QuickShare's Dilemma - please give feedback!

[LazyLion]

As you know QuickShare is fairly new All South African local hosting site...

http://www.quickshare.co.za/

Their service is sorely needed in South Africa where bandwidth and hosting costs are so high.

But they have a dilemma... here it is (you may have guessed it...)

Hi Gary,

I hope you don’t mind me emailing you.

The reason I am emailing you is because we are facing a bit of a dilemma on our side in the running of QuickShare and I have written a blog entry that gives insight into it. Knowing that you are an active user on QuickShare your thoughts and opinions on the matter would be especially valuable to me as ultimately QuickShare is way more about the members than it is about us.

Would you mind reading the blog post if you get some time? It’s live at http://blog.quickshare.co.za/2008/11/21/dilemma-sa-or-international/ .

I would really appreciate any feedback you may have.

Kind regards,

[The Site Owner]

Here is the blog he mentions...

Dilemma: SA or International?

We have a bit of a dilemma…

We aboslutely love doing what we do but we are faced with a major catch-22 in that hosting QuickShare in South Africa has become prohibitively expensive. This is because the cost of bandwidth is easily 600 times more expensive in South Africa than what it is in the USA or Europe. For the price of 1MB here we can get 683MB on a popular hosting service based in the UK.

Since our users are the most valuable part of QuickShare, we decided to share our thoughts with you and get your opinions and thoughts on the situation.

After giving it some thought, it seems we have 2 viable solutions.

Solution 1

* We continue to host QuickShare in South Africa, limit the amount of bandwidth available on the free account and introduce paid accounts for users who require more bandwidth.

The pros:
Users will still be able to sample the service and use it for hosting and sharing of small files. Users will be able to access files on local-only bandwidth and will be also enjoy the faster speeds associated with hosting a site locally.

The cons
Due to the costs of bandwidth mentioned above, the cost of the paid plans will be quite high even though we would be able to secure bandwidth at fraction over cost price.

Solution 2

* We move QuickShare over to an international server in order to reduce bandwidth and hosting costs.

The pros
Cheaper bandwidth and hosting costs would mean that we could operate as usual but offer our users a significantly more powerful free account and users accessing files from other countries would experience better speeds than they currently do.

The cons
International hosting would bring slightly reduced speeds to local users due to the higher latency between South Africa and the rest of the world. Users would also no longer be able to access QuickShare on local-only bandwidth.

Comments are open on this post and you do not need to be registered on the blog to post. We would appreciate your thoughts and feedback regarding this situation.

Kind regards,
QuickShare Team

Would you guys mind giving your feedback here or to the owners via the contact section on the site. Or PM me and I will let you have the contact details.

BTW, my vote was as follows...

Thanks for the e-mail! Yes, I was wondering when you guys were going to hit this problem. I have not uploaded anything yet, but I was getting ready to try and upload some stuff [...]

Having read your Blog... I would ask you one question...

"Are you running the site to make money (not that there is anything wrong with that), or are you doing it as a sevice to South African users?" (maybe that is two questions, I dunno).

BUT... either way... my vote is for Option Number 1. (Reducing the size of the hosted file). For these reasons...

1) South African users really do need a good local file host.
2) Local Broadband prices should drop later in 2009 when Seacom goes live, I predict by at least half.

So if you can stick it out for less than a year with the smaller file sizes, in the long run you will have the reputation that you stuck by your users.

... and guys... please support them by taking out a subscription and helping with the bandwidth costs! We need more sites like this in SA. Thanks.

 

[ld13]

My vote is for both. Hosting is so cheap internationally, you might as well host here AND there. Then give the user a choice.
Do you want a:
Free Local Account - 50MB
Free International Account - 200MB
Paid Local Account - 1GB @ Rxx.xx
Paid International Account - 10GB @ Ryy.yy

Should not be too hard. Host the site locally, and just pipe the "international" account uploads/downloads to the international server. Best of both worlds

 

[LazyLion]

My vote is for both. Hosting is so cheap internationally, you might as well host here AND there. Then give the user a choice. You want a local free account with 50MB/intl free account with 200MB OR do you want to Pay Rx for a 1GB local account/ Ry for a 10GB intl account. Should not be too hard. Host the site locally, and just pipe the "international" account uploads/downloads to the international server. Best of both worlds

Hmmm, that might be doable!

Even better... host the site on an Akamai backbone! .. and get the best of both worlds!

 

[ld13]

Hmmm, that might be doable!

Even better... host the site on an Akamai backbone! .. and get the best of both worlds!

They won't ever go the Akamai route - $$$. They'll just end up paying the local bandwidth bill in any case. Hosting it internationally and locally should give them more control and keep costs lower. And it is more than doable. Easy to host a website over multiple servers without the user even noticing.

 

[w1z4rd]

Get a server in the states and one at heztner.

State side you can get a server (own server not a virtual server) starting at around R250 a month. Includes the free version (10 domain limit) of plesk. Then get the 5gb bw server from hetzner (around R1000pm.. and comes with konsole).

High bandwidth sites should be moved offshore or be charged per mb over their limit.

Dont host on ADSL.

 

[rwenzori]

My vote is for both. Hosting is so cheap internationally, you might as well host here AND there. Then give the user a choice.
Do you want a:
Free Local Account - 50MB
Free International Account - 200MB
Paid Local Account - 1GB @ Rxx.xx
Paid International Account - 10GB @ Ryy.yy

Should not be too hard. Host the site locally, and just pipe the "international" account uploads/downloads to the international server. Best of both worlds

This, to me, is very good thinking.