zlacker

>>mikece+(OP)
Signal had 40 million active users in 2021 [1]. With 14 million in infra cost, that comes to .35 per user/year. Total expenses are about 33 million, so about .825 per user/year. All in all that seems very reasonable.

[1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/signal-statistics/

>>V__+r8
I'd be happy to pay $1/year for signal, and I'd pay $2/year if it were decoupled from my phone number.

>>lepton+ug
If you pay Signal $1/year, they'll realistically see about 60-70 cents of that – and that's only considering payment processor fees.

Now add the cost of providing support (it's a paid product now!), payment handling on their end (in a privacy-preserving way, which excludes most common payment methods), and top it off with the immense damage to the network effect by excluding all the users that can't or simply don't want to pay $1/year...

Donations seem like the much better option here.

>>lxgr+in
You can also charge for a 10 year minimum and get to a higher retained %

You don't need to provide support, even much more expensive consumer services live without a proper one, so being explicit about the fact that you only pay for infrastructure could suffice

Not sure why payment privacy has to be so strict for everyone

The network effect damage is real, but maybe it could be limited with donations :)

>>eviks+8s
Selling a service automatically opts you in to all kinds of consumer protections, either legally or de facto through the dispute mechanism of the payment methods your customers use.

Just ignoring customer complaints and selling the service "as-is" is usually not an option.

>>lxgr+6t
Why is it not an option when it already exists in many places (all these protections fail all the time)? Your first sentence doesn't imply high/expensive level of customer service

Besides, even now they're not ignoring all the complaints, the do fix bugs?

Maybe to be more specific, how much did it cost WhatsApp when they had $1 price and a tiny team? How does it compare to the cost of SMS?

>>eviks+FB
In a December 2013 blog post, WhatsApp claimed that 400 million active users used the service each month. The year 2013 ended with $148 million in expenses, of which $138 million in losses.[1]

FB acquired them next year and if my memory is correct there were 19 in the team then.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp

>>YetAno+pC1
That $ figure tells us nothing as it includes those same huge SMS costs that Signal is on an unsustainable path to rack up

With just a bit more effort you can see that most of those $148 are not related to the extra customer support we're discussing, but rather to the things that Signal is already doing

Costs and expenses in 2013:

Cost of revenue 53 (payment processing fees, infrastructure costs, SMS verification fees and employee compensation for part of operations team)

R&D 77 (engineering and technical teams who are responsible for the design, development, and testing of the features)

G&A 19

>>eviks+1h2
So for $10M revenue, they had $53M cost of revenue. I think asking for $1 is never going to be sustainable, even if leave all other costs. My guess is that "employee compensation for part of operations team" is the primary one taking all the cost, as payment processing fees couldn't be more than the revenue itself and one message is pretty cheap.

>>YetAno+ou2
Why not? Someone calculated above that total costs are below $1 for Signal even with all the SMS waste (also, it doesn't have to be a literal $1)

Besides, the original point was about huge$ from running a paid vs free app, which isn't the case