FeedBin, my RSS reader of choice, is 1 year old today
Feedbin launched into a market with no future. Google owned RSS and they had let it languish.
That all changed when Google announced they were shutting down Google Reader two days after Feedbin launched.
Interestingly, he moved from AWS-backed Heroku, to a dedicated server, with a 50% drop in price.
For all this performance, surely the price must have gone way up? Well no. Feedbin’s last bill on Heroku was for $7,997 and the first month’s bill on SoftLayer was $3,932 so dedicated does not mean expensive.
This is no surprise to me, after finding out how much we were paying for dedicated servers at Universal Music - or rather, just how LITTLE we were paying. AWS and co are great if you need flexibility to bring up machines quickly, but if your scaling isn't all over the place, dedicated is usually a lot better[1].
The real crux of it, and why I'm more than happy to pay for it:
Feedbin has one of those boring business models that actually works. Charging money for a good or service. Feedbin will never have millions of customers but that’s OK. It just needs you.
I'm not the product. FeedBin is the product. Well done to Ben for creating a great product.
[1]: or use someone like Rackspace, and have some dedicated with cloud for on-demand scaling
