Ubuntu One Pricing and alternatives

[scaine]

From testing Karmic, I notice UbuntuOne is now pitched as a given. But having checked out the web page to see if it's worthwhile, I'm pretty shocked at the price. Here's how it stacked up against the few alternatives I know about :

UbuntuOne, 10Gb, $120 a year, Integrated with Nautilus
DropBox, 50Gb, $199 a year, Linux client download
Humyo, 100Gb, $85 a year, Webdav access in Nautilus

[EDIT - additions]
Adrive, 100Gb, $130 a year, Webdav access in Nautilus
Microsoft SkyDrive, 25Gb, Free, Web upload only, 50Mb restriction on file size, 5 files/a time upload.
SpiderOak, 100Gb, $100 a year, deb-based installer

I did a search on the forums and no one seems to be talking about this at all. I'm absolutely behind supporting Ubuntu and of course Canonical, but I'm not mad enough to shell out $120 a year for 10Gb of online storage when the main competitors are asking for $20-$40 LESS and offering 5 times as much storage or ten times as much storage.

Hopefully I'm missing something a crucial selling point here, right?

[gn2]

It's already been mentioned here: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=367

Adrive (http://www.adrive.com/plans) is another one to add to your list.

[SunnyRabbiera]

But even if you dont add it up by year $10 a month for 10 gigs is pretty fair, its a dollar a gig.

[DeadSuperHero]

Is there anything quite like UbuntuOne that is GPL or BSD-licensed? I like the ideas behind UbuntuOne, but it's a proprietary service...

[gn2]

I like the ideas behind UbuntuOne, but it's a proprietary service...


As is this forum......?

[scaine]

It's already been mentioned here: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=367

Adrive (http://www.adrive.com/plans) is another one to add to your list.

Nice one thanks, I've edited the original post. The forum list you point me at is 3 pages long, but searching for "price" revealed only one thread, 280 odd posts discussing whether it should be open or closed source, ie price isn't a factor.

Searching for "cost" provided three threads, this one looks good : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1202536&highlight=cost, which highlights "Skydrive" and "SpiderOak" (also added).

It seems that there hasn't been much discussion of the service purely in terms of its cost and competitors and unlike SunnyRabbiera, I dont' agree that it's value for money. Maybe if you only need 10Gb, but given that my office documents alone total 2.3Gb, there's no chance that my 60Gb of FLAC files and 14Gb of Photos will find room to live in the cloud if I decide to shell the $120 for the service.

[Giant Speck]

As is this forum......?

True, but Canonical didn't make vBulletin.

[gn2]

True, but Canonical didn't make vBulletin.


Nor did they make the proprietary element of the Ubuntu One service.
They have no control over it either.

[meho_r]

But even if you dont add it up by year $10 a month for 10 gigs is pretty fair, its a dollar a gig.

And you can have Dropbox with 5GB for FREE. I like UbuntuOne, but IMHO it has to go a long way to compete with Dropbox.

[gn2]

It seems that there hasn't been much discussion of the service purely in terms of its cost and competitors and unlike SunnyRabbiera, I dont' agree that it's value for money. Maybe if you only need 10Gb, but given that my office documents alone total 2.3Gb, there's no chance that my 60Gb of FLAC files and 14Gb of Photos will find room to live in the cloud if I decide to shell the $120 for the service.

Like you I find the proposed Ubuntu One pricing to be set far too high.
It's something that has been mentioned in the Ubuntu One forum a number of times, but AFAIK there hasn't been a discussion solely on price thus far.

As I see it, unless there's a need for multiple users to access your files from various different geographic locations simultaneously, there's no point paying for a cloud storage facility.
Long term it would be cheaper to run your own file server.

If I needed to have all my files with me I would simply carry a 2.5" hard drive around.

Maybe I've missed something, but I just don't see the point of paying for Ubuntu One.

[snargfish]

The pricing is slightly physcotic for some remote HDD rental space.

[t0p]

I like using the firefox add-on gspace. This enables you to use the inbox of a gmail account as just another filesystem. So google are hosting some stuff for me.

That's currently 7 gigs, and gmail storage space is increasing all the time. And there's usually good access to gmail servers. And it's *FREE*!!! (price, not liberty).

[Mornedhel]

I like using the firefox add-on gspace. This enables you to use the inbox of a gmail account as just another filesystem. So google are hosting some stuff for me.

That's currently 7 gigs, and gmail storage space is increasing all the time. And there's usually good access to gmail servers. And it's *FREE*!!! (price, not liberty).

I've come across gmailfs in the repositories, apparently it does the same thing except it isn't a Firefox add-on. Has anyone here tried it ?

[SecretCode]

Nor did they make the proprietary element of the Ubuntu One service.
They have no control over it either.

What's the proprietary element of Ubuntu One? Do you mean software? News to me

I thought the cost of Ubuntu One was just to cover the hosting space.

[ssdt]

Well looking at the price and discussing the prices in my mind, I guess going in a different direction is much better. Ubuntu One is great for backup but Mediafire gives you unlimited storage capacity where each file could be 100 megabytes so you can download the file (if you have a good interent) and change it whenever you want and put it back in because you also have unlimited bandwidth.

Also Ubuntu One should make the paid serviece a little better, maybe 50/100 GB or they should make up a new plan to make unlimited with the amount of price that they want to put.

[gn2]

What's the proprietary element of Ubuntu One? Do you mean software? News to me

Yes, Amazon's proprietary software installed on Amazon's servers where Canonical will be leasing space for it's Ubuntu One moneyspinner.

[cb951303]

As I stated in another thread, feature-wise UbuntuOne currently is nothing but a fancy FTP server.
Dropbox beats the hell out of it. And who cares if the client side software is open source as long as server is not. Remember, a part of the dropbox client is open source too.

[SecretCode]

Yes, Amazon's proprietary software installed on Amazon's servers where Canonical will be leasing space for it's Ubuntu One moneyspinner.

Aha. That makes the arguments against Ubuntu One carrying the Ubuntu name much more substantial.

[gn2]

Aha. That makes the arguments against Ubuntu One carrying the Ubuntu name much more substantial.

There was a large discussion thread about that back in May/June.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1163493

You might find it interesting from post 243 onwards.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7379071#post7379071

[vgrisham]

You'll want to steer clear of SpiderOak. It is a mess and the sync feature simply doesn't work. I've been trying for months to get it to work. They've given me two free months to keep trying, but I'm about to pull the plug.