As someone using the service to backup photos and documents, (since it’s the only one I can use TrueCloud Backups with) my bill is looking to be 5x’d next month.
Is there any roadmap to provide a Restic UI without Storj as the provider, It doesn’t feel great running a cronjob script to do restic backups when the whole TrueCloud Backups feature is just sitting there.
It is very hard to deliver services for $1 a month… Storj were losing money on these accounts. They don’t have Google’s economy of scale, but they do provide privacy and global (catastrophe) resilience. They are assuming the amount of data they backup will grow… and include your family videos. In that scenario, 1TB makes sense.
Lowest cost backup is a drive that you plug in occasionally (and then store on another site).
Cloudsync can be used… vanilla APIs.
For TrueCloud backup its only storj at present and we’d like to integrate it further so don’t want the Cloudsync plethora. Any requests for other providers should be a feature request and a keen cloud provider.
I think Storj have given 30 days notice… why do you say 48 hours? (I’d prefer more notice as well).
From my understanding if you’ve still got storage next month, you’ll be charged the new min charge. It’s currently the 31st of may …
The email says:
If you prefer not to be charged, you can close your account before June 30, 2025 to avoid the fee.
I do agree on wanting to be able to use Restic with other providers though. The amount of cloud data I use makes Backblaze cheaper than Storj with these new changes so I’ve migrated to using CloudSync with Backblaze after this announcement, but RClone is missing functionality that would be nice to have for backups. Not a deal breaker for me, but it is a bit annoying.
That’s a prefectly good solution for small amounts of data if you are keeping the primary copy on your TrueNAS.
Backblaze is cheaper because they use a single data center. However, they also have trouble making enough money. There’s no such thing as a free lunch - except for open source software.
I’m also pretty sad they are adding this fee, I’m gonna delete my account and switch to cloudflare r2. But what are you talking about them giving less than 48 hours? Did you not read? They gave you 746 hours notice (July 1st) which is plenty.
Hello, John Gleeson from Storj here, providing some additional clarification. I apologize if our recent announcement that we are implementing a minimum fee for Storj accounts has come as an unpleasant surprise.
As Morgan has pointed out, there are costs associated with running a storage platform, and some of those costs scale differently than others. Based on an analysis of our internal costs associated with the delivery of the service, we determined that a minimum fee of $5 per month was required to ensure that we could provide the best possible level of service to all users.
While our terms of service require us to provide sufficient notice, we want to be as transparent as possible and allow time for our users to make informed decisions about the use of the service and take action if they do not want to pay the minimum fee.
Just as a point of clarification, this change goes into effect July 1, 2025, and will be applied to usage in July, with the first minimum bill to be issued in August. Users who close their accounts by June 30 will not receive an invoice that includes the minimum fee
The announcement provides users with the option to cease using the service if they do not wish to pay the minimum fee. While this option may seem obvious, we are required to explicitly state that option by regulations in some jurisdictions.
Minimum use fees are not uncommon, and Storj is not the first or only cloud provider with usage fees. But we are committed to continuously improving our network and providing the highest levels of service while keeping our costs as low as possible.
We know that changes like this can be difficult, and while we hope most users will continue to find value in the service, we completely understand if the new pricing no longer works for everyone. Thank you for your continued support of Storj. Your feedback is important to help us understand your needs and continue to provide the level of service you have come to expect from Storj
I currently am backuping up around 2TB worth of datasets using TrueCloud. Due to compression, this results in ~500GB on Storj, which costs me $2/month. I’m sympathetic to the cost of credit card processing fees, but a billing changes that result in a 250% difference, with only one month to rectify is souring me on Storj.
Storj needs to support credits, and then bill us in $5 increments. TrueCloud also needs to support any S3 compatible API. This artificial vendor lock in isn’t good for your users.
Further to this, with the increased prices Storj is no longer competitive for many use cases.
Given the issues with billing increments, pricing and future uncertainty of Storj following their acquisition; is there any opening for a discussion allowing other providers?
Myself and many of my clients have requirements for backup data to be stored within specific providers and geographies, of which Storj does not comply.
I would certainly even consider paying a fee to use other providers.
The vendor lock-in does indeed feel a bit off, I have to admit. Particularly given the selling point of TrueNAS for me is the very fact it’s open.
The cloudsync function works with many S3 providers. I’d recommend that approach.
The cloudbackup function required engineering and testing and is only currently available with our partner Storj at present. If you have a major commercial requirement that justifies paying for development, then please contact us.
$5 a month for 1TB online storage is not a bad price as long as that is all it is. The reason I mention this is that AWS looks a good price until every byte is billed and you have no idea what you are even paying for.
I think having a free tier with enough space to allow testing or storing important configs is a good thing. Maybe 2GB, once a user expands past this, a user has the opportunity to move to the $5 tier.
Storj could even have a TrueNAS only plan for small users. This would align with the TrueNAS team and Storj getting new customers.
The Storj pricing page is not friendly for small users and I would ask that the TrueNAS team ask Storj to clear this up as a lot of home users might want to use this service rather than just large corporations. Maybe even create a TrueNAS Personal plan with clear pricing. Currently I would not bother as the storj pricing structure scares me.
TrueNAS is not even mentioned in the FAQs at the bottom of the page, I think TrueNAS should at least be mentioned there. A partnership works both ways. The FAQ could include things like Storj natively supports ZFS and it fully integrated in to TrueNAS etc…
This is the approach we are using presently and works OK for some. But for others, the lack of filename encryption and multiple versions on the cloud end makes it not a viable solution for them.
Thanks, should a larger client come along that can justify that cost, I’ll do exactly that. However for the majority of my much smaller clients, this isn’t really something they’ll entertain.
They would be willing to pay an upfront fee for this feature however, if it was available as an existing tier/product (like an TrueNAS SMB license, for example).
Ultimately however, the uncertainty around Storj as a provider, particularly their changing pricing and ownership, causes significant friction when discussing them as an option. It’s also quite hard to answer questions around vendor lock in, when I’ve often sold TrueNAS as an option over alternatives precisely because it has no vendor lock ins.
I’m completely sympathetic to development costs, particularly for open source products such as TrueNAS; but this particular lock in has caused issues for clients that signed up under certain pricing terms, only for it to change on them not long after. They were otherwise happy, as they assumed they could just move the target to somewhere else, but once they were told that’s not an option, it’s soured their opinion of TrueNAS quite severely.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Thanks for the suggestion… we would like to do this. TrueNAS Connect makes it easier in future, but no firm plans yet. Too many other requirements from customers.
I was disappointed in the price increase especially since it was shortly after I decided to use the Truecloud Backup option in Truenas, but I am essentially storing more for less $ even with the price increase. Another storage company (not S3) was billing us 31$+ a month for storage which is a cost of about 7$ per TB/month. I moved the storage over to StorJ and setup the backup options in truenas and I also actually increased the actual total amount stored as it is compressed and I am only paying about 14$ for 3.25TB/month. That is a huge cost savings for us.
I wouldn’t mind various other storage options be made available for the Truecloud Backup at some point other than Storj. It opens it to flexibility and choice.
For my local market and currency I’d say that it’s only an OK price; local competitors here charge the same (or less) with comparatively minimal egress fees (if any). Another complication has been billing only being available in USD, causing further price fluctuations and complications (and in some cases outright denial).
Something I neglected to mention earlier, being locked into a single provider also prevents users from using TrueCloud to use non-cloud based options. I have been in a situations in the past where we’ve hosted backups for clients or hosted backups between multiple sites owned by the same business where ZFS replication wouldn’t be ideal.
Thanks again.
