AKA: Pay for Data Hosting
Payment for centrally storing data used in the OSS on a remote server - e.g., passwords for a password manager. Often leads to recurring payments for long-time data storage, but can also be a singular payment for time-constrained or lifetime storage.
Requires:
- Setup of a data storage platform (hosted of self-hosted)
- Integration of payment mechanism
- Setup of a legal entity to accept the payments
Variants & Options:
- Freemium Data Storage: A small amount of data is free to store but larger amounts must be paid
- Storage can be realized in many Clouds by using a hosted Database with Backup mechanism
- Payment system requires website or in-app mechanism connected to payment system
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Days | Implement data storage and payment system |
| Effort to maintain | Low | Backup and maintain data storage |
| Cost to set-up | Low | Maybe for DB and backup |
| Cost to maintain | Low | Cost of data storage & backup |
| One-time Income | Medium | If data storage is bought for life, etc. |
| Recurring Income | Medium | |
| Income Predictability | Medium | Client might go back to free |
| Full income Threshold | 1000+ | Depends heavily on the data storage price |
| Recipient | C | |
| Additional Work | Medium | Extra work to setup data storage |
| Visibility | Medium | Gets harder the more the system is used (more data created) |
| Necessity to pay | Low | The base version can probably work without paid data storage (or few people would try it) |
| Entry Threshold | Low | If starting with free storage |
| Countervalue | Storage | User pays for data storage, backups, and access from multiple devices |
| Scalability | High | Scales with the number of end-users and data created. |
| Effort for marketing | Low | Users probably increase their data volume |
| Competitors | None | Could be opened for compeitors within OSS |
| Software types | Special | Best for tools that create or handle user data |