
Tell HN: Digital Ocean will start collecting fees for backups - jrs235
DO subscribers have received the following email:<p>Some Important News About Backups<p>Hi there,<p>We’re in the process of updating our backup system and we wanted to give you a heads up about some changes you’ll be seeing.<p>You may have noticed that, though the cost for backups has always been 20% of your Droplet usage, you’ve never actually been charged. Don’t worry, we’re not coming to collect for past backups now. So far, we’ve been happy to offer backups, free of charge.<p>Starting in February, however, you will begin to see charges for backups on your monthly invoice. Backups will now happen on a weekly basis, with at least four backups occurring per month. You&#x27;ll only be charged for a maximum of four backups in any given month and you&#x27;ll never be charged for backups that fail to happen. Payment for backups occurring in February will be due on March 1st, and so forth.<p>We&#x27;ll provide you with a scheduled window each week in which your backup will occur. This information will always be available in both the control panel and the API.
If you’d like a more in-depth explanation of how backups work – and when and why to use them – we’ve prepared some detailed articles on the topic:
Understanding DigitalOcean Droplet Backups
DigitalOcean Backups and Snapshots Explained
How to Choose an Effective Backup Strategy for Your VPS<p>Happy Coding,<p>Team DigitalOcean<p>UPDATE: Made paragraphs to remove wall of text.
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squiguy7
Correct me if I am wrong, but if you enable this option when you make a
droplet a popup comes up and tells you it will cost 20% of the droplet's fees
per month. This isn't news to me as I don't use it because I have such a small
amount that I pull it down to my own machine.

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jrs235
You are not wrong. What is newsworthy is that they are going to begin actually
collecting that 20% which they have not been actually charging for in the
past. This is more of a heads up for those that see an increase in their
monthly bill/charge.

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rpietro
agree this is nuts. EC2 always an option

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stephenboyd
It's an option for people who want the convenience. DO has free snapshots and
you can roll your own backup system anyway.

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novocraig
20% for four backups per month? That's insane.

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Someone1234
It is opt in in fairness. You have to set it to backup when you create the
droplet.

20% flat is not THAT crazy, backup services and EC2 and Azure both nickel and
dime a bit via bandwidth and storage fees.

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toomuchtodo
To snapshot EBS volumes in EC2 is pennies per GB. 20% flat is crazy.

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jrs235
Its really not though, as long as you are using the smaller droplets.

$5/month 20 GB droplet would be 80 GB of backups for $1.25 on AWS S3 that
would cost $2.40

$10/month 30 GB droplet would be 120 GB of backups for $2.50 on AWS S3 that
would cost $3.60

$20/month 40 GB droplet would be 160 GB of backups for $5.00 on AWS S3 that
would cost $4.80

$40/month 60 GB droplet would be 240 GB of backups for $10.00 on AWS S3 that
would cost $7.20

$80/month 80 GB droplet would be 320 GB of backups for $20.00 on AWS S3 that
would cost $9.6

ADD: Then if you compare outgoing to internet bandwidth costs DO is better.

Assume you use all 1 TB of your small droplets bandwidth. That's included in
your $5 while on AWS that will cost you an extra $89.91.

UPDATE: Bandwidth pricing for droplets is for incoming and outgoing, so
assuming 50/50 (bad assumption) then AWS would cost you $44.91 more per month.

