Recently we received several inquiries about our business model. How is Clipperz going to make money? From a security point of view this is a very sensible question to ask. The basic answer is: we really don’t know yet.
Giulio and I started Clipperz online password manager out of pure passion and enthusiasm and have been working at its development for the last 18 months investing our own money, time and energy. We publicly launched few days ago and now it’s time to think about the money side.
Complete transparency is our only way to gain the trust of our users, this is why we made the source code available for security reviews, this is why we packed the core crypto algorithms into the Clipperz Javascript Crypto Library and released it under a BSD AGPL license.
In the same way we are going to be as transparent as we can about all the financial aspects of Clipperz.
Given our “zero-knowledge” approach, we cannot think of any effective way to introduce advertising in Clipperz. Therefore maintaining and developing Clipperz on ad revenues is not a viable scenario. We are left with the following alternatives.
Spontaneous donations
Is it possible to sustain Clipperz through the generosity of people who believe that having full and exclusive control of their own data means more security and more freedom? That would be really nice! And maybe we could integrate the donations flow by selling Clipperz merchandise. Sound interesting? Make a donation!
Clipperz as a marketing tool for other services
We are convinced that the zero-knowledge paradigm implemented and tested with Clipperz password manager could be used for a wide range of applications: a personal finance manager, a confidential to-do list, patient records for physicians, … Any suggestions for other new applications?
We could target professionals (physicians, lawyers, headhunters, …) that hopefully will understand the benefits and the convenience of the new services and pay for them. As a result Clipperz could become the poster child of a new breed of web applications and stay free forever.
Each of these new apps could be built leveraging the same security platform designed for Clipperz. But the development of custom data structures and functional interfaces is going to be a significant challenge.
Can we afford to move along this path with our own resources? Definitely not. We would need investors that believes it is a sound and profitable strategy. We are actively looking for brave venture capitalists, but more on this soon.
Premium service
I always liked the so-called freemium model. It could be quite easy to define a free version of Clipperz with limited functionalities and introduce a new premium service with no restrictions for paying subscribers.
In that case where should we draw the line between the two versions? Capacity (e.g. limited number of cards), features (no sharing, no tagging, …) or a mix? How much will you pay for a yearly subscription to the premium service?
All the options above will take quite some time to generate a significant cash flow. What to do in the meanwhile? Take a look at this page! Thanks!
Picture courtesy of Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid.com
“Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”
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typo
careful, you donations link is broken in online feedreaders because it is a relative link ;)
Drupal problem with relative path in RSS feeds
@riffraff
Thanks!
We definitely have a problem with Drupal feed management: all the links to our internal pages are wrong. See this page from the Drupal.org site for further details. Hopefully the patches we are going to apply will fix it.
Marco
I personally hope the
I personally hope the donation ware model can be made sustainable for you. Clipperz is truly a revolutionary product that is already an indispensable part of my online existence. Over time, I believe this will be true for many others as well. So, if you are reading this, and agree even slightly with me, cough up a few dinero to invest in the future. Hit that donation button right now.
Did I just sound like I was on a PBS pledge drive?
make money from ad
most of the site on the internet are making for money from AD,And The can make momey money from member or addon service Only when they grow up When they have alots of user. This is my opinion
I just made a contribution
I just made a contribution to show how much I enjoy using clipperz and how much I want it to succeed.
I wonder how it compares to something like roboform or roboform on a flash memory card.
I wonder if you could make a pay version that deploys to a flash memory stick with enhanced capabilities.
I also think it would be incredible if you could link something like a security chip or fingerprint reading into the security model. I’m sure you have already consdered it.
Is there one specific reason
Is there one specific reason why Clipperz doesn’t go down the advertising route?
Advertising? Not likely.
Since we know nothing of our users, their value from an advertiser point of view is quite limited.
Moreover, the integration with ad servers serving dynamic content within the Clipperz application could present several security risks.
Thanks, Marco
I like the idea of bringing
I like the idea of bringing it in with other services within the professional sector. Clipperz clearly has a good sense of brand credibility which lends itself well to this niche, especially with the aforementioned physicians and the like.
As for donations, are you willing to share how much has been donated by Clipperz or any notable donations that have been made?
Donation report
@ Eve Isk
Thanks for your kind words. You can find a monthly summary of the received donations at http://www.clipperz.com/donations.
Marco
replay
Anyway I use Clipperz and love it. It solves my problem of having many passwords and using many machines, some not even my own. Having the source code public was one of the reasons I choose that site. I did look at the source code tho I’m no security expert I can code a bit. I have no data there truly important tho just passwords to e-mail and social sites and stuff.
Time to try "Freemium" model?
You have a really awesome product here. It seems the donation model is not really making it, based on your reported contribution history at:
http://www.clipperz.com/donations
Why not try the “Freemium” model? That seems to be rather popular these days. You can probably implement this just by changing the rules that businesses must subscribe, but it is free for personal use. $19.95/year would be a very reasonable amount to charge IMO.
Mark
reply
That’s what I partially did. ;) Do you know other competitors like you and PasswordSafe ? I would like to do a benchmark.
Competitors
Hi Scott,
there are some few other online password managers. Here are some of them (alphabetic order): Agatra, Clickpass, Lastpass, NeedMyPassword, Passlet, Passpack, Spyshakers, Shibbo, …
Looking forward to see the results of your tests!
Thanks, Marco
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