I am intrigued by this. I read everything on your site. It looks great since it apparently allows transfer between devices using different OSes and that is always the sticking point around my place. I have several incarnations of Windows (7-11), a couple of linux distros (PopOS, CentOS7), and iOS on our phones. I see that linux is currently not supported though you would add that if people request it.
That's great.
My question for you is about the security of the data being transferred. You're using TLS according to your docs and this app transfers directly peer to peer. Is this secure FTP using TLS?
You have two tiers for users - Community and Business. Community is free and donations encouraged. Speeds may be slower to prioritize paying customers and support is more crowd-sourced. Business gets fastest speeds and direct support.
I am not a subscription buyer by choice. I would like to help make this profitable for you. Would you consider offering a paid version for personal use that would give faster speeds, security updates, and bug fixes at a price point between Free and Business? $300/year is way too much for something that would be used as a personal tool to quickly and securely send documents and photos to family members.
I realize that the donation model could function like a one-time payment model since you are likely using it intermittently and sending a small donation for each use so that your annual costs are minimized. In that case you always use the most current version. You "own" that version during the period that you use it and you pay a reasonable donation for use of it.
I also don't see the need to establish an account if this is a p2p service since the data transfers should walk from my device to the destination device. Fill me in on why I need an account.
I would pay for a license to use this with the expectation that the license would provide the current version of the app plus all bug fixes and security fixes for that paid version and that upgrades taking the app to the next full version would be discounted to existing users. I could be a long-term customer.
As an example, I use an antique, unsupported version of SnagIt on my machines. I purchased the license years ago, upgraded through a couple of versions until they got to a point where they dicked up the interface and changed the tool availability and so I ditched the newer version and have continued using the old version which work great. I still get the nag screens to update to the new version but the click to close that dialog is now muscle memory for me.
I appreciate the functionality that this app, blip, provides and would like to be a paying customer and use the app but I'm not interested in a subscription model.
EDIT: I forgot to note a slight error in one of your replies to a FAQ.
Under the "Blip vs Aspera" comparison in the FAQ "Why is Blip easy to use?" there is a fat-finger spelling error.
Hey, really appreciate such thoughtful reply. I’ll address your questions while explaining our design decisions and how Blip works.
We set Blip to use email addresses because we wanted to make it convenient for people who are less tech savvy and for business customers who need to quickly find and know who they’re sending files to. If you sign in on another device, all your other devices and recent people are just a click away—so you don’t need to set up or sync that list by yourself.
Blip is a local-first app in the sense that it works with files on your devices, but the interactions are server-driven, letting you negotiate transfers with your devices and other people, no matter where they are. When transferring files, we try to connect devices directly over IP, but when that’s not possible (and it often is not) we relay files over our servers. We use TLS 1.3 to encrypt files in transit. When devices are connected directly, we use mTLS for an even higher level of security. We plan on adding full E2EE in the future.
We care a lot about speed! We don’t throttle transfer speeds when devices are connected directly. Sending files on home Wi-Fi should be as fast as possible, as long as devices can ping each other. Reduced speeds only apply when using our relay network. If demand is high, business customers get priority to ensure their work is delivered on time.
Our business model is still very much evolving. Our main goal was to structure it in a way where people who benefit from Blip commercially should be supporting it the most. We considered a licensing model, but Blip relies on infrastructure maintenance and continuous development, so we need everyone on the latest and most secure version. We decided to make a clear distinction between community and business users, because we learned there’s more demand for speed at work. Of course, if community users start experiencing slow speeds (in practice, this hasn’t been the case), we’d love too bring this to personal users to. One way is for one-time donations to provide high-speed data boosts. Since personal users don’t require extra support and business features, pricing can be more affordable.
All that said, it’s so good to know that speed matters! Our goal has always been to make Blip the fastest way to send files.
Thanks again for the feedback, and for the heads-up on the typo—already fixed! :)
I suspect that I will give this a try on some of my devices. Thanks for the informative reply. I noticed that your Windows support begins with Win10. Does that mean that it won't work at all for Win7 or that it might not work?
I have a couple of Win7 workstations that could use something like this.
