you wasting your time

1) Its not an online backup service. Its an online file repository meant for your convenience to access files. See here from their FAQ page.

Is Livedrive a backup product?
Whilst Livedrive provides a safe and secure place to store your valuable files, it’s not a backup product in the strict sense of the word. Livedrive is not designed to run scheduled backups of system files, email and contacts for example. What Livedrive does offer is a means of securing your valuable files, accessing them from anywhere in the world and easily sharing them with friends and colleagues.

Livedrive is currently developing a backup feature which will be released soon.

2) Files stored on their servers are not encrypted. They are only encrypted while in transit. Do you trust them? Do you trust their software with all its file sharing hoopla to protect your data? Read here from their FAQ page.

What level of security do you provide?
Livedrive uses military grade, AES-256 security to encrypt all communications between a user’s computer and our servers, data stored on your Livedrive is backed up on to multiple storage servers at our data centers ensuring your data is fully protected. Our network is protected by enterprise-grade firewalls ensuring that once your data is on our servers only the people you want to access your data can.

3) Who is housing your data? They claim they use "carrier grade data centers". What does that mean? They don't provide any credentials for the data centers such as meeting any of the following standards. yes I know these are predominately US standards, but similar Int'l standards exist.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
SAS (Statement on Auditing Standards) 70 regulations

In my opinion be careful if you are considering Livedrive for your important data storage.

StGeorge wrote:
I love Netgear's ad for Vault- "Can your data survive a disaster?" ...it's more like, "Can your wallet survive an explosion?" I love ya Netgear, but it's time to get real....

I think Netgear and Elephant Drive are getting the hint that users are not happy with their pricing model. Netgear recently sent me an online questionnaire asking for my opinion on Vault and for the reasons why I've chosen not to use it. Considering that Vault uses S3 yes there's plenty of room for them to move on the price and still be profitable. Instead they choose to be niche and address online storage for the few who don't mind paying dearly.

I sure hope so... I LOVE the concept, but the pricing is just too high.

I recall reading some messages from the JungleDisk dev team about a ReadyNAS add-on being in development for use with their online backup service... anyone hear anything about that (or others)? I certainly be interested in some alternatives to the current Vault offering/pricing.

The price disparity between Vault and other offerings just keeps getting more ridiculous! Acronis recently introduced their online backup service at $30/yr (intro, later $50/yr) for 250GB, and iDrive has a plan for 500GB for $150/yr! There are others, too. Netgear's offering, while nicely integrated with Readynas, is an order of magnitude more expensive. In addition, the Vault website is awful, with an unintuitive design/layout, and extremely limited statistics. You can't even see on a folder by folder basis how much space you are using -- they only show the size of individual files and the aggregate total space used. It is so badly designed that you feel like you're being tortured every time you use it.

Hi rschoon,

Thanks for the feedback on both pricing and functionality. We are evaluating both issues you've raised, but would like to get a little more information about the concerns so we can make the most effective changes.

First, on pricing - it looks like the Acronis offering does not support external drives or network drives at this time (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... tml#faq-45). This appears to be a common theme among most of the lower cost providers of online backup - offering a reduced effective price per GB but dramatically limiting the devices or systems that are supported, and consequently reducing the actual amount of data an end user can conveniently store. We are assuming that this is not really a viable alternative for you, but want to double check - would you be interested in a similarly priced but also similarly restricted plan? Nearly all of the discontent with the current pricing in this thread seems to come from comparison to offerings that do not actually support network attached storage, so we want to make sure that we are covering this need if it is really there.

The iDrive offering you mention does not appear to have a device restriction, but does include some language regarding "home use." While functional differences certainly remain (e.g. ability to configure remotely, ability to run natively on the ReadyNAS so as not to require a local host to be on, connected, and secure), this appears to present a pretty low effective cost per GB. Would a similarly structured plan, restricted to "home use" only, be a compelling service for you?

Second, on functionality - We are constantly working to improve the usability and extend the functionality of the web-based tools. It sounds like a key feature you are looking for is the ability to right-click or select from an options menu to see the total storage contained within a particular folder - can you confirm that this is the desired functionality? If so, we are happy to report that this will be available shortly. If not, please just let us know (via post or private message) more about the specific feature(s) you are interested in and we can add that feedback to our product road map.

Thanks again for your input.

The ReadyNAS Vault Team