May 15, 2023
Communick first started with the idea to provide the easiest and
cheapest way for people to participate in the fediverse. Given our
focus on privacy and based on the principle that we would never
“monetize” our customers, we put our efforts on providing a service
that could work for everyone, but we did not want to make any type of
features for any type of specific market segments.
In some ways, that was successful. We have been running our servers
for close to 3 years now without any major incident. We set up our
infrastructure in a way that could (potentially) serve tens of
thousands of customers very efficiently. Almost all of the processes
were automated to the point where I could go for months without
touching any of the servers, except for the occasional upgrade for a
new release. Even today, our cost per active user is so low that we
can manage to offer access packages that cost less than $0.50/month
per user and still be profitable.
But it seems that is not enough. The absolute majority of people
coming to the fediverse are not doing it because they are looking for
something super cheap or free. They are doing it because they want to
feel like they have their own space, interact with the people they
already have connected in other networks. They are willing to pay a
lot more than a few cents per month, if they know the people behind
the servers.
So, instead of arguing with everyone trying to convince them that a
communick account could give them all the functionality they needed
(at a lower price), I decided to offer them what they are demanding
instead. Which brings us to our first step in this phase: we are
offering now Mastodon instance hosting.
To have your own Mastodon server, all you need to do now is to
purchase a domain. We will manage it, make sure things are up-to-date,
secure, backed-up properly, etc. You get admin access right away and
all you should worry about is in keeping your community vibrant and
healthy.
At first we are offering one single configuration: a server that is
provisioned with enough resources to handle ~100 users comfortably and
efficiently. We are still figuring out the pricing and how to offer
single-user instances, but they should come pretty soon. If you are
also looking for someone that can host bigger instances, do keep in
touch.
That’s it for now. I know this blog has been silent for a long time,
but I’m planning to bring more updates here.
Jul 1, 2020
Oh, hi! Welcome to our blog and our very first post. Perhaps an
introduction is in order: we are Communick, and we are building a
social media and communication service provider…
That is way too generic. What do you mean by that?
Basically, it means that we are taking open messaging and social media
services and providing hosting for them.
We are starting with:
- Matrix, which gives a modern and unified set of programs for text
messaging and audio/video calls.
- XMPP, which provides a rich ecosystem of clients and automated
services built on top of it.
- Mastodon, the fastest growing social network and microblogging
platform.
And this is just the beginning. We are planning to also introduce SIP
for integrating with traditional phone networks, alternatives for
photo-sharing systems, federated blogging…
Well, sort of. This is not yet-another platform. We are providing
services that are based on open and federated technologies, which
already exist and are not controlled by any one company in
particular. In other words, we are collaborating to expand the
existing Fediverse instead of competing for some artificial
monopoly.
If you think this is crazy, wait until you hear our plans on how to
make money from this business…
No. Don’t tell me you are actually thinking of…
We are going to charge our customers a small monthly fee for the
services we provide. We really believe that any sort of “ad-based” or
“freemium” model eventually leads to some bad incentives for business
which are not aligned with the end user. Just take a look at any of
the offering from the big companies and try to remember the last
change that was made to their products which was designed for the
benefit of the users and not their investors.
Also, we want to build this business without any influence from
outside investors or the pressure to turn into an unlimited growth
machine. We rather take a slice of a good pie than trying to control
all of the current mediocre bakeries.
So, while we do have some ideas that we are willing to explore later,
the only way we are seeing this to work at the moment is to actually
charge the people using it.
Don’t worry, though. We are still figuring out the exact pricing, but
even the most comprehensive plans will be less than a dollar/user/month.
How are you getting people to pay for a service, if all of the other people are already using something free?
Right, the famous “chicken-and-egg” problem. For that, we are going to
need your help.
Instead of getting only users paying for single accounts, our plans
will be for groups, much like a “family plan” of phone companies.
One person can sign up to our service and then invite their friends to
join. By taking this approach, we can:
- provide a way for the privacy-aware people to signup for a service
they would like to use and already understand the “no free lunch”
issue from the big networks.
- provide all the tools and information needed for them to help
educate their friends and contacts to join our services, i.e, this
is where we can “go viral”.
- avoid the issue of dealing with micropayments. By aggregating lots
of accounts for billing, we can keep our costs even lower. By
keeping the costs lower, we hope that those who really want to
avoid the other networks will be encouraged to sign up and even
perhaps foot the bill for the group in the beginning.
I could also be running another server and share with my friends and family.
Yes, you could! In fact it would be great if you did it as well. The
more people we have providing services in open and non-centralized
systems, the better for the internet and for society in general.
With that said, bear in mind that you will have to:
- buy or lease hardware to run the services 24/7/365
- learn how to set up a different set of technologies and how they work together
- deal with server management, possible outages, backup, etc
- provide support for your non-technical friends, whose requests may
come at any (inconvenient) time
- afford operating costs (in general and per user) that are almost
certainly higher than what you would pay for any professional
provider
If you want to use this at as learning experience, go for it. If you
are doing it to defend your absolute independence and freedom, we
salute you. But, in the end of the day, most people just care about
having a good way to talk with their friends without being tracked and
having their data exploited for someone else’s benefit.
This is why we are building what we are building.
What about the enterprise market? There is way more money there to be made.
True! We are also working on an enterprise offering. Stay tuned.
No need to wait, I am already convinced. I will get all my friends/family/coworkers/pets to join ASAP!
That is great to hear and we appreciate the enthusiasm, but we also
have a lot of things to figure out. This is why we are launching in
limited preview mode. During this initial phase, only the first 100
signups will be able to purchase a 10-user membership, and we are
asking for a one-time payment of $5 which will give access to everyone
during the whole period of limited preview. We are expecting this to
go until the end of the year, when we are expecting to have the full
launch.
But you don’t need to wait until then. Sign up
today to guarantee your spot and let’s
make part of the federated revolution.