Vaultpress – The Golden Ticket
Friday I got ‘The Golden Ticket’ from Vaultpress (see my previous post here: Aliens happen) – the new WordPress back-up service (from Automattic – WP’s mother). Being excited becoming part of the beta, it was kind of a disappointment when I was taken to this page:
$15 (instead of $20) per blog? As a beta-tester? They realised it is not the common approach: FAQ’s:
Initially I mentioned $30, as I picked that up from their site; however, it seems they are testing their pricing, so it is now $20 ($15) or $50 ($40)… The difference being the ‘Security Monitoring’, but unfortunately they don’t provide any details, so it’s a guess what that $25 extra brings… Does it protect you against this: pharma hack – if so, it would be worth your money as it probably saves you hours of restoring files and perhaps even worse, it doesn’t affect your search-engine rankings… However, they don’t explain (let alone guarantee) anything, so it’s too early to tell.
Here are my observations (ahum):
– we all love WordPress
– we all are underprotected
– we all are cheapsters (spoilt with ‘freemiums’) – any price-tag will be too high/large/much
– we all ‘understand’ life- and home-insurance – just not website-insurance
So, is $240 a year for some peace of mind too much? Yes, as you haven’t had any problems so far? No, because restoring your blog manually will take you several hours(?) (or you have to hire me) – including the stress, frustration and possible loss – that you can’t put a price on. “But the back-up plugins that you recommend are free?!?!?” – True, but they don’t do live back-ups (although you can schedule hourly back-ups…) and they don’t store files in the cloud (only on your server) – or in your Gmail account if you send them there – which is limited, as the attachments may grow too big…
Personally I figure I will have a hard time to ‘sell’ this concept/product to my clients – especially if I become the ‘reseller’ – what/how do I charge them?
My suggestions to Ma.tt and his great team:
– Tell us what you offer – more technical info gives us insight what is stored and how to manage it – that way we get a better pitch to clients
– Tell us how secure it is – we all know incidents where back-ups that ran overnight for months, but when restored they didn’t work – as someone forgot to check/test them on a regular basis…
– Rethink your pricing-structure – if you want me to ‘resell’ it, there should be some incentive (contact me for an alternative)
What do you think (both about VP and my take)? Did you try it out already? What do you like? What’s missing? Comments are open now!
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