UPDATE – The great guys at Syncplicity were so excited to be mentioned on CloudAve (and who wouldn’t be?) that they’re making a special offer to the first 100 CloudAve readers who reply. They’ll bump the free version from 2GB to 4GB and add 5GB to the paid plans – nice! Just click on this link to sign up!
Here on CloudAve we’ve talked at length about the need for start-ups to
quickly ramp through to revenue generation. It’s always been a fundamental
requirement for businesses but in there days of tight money and worsening
economic conditions it’s even more imperative.
It was impressive then to read that Syncplicity, the synchronisation, backup
and sharing service has, in one announcement, come out of beta, started charging
customers and secured another round of VC funding.
Syncplicity is a great service that I’ve been using for some months now – it
passes my own personal acid test with flying colour. The acid test goes
something like "for a utility app (which Syncplicity is) I shouldn’t ever need
to check whether it’s working – it should be invisible and seamless at all
times". Syncplicity fills these requirements well. Although it’s quite a busy
space, with many including Mozy, SugarSync and Microsoft (with its LiveMesh offering) competing for customers
with Syncplicity.
Now that it is in general release, details have emerged about Syncplicity’s
charging structure. Users will still get 5Gb of storage for free, thereafter
they can get 50Gb for $10 month/ $99/year or 100Gb for $20/month/$198/year. It’s
not a lot of money to pay for secure online storage.
In another vote of confidence, Syncplicity announced that they have obtained $2.35mill funding from True
Ventures – an announcement that indicates a high-level of confidence given the
dearth of VC deals occurring right now.
So now that Syncplicity has everything in place, some questions remain;
- Will users convert readily from a formerly free version to a paid one?
- How does one differentiate ones product in a sea of similar offerings?
- Utility apps, those that sit in the background, are much less glamorous that more "in your face" ones. How do utility app vendors gain and keep users mindshare?
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You guys are doing a great job – more than happy to support you. That said, I tried to sign up and got this error:
Failure
An error occured during the signup process. Please try again later.
One thing though, presumably are making some revenue from these signups (which is fine – I know well how much time goes into writing) in which case you should specify whether you are (or indeed, if you are not).
Cheers,
Sam
Oops… no Mac version yet:
“Syncplicity does not currently have a client for Macs. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Sam,
We’re not generating any revenue through the Syncplicity sign-ups.
It is common practice for startups, conferences…etc to provide promotional sign-up codes through blogs, and the only indirect benefit for the blogs is possibly increased readership, or perhaps just being able to offer a gesture to their readers.
The onus is on the other side, if they do get compensation, of course they should disclose it.
Sam,
Oops — looks like we have an incorrect message on the Mac beta waitlist signup. We’ll get that fixed. The Mac client is in private beta right now so people are waitlisting for it and we’re releasing it in batches.
In the meantime, if you are interested, send me an e-mail at leonard at syncplicity.com and I’ll have you added to the Mac beta immediately since you helped us find a bug. 🙂
Thanks,
Leonard
@Sam – now that’s why I like web apps (and blogging). We didn’t tell Syncplicity about the bug – but only a few hours after you noticed and commented about it the issue was resolved, the vendor contacted you and we’re all happy living in the glow of satisfaction that traditional media (and traditional shrink-wrapped software) could never create.