Apparently you didn't notice who you were replying to.

rsync.net charges more for data at rest but they don't charge for downloads which is a significant savings for some use-cases. Also note that AWS's IA storage has a $0.01/GB retrieval charge on top of their standard data transfer out charges.

"You're paying for that though, rsync.net starts at 8c/GB/month (for 10+TB), the smallest offering (under 1TB) is 20c/GB/month), by comparison S3 is 2.75c to 3c/GB/month in standard storage (and 1.25c/GB/month for IA)"

Actually, the ZFS send/recv capable accounts start at 6 cents and go down from there. There's a bit of a cost reduction since we don't create and maintain snapshots for you - you take care of that yourself, with your own zpool at rsync.net.

Email us. We'll talk.

I'd be really curious to know why rsync.net is so expensive. Is there something inherently costly about scaling a ZFS based filesystem like this?

We offer unlimited technical support and integration engineering for even the smallest customers.

You can emergency page us on Christmas day.

We'll set up "pull" jobs on our end to pull the backups from you.

These things are very valuable to some people ...

I can definitely see the value in those things but I think there's also a place for "dumb" storage. Some people want that great support, some people don't need it.

I'm in the latter category and I'd rather have the choice to pay for it than be forced into it, which is why despite loving the trial I had with you guys, I couldn't justify continuing.

I expect part of it is a difference in the domains they charge for: rsync.net charges for storage but not transfers.