Mylio Funding model

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#1

I feel like Mylio’s funding model is not yet right.

First of all, thanks so much for Mylio Free. It’s a wonderful way to get folks – like me – hooked on a great app.

But… I don’t feel like there’s a place in your funding model for my use case – which I think is a very common one. I’m a casual, family photographer. I have more than 25,000 photos and want to sync only with others in my family. Heck, my kids are grown so practically speaking that means synching with my wife.

In other words, lots of photos and the devices used by myself and my wife (2 computers, 2 phones, 2 tablets).

I’m more than happy to pay more than $0 for Mylio for that use case. But I’m unwilling to pay $99/yr. (the subscription plan). The thing that stops me is thinking about the multi-year scenario. I’d expect to use Mylio for a decade. Am I willing to pay $1,000 for that? No. It’s a great app but $1,000 is just plain greedy. (Note, I’ve developed software. I know it’s a lot of work.)

What do I think would be fair? I’d go for one of the following:

  • $100 to buy the app; $15/yr maintenance for each following year. Free upgrades for as long as I’ve continuously paid my maintenance fees.
  • $25/yr subscription fee
  • $100 to buy the app; $50 for each significant upgrade (est. every two years)
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#2

The only issue with this, from Mylio’s side, is how much money would they lose. I’m exactly the same use case as you - 2 PC’s, 4 phones, with 45,000 photos. I’ve paid for Mylio pro ever since I found out it did what they claimed, and loved it.

Mylio was completely unique, and is now still ahead of other photo sorting tools as they don’t provide the speed or syncing capabilities. So, if a cheaper option of Mylio was available, they would lose my money.

Your crazy math scared me… $1,000 over ten years, if you earn USD perhaps… But in other parts of the world it gets really scary - $1,500 here. Yikes. But still it’s worth it, we’ve never looked through family photos much in the past, now we have access to them everywhere - It’s changed what we use them for.

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#3

How much would Mylio actually lose? Hard to tell. I’m betting there are far more people in my shoes than yours. That is, they’d gain as much from folks like me signing on as they lose from folks like you taking the cheaper option.

Consider a thought experiment. Let’s suppose that at the current subscription rate they have 10,000 subscribers and 80,000 freeloaders. Assuming they all stay for 10 years, that’s $10M in revenue.

If half of those subscribers are like you and a quarter of the freeloaders are like me then Mylio’s ten year revenue goes up to $10.875M over the ten year period.

Can they convert the freeloaders? I don’t know. But I bet $100/yr is scaring off lots of people like me.

As for the US dollars, I know what you mean. I live (and earn) in Canada. At current exchange rates it’s about $1,300 for ten years.

Oh, and I’m also “Byron”.

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#4

Hi Byron - not sure if you’re aware. Some Seagate USB drives come with a Mylio subscription special that is uniquely tailored for them. It provides for 50’000 pictures/4 desktops at $50/year (with first year free).

Maybe if you are in the market to buy a new drive again, this combination may work out for you?

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#5

The Seagate drives @Mylio_Deon is referring to are in the Backup Plus line.

Here is a link to these drives on the Seagate website:

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#6

ha! Sorry for stealing you’re name!

#7

Thanks for the reference. I have seen this but haven’t moved on it because (a) it’s unclear how to take advantage of it, (b) the free plan has worked well enough for me, © I don’t currently need another backup drive.

WIth respect to (a)… The Seagate website only talks about a 1 year subscription to Mylio. How does that translate to the subscription for later years?

Logging into my account and clicking “upgrade”, I see a choice of “Free”, “Trial”, and “Premium”. No choice for “Creative”.

And philosophically, I still feel like Mylio’s normal subscription plans leave out a large class of users.

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#8

It’s free for a year, then after 1 year you get an option to renew for $50 per year. You won’t see the plan on the normal Mylio website - you have to go in via a link on the Seagate drive.

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#10

What link exactly? I think some of the problem is the Seagate app that you fire up is kind of unclear on how it applies the promo.

I have a drive and was prompted through the startup app and was led to the Mylio site. All it asked was to download and sign up (I did it via my Google account). With the Adobe promo, you’re provided with a promo code, nothing like that seemed to pop up for Mylio.

When I look at my account it only says ‘Free’. I submitted a ticket, will see what happens.

#11

@Jeremy thanks for letting us know about this, glad we got it fixed for you!

For others seeing this, the redemption for Mylio Create is done by opening the “Start_Here” file on the drive when you fist plug it into your computer.

This will take you to the Seagate registration page where you can redeem the Mylio Create offer. Once you are redirected to our site it will allow you to create an account or sign in with an existing one. Please note, Mylio Create is not redeemable on Premium accounts.

We are investigating any possible issues using third-party sign on options with this redemption/account creation page.

Redeeming Mylio Create with third party sign-in buttons
#12

Promo does not seem to be valid in Australia. Only get offer for 2 months Adobe CC when clicking start_here on my Seagate Backup Plus drive

#13

When and from where did you buy that drive? I do see the Mylio drive on amazon.com.au if I search for “Seagate Mylio”

#14

oops - July 2018. from physical store in AU. I thought I got it last year…times flies :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

I have to agree with bwbecker. For his (and also my) scenario 99/yr is definitely too much. For 36 /yr I can buy a 200 GB subscription at Apple iCloud. And additionally Apple Fotos is with respect of usability superior to Mylio.

Mylio is lacking a “hobbist” fee. 40000 pictures and 3 Computer for 2$ per month seems to be appropriate. Probably skip the “raw” support in this fee to distinguish it from the “professional” fees.

#16

Your use case is similar to mine. Admittedly, $99 per month is not insignificant but it’s not unreasonable either, considering the costs of software development and maintenance. Mylio uses peer-to-peer syncing which I would imagine is more challenging to develop than other products that sync via the cloud. One could multiply $99/year by any number of years from 10-70 years and get a “scary” number. Even though I am an Apple user, I disliked the vendor lock-in of Apple Photos. In contrast, Mylio has open architecture which works well with PDF as well as image files. I sincerely hope that Mylio has a sustainable business model because I’m in it for the long run.

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#17

This same thing appears to have happened with my account. I logged in with Google, entered the promo code, but my account still says “free for life” account, not Create. When I tried to claim the promo code again, it said it was expired.
I’d be fine (maybe prefer) to change from using Google to login to creating a Mylio account if that would help…

#18

I fell in love with Mylio the first moment as it is FAST and beautiful and quality of editing functions though it is lacking some options. But it needs options to customize, sort out some bugs and usability problems. So I am eager to see the development in the coming months.

As a professional photographer with hundreds of thousands of photos the 99 are not the problem. As a private user I would prefer to buy a software and not pay hundreds of over the years.
But as a photographer the lack of options to customize and basic functions bothers me:

  • collaboration where employees do have restricted access. no need to replicate/access an archive of a decade. It takes forever to sync those files. not even speaking of space waste on those workstations. Also an issue of security. Not everyone in the team should access everything. And think about an iphone syncing 500k-1M pics.
  • excluding folder options (I scale/export photos so I have versions for distribution, web, etc.). Mylio keeps them all in the database scanning faces on all of them, etc.
  • missing sorting/grouping options
  • compatibility with ACDSee Photo Pro is good (ratings, labeling is recognized) but hidden folders are scanned creating duplicates of pictures.
  • PNG watermarks
  • more support for online backup services
  • white balance picker
  • white balance presets
  • white balance for shadows/highlights
  • export tool with functions like sharpening, automatically creating subfolders, saving custom presets

some I have posted in feature requests already…

Keep on going!

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#19

From my personal view the yearly subscription fee is priced reasonably. Mylio keeps the most precious moments and memories of our life and makes it very easy to manage, archive and backup our media.

What is becoming a bigger issue for me regarding the subscription model is product management and development. I don’t see in which direction Mylio wants to develop its software. They publish gimmicks like OCR (which can’t be disabled and puts heavy load on CPU) instead of fixing long known bugs and improving and concentrating on the core functionality. That makes me question which roadmap Mylio is pursuing and whether I will follow it in the future.

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#20

@DrNipkow Thanks for the feedback. My New Years resolution is to better outline our product roadmap here on the forum. I know, personally, not knowing the direction of a software that is as personal as Mylio is can be frustrating in the least.

Generically, I’ll say that we try to expand our feature set in a variety of ways, which means that some features may not be relevant to your workflow while others may hit the nail on the head. I’ve seen OCR as something that doesn’t interest a few folks here but I’ve also heard a lot of positive feedback from some people who use Mylio in a business setting - OCR can be hugely beneficial to their document (and photos of document) management.

I think our “core functionality” is slightly different for every person - we certainly have some pillars that most everyone utilizes, but the fringes can be critical for some people and irrelevant for others. We’re always working on improving the balance, though.

Oh - and re:bugs. I’m sure they are but is have you reported these bugs to our support team? I just want to make sure they’re being looked at in our planning.

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#21

@Mylio_Matt Hi Matt,

thanks your the reply, I appreciate that. Also thank you for the extensive answer in the change-log thread. I want to emphasize what @ionos wrote in the other topic and what I meant with core functionality:

I use Mylio because it is the only solution that offers the combination of privacy, security, performance and usability for managing my photo and video library. There is no other product even close to it. This is your value proposition and for this I and a lot of people are willing to pay.