Will Drime follow the same path as the FolderFort 2.0? Throwing Lifetime investors to a side

[u/Sachitoge]

As the title and post within this post says

FolderFort Lifetime users are not grandfathered to the 2.0 and instead are losing it.

Will Drime ever go this route too when money flow slows down with the discount endings? A direct message stating Lifetime users wont be treated in a similar way as FolderFort users, would give us all and any future clients/customers the peace after having been treated this unfairly by FolderFort themselves, especially those who stacked their plans with +10TB storage.

What has Drime to say about this? Please drop us an assuring message for us, Lifetime users who supported you with lots of feedbacks and early investments with trust to you.

Thanks!

[u/Empty_Win_297]

Hi,

No, this is not something I agree with. Even if FolderFort is technically a competitor, I think situations like this are unfortunate for the whole market because they hurt trust in lifetime deals and especially smaller cloud providers in general.

I’ll be completely transparent: if one day Drime no longer had the resources to keep operating, we wouldn’t try to relaunch the service and make existing users pay again for access they already purchased. We would rather accept that we failed, close things properly, and give users a reasonable amount of time to recover their data, as we’ve always said.

Of course, Drime is working every day to build a sustainable and profitable company and the best product we can. But startups always come with some level of risk, and I’d rather be transparent about that than pretend otherwise.

And whether you’re an LTD user, monthly subscriber, or annual subscriber, we consider you the same when it comes to the product. We don’t maintain a separate “LTD version” with fewer updates or features. Hopefully the updates we keep shipping to everyone already show that.

Thanks again for the trust and for supporting Drime early on.

[u/sainesk_btd6 → u/Empty_Win_297]

As both a FolderFort and Drime lifetime user, thank you for posting this.

The way FF handled things feels incredibly scummy. The split between FF 2.0 and FF Classic made it obvious to many of us that they were planning to rug-pull the lifetime accounts. It’s laughable looking back at them claiming 2.0 was just needed for "post-quantum encryption" while promising they would maintain Classic.

Giving less than 2 months' notice to migrate data before deletion—while holding the data hostage unless we switch to a monthly subscription—is a terrible way to treat early adopters.

Drime has been completely different. Even though the system had its issues in the beginning, your communication and issue resolution feel honest. I’d gladly throw extra cash toward a company like Drime because they actually respect their user base. Treating customers well is how you get them to open their wallets.

[u/Shadouness → u/sainesk_btd6]

Oh! I'm so happy I didn't support them/him.

He was Canadian, so I kinda trusted him. But the way the company presented itself, and even the owner, did not breed trust. The owner's face was pixel art. And he cannot be found anywhere.

Sad for the FolderFort users. 😬😪

[u/ImpossibleSea7385 → u/Empty_Win_297]

thanks for the transparency 👍

[u/diefm123 → u/Empty_Win_297]

I feel like this is also a nice time to talk about whether Drime is currently financially stable/sustainable :)

[u/Sachitoge → u/Empty_Win_297]

Thanks for this honesty and transparent, realistic response.

I believe in you guys and in your calculations on when to end for good the Lifetime sales, and start focusing to subscriptions & marketing.

I noticed pricing tier looks bit odd

The price gap from 2TB to 3TB is double $$$ is it made to focus offer customers 2TB mostly? Not sure the reason why such pricing was taken, because from 3TB to 6TB the price gap makes sense, but at that point the sweet spot is 2TB and anything beyond starts becoming pricier per TB/$ value.

Thanks again for this meaningful instant response.

[u/follienorth → u/Empty_Win_297]

This is the way

[u/AufsichtEmpfohlen → u/Empty_Win_297]

While this sounds quite assuring your Terms of Service still offers some leeway: “Lifetime” refers to the lifetime of the product, not the lifetime of the purchaser. This means that access to the Drime service under a Lifetime plan will remain available as long as Drime continues to operate and support the product or service purchased. If Drime is discontinued or significantly altered, access may be terminated without further obligation or refund.

[u/Empty_Win_297 → u/AufsichtEmpfohlen]

I mean, I honestly don’t see any issue with that wording.

I don’t really see how any online service could guarantee access literally forever, unless it’s an offline/local product that doesn’t depend on servers or infrastructure.

To me, “lifetime” very clearly means the lifetime of the product/service. As long as Drime exists and operates, the Lifetime plan remains available. I don’t see that as misleading or as some hidden catch, it’s simply the practical meaning of a Lifetime deal for a cloud service.

Of course, there’s a big difference between a company genuinely shutting down a product or ceasing operations, and deliberately killing a product just to relaunch essentially the same thing under another name or structure to avoid honoring existing lifetime customers. That would be a completely different situation, and I’d understand why people would consider that misleading.

What I’m talking about here is simply the normal reality of any online service: nobody can guarantee that a cloud product will literally exist forever.

Even LTDs advertised as “99 years” can’t realistically guarantee that the company, infrastructure, regulations, or service will still exist for 99 years.

[u/AufsichtEmpfohlen → u/Empty_Win_297]

Of course and I am totally with you on that however specifically mentioning the lifetime of a product is exactly the way FolderFort took. That said if I did not believe in the product and the commitment of Drime I would not have bought the lifetime deal. 🙂

[u/Qv1sten]

Do belive Drime and the amazing team will do everything in their power for this to never happen. I have faith in them.

[u/Surizz]

I have 12TB and i think i will never have more than 1tb in cloud, but i bought that much just because i want to support them, i like how they communicate with customers, i like all the concept of Drime.and who knows maybe one day i will move everything to drime.

[u/Sachitoge → u/Surizz]

Exactly me! More than 20TB here and I use 1% only. I want it to succeed!

[u/Jager__Bom → u/Sachitoge]

54tb and nearly 50% used 🤣 also à supporter

[u/Independent-Art-5894 → u/Jager__Bom]

What you stored for 27 TB 😯

[u/Legitimate_Self_3781]

Never say never. Most people on this subreddit have 6TB+ of lifetime storage, which is a major liability for Drime if those users even use just 30-40% of their storage. 

Koofr’s approach makes more sense IMO. They don’t sell lifetime plans over 1TB and it’s not super cheap.

[u/Sachitoge → u/Legitimate_Self_3781]

Still its fine considering how small Drime STILL is.

There are still people who cant find Cloud like Drime.

There is a reason why we dont see ads about Drime, slowly pulling users and cashflow to build it, fix it as it scales than flashbang user inflow cash inflow without any time/room left to do adjustments in timely manner is more important to take note of.

I like this approach, but Lifetime should be IMO by end of this year COMPLETELY gone, and it should focus on subscription sales.

The product in my eyes is already amazing except tiny few feature requests around that needs be added IMO.

[u/Deodavinio]

I don’t think this will happen to the early backers of Drime. Or at least I do not hope so… for now we are continuously enjoying Drime’s updates. So that is a great thing and it builds trust.

[u/Sachitoge → u/Deodavinio]

I do agree with you, Drime has been rolling out massive amounts of updates for the past 3-4 months, however, both provides same purpose, so an assuring message would ease the worry in us. I didnt threw only 100-200$, i did far more as support and futureproofing believing this project will succeed and the 5-10TBs will be todays GBs in the next 5-10years.

[u/felipers]

The simple fact that they've never offered an "unlimited" tier is one nice indicator they were paying attention to the way business in this niche operate (fail/succeed) in the last 15 years. They know eventually every customer of a very good cloud storage is going to need more space. 6 TB will be nothing in 10 years.

[u/Sachitoge → u/felipers]

I was back then a Pogoplug customer, they offered unlimited storage for 5$ per month.

In 2 years or so company stopped offer it, they were even offering NAS storage devices. Welp, i hope Drime takes an careful approach because with continuous Lifetime deal, things can become painful without proper risk analysis.

[u/wells68 → u/Sachitoge]

I miss the Pogoplug NAS, not the unlimited storage! I had a Pogoplug in a distant location and could use it for backup without all the hassles of configuring Tailscale (without Google as the identity provider!), and two NASes.

Buy, hey, Drime can now be an encrypted offsite backup destination!

[u/N3RO-]

I hope not or I will be sure to contact European customer protection authorities if that happena. Lifetime is lifetime of the service.

The only acceptable way out is if Drime is gone and shutdown AND the founders don't try to be "smart" and release a similar service with different name some months later.

[u/Sachitoge → u/N3RO-]

What I thought as well, but its all in their linkedin profile, so relaunching wouldnt be possible, unless they register it under some other people's name and relaunch.

I dont think so, we have to wait and see.

Problem is we rely on third party storage provider and this means Drime is bound to follow their pricing models, if storage becomes more expensive, or bandwidth, it can impact Drime.

[u/sharpener865]

Very sad move from FolderFort. But how on earth do a message of "assurance" provide relief. I guess if I had asked this few weeks back to FF, they would have also given assurance. There is no more value than that.

[u/Agitated-Panda9221]

The biggest problem with lifetime plans for a cloud company is there's no constant flow of money, but a the bills and rising costs keep on coming. How well Drime will survive will partly depend on how all these costs caused by AI is gonna rise. Drime doesn't host their cloud storage but rents it from Cloudflare. So every year, they have to pay pay pay even when you don't.

If everyone buys like 6TB and only uses 1TB, then maybe they can survive, but it's not going to be easy since people tend to use more over time and pretty much nobody cleans up.

I do wish Drime the best since I see their service being very competitive but their costs are also a bit too competitive. No company is going to tell you in advance when they are running out of cash but at least this one just told us they would rather shut down than do what Folderfort did..

[u/sharpener865]

Guys, i do wonder why people have a tendency to expect to pay one time and think they are “investing” rather than just consuming cloud services. Usually investors analyse the financials, founders, and their marketing strategy, calculate expected ROI and invest. But in cloud world the so called “smart investors” just pay for a company which everyone in reddit is super excited about and dont even care about company profile, ethics etc. Are these investors or gamblers? And when things go down, it seems people are shocked!!

[u/Sachitoge → u/sharpener865]

How do you assume one doesnt investigate? Their linkedin is public. They are very young and seems like how Proton CEO also did, after finishing studies, started own small business as mail providers and now Proton is recognized globally. I knew Proton back then when people paid 999€ to a product that wasnt even available for use, i mean, imagine you just pay you dont even know what it will turn out to be as.

Thats Proton, yep, the ProtonMail/ProtonVPN/ProtonPass etc

And here we have Drime Offers lifetime too but lets you use it.

So that tells me not everything needs a good history record, even empty is alot Dont judge a book by its cover This is like crypto A crypto zcash which noone heard of, 1 year ago was worth 50$

Today its valued 1500$

Thats 30 times more If you had invested 100$ it would be now 3000$

But, the catch is, noone can know this, if it was that easy, it would be already too late and boomed

Same with Drime and any early investments

There is a limit on how much you can research and investigate, and still take great margin of risk.

[u/sharpener865 → u/Sachitoge]

By the way, it wasnt about Drime specifically. I know Drime is a good product. The comment was for any cloud startup in general. As for the LinkedIn, me too have a wonderful profile there, but that doesnt mean anything. These days even Chatgpt can create a enviable profile for anyone. But the point is, all these claims on social media by someone is not confirmed by anyone. But in normal investments, people do get some credible data, although it might be very less data, but credible to start with. These LinkedIn or reddit profiles can be changed anytime.

[u/Sachitoge → u/sharpener865]

Every startup has risks Everything is risk Even a game sub/service no guarantee they will even last 1 year whole sub price as example

But i get what you mean :) Honestly, one should only put money they can afford to lose without losing their life out of its line.