Astrobin to charge subscription fee from 2016

[glend (Glen)]

I received an email overnight advising that my Astrobin account will cost $36 USD pa beginning in 2016. It seems the software needs to be rewritten and updated so users are being asked to pay an ongoing subscription fee to finance redevelopment and ongoing maintenance and services. Free accounts will still be available but limited to ten images and no RAW files.

If you have an Astrobin account you will be receiving this email shortly.

I don't know that I am prepared to pay $50 AUD pa for a jpg storage facility, when there are reasonable cloud alternatives, admittedly without plate solving. It apears adverting will now be pushed in the new site as well. More to come on this I am sure.

[bojan]

Astrobin plate solver is very good.. but I can certainly live without it, and there are alternatives.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Salvatore deserves to earn an income for the platform he has created.

H

[pluto (Hugh)]

If you just want platesolving use Flickr and add your image to the Astrometry.net group.

Having said that, I like Astrobin and I have no problem with it not being free - though with our exchange rate it's maybe a bit steep, at least for the minimal amount of use I get from it.

[doppler (Rick)]

It seems most of the big players are gearing up for subscription based services, a lot of the net won't be free much longer and even new versions of software will be sold on an annual subscription basis.

[RickS (Rick)]

The reasons behind this are covered in the latest blog entry: http://www.astrobin.com/blog/

If it pays for maintenance and substantial enhancements then I don't have a problem with the subscription. I'm already donating more than that anyway.

Cheers,
Rick.

[bojan]

Amateurs are not amateurs any more.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Bandwidth and storage isn't free. People have had free reign for five years. I think it very fair at 10 cents a day!

H

[bojan]

H, on one hand you are right, those things are not free..
But on another thought, this may look like a sort of blackmail.

BTW, this forum lives partly on ads, right?

[pluto (Hugh)]

Originally Posted by bojan

But on another thought, this may look like a sort of blackmail.

If you don't want to pay for it nothing will happen to anything you've already uploaded. If you have more than 10 images already uploaded you just won't be able to upload any more without paying.
It's still free for everyone to upload 10 images which is more than enough to find out if the site works for you and is beneficial IMO.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

I don't mind paying for something like this at all - the site will probably end up being better as a result.

In any case, I use PBase at $US23 pa for 1G worth of images (= a lot of images). I don't need to see a plate solve every time I view an image so it works for me.

http://www.pbase.com/pricing.html

Cheers,
Marcus

[bojan]

Guys,
please do not misunderstand me - the price for service is probably not too excessive for most (but it adds up), this is a matter of principle, IMHO.

If someone is offering something for free at the start, and then suddenly (even after 5 years) puts a price on the same service... he should have considered the cost earlier.
Or, at least he should have ask the users what they think about the fee before making that decision (after exploring other possibilities).
Yes, he provided the platform .. but this site is also made of people who contribute.

I have to repeat: (some) amateurs are not the amateurs any more.

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

My personal opinion fwiw is that approximately $50 per annum is a very minimal amount to pay for an excellent facility. Clearly he is not doing it to make an enormous profit and I would guess that Salvatore would be spending many hours of his own time gratis in maintaining the system. I personally think that we are lucky that we have fellow amateurs that are prepared to spend the time creating very useful tools for other to use and to do so at minimal or zero cost.

Just my 2c worth.

R

[dannat (Daniel)]

Originally Posted by bojan

Guys,
If someone is offering something for free at the start, and then suddenly (even after 5 years) puts a price on the same service... he should have considered the cost earlier.
Or, at least he should have ask the users what they think about the fee before making that decision (after exploring other possibilities).
Yes, he provided the platform .. but this site is also made of people who contribute.

Astromart went the same way

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by Ryderscope

I would guess that Salvatore would be spending many hours of his own time gratis in maintaining the system.

I do web applications for a living. The costs involved are much higher than you'd think (the company I currently work for pays tens of thousands of dollars in "hosting" every month), and development is hard. Sure, anyone can throw something together, but to develop something like Astrobin, supporting the kind of traffic he's getting, as a one-man-shop? Huge amount of dedication, skill and effort. People have no idea what it takes, this guy deserves his measly $36USD/pa and more.

[DJT (David)]

Originally Posted by codemonkey

... People have no idea what it takes, this guy deserves his measly $36USD/pa and more.

+1

It's a good resource for quite a few reasons and I have donated in the past as to me it represents value in some form or other.

Looking at the email from Salvatore, once you subscribe you don't get the ads.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

I'm taking a different tact. I'm going to start charging Astrobin for the honour of hosting my awesome images

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by troypiggo

I'm taking a different tact. I'm going to start charging Astrobin for the honour of hosting my awesome images

Don't go all TPP on me just 'cause I've looked at your images, Troy

[dreamstation (James)]

I have absolutely nothing to do with Astrobin but I have seen free services turn into paid services before. It may not be much but it's a slippery slope, and it seems everything these days is a paid service. It all adds up and at the end of the day, everyone is on a budget. Some people just might not be able to afford it or use it enough to see value in paying.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Originally Posted by RickS

Don't go all TPP on me just 'cause I've looked at your images, Troy

It's pay-per-view and I'm counting yours mate