this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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filen.io - one time payment plans - encrypted cloud storage (filen.io)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Sorry if this reads like an ad; the link is a non-referral one. (I am broke though if anyone wants me to DM my referral link (10%) lol) I heard about it here and wanted to share for others that were interested by that original post but waiting for a sale.

Hello everyone I just figured I would share a PSA since filen.io's black friday sale seems to be live now. Filen is another good opensource (all their client apps) alternative to google drive, dropbox, icloud, MEGA, etc.

I've been checking this company out for the past week after I saw someone asking here if it was trustworthy. It seems legit; fairly young company which explains why they still offer lifetime plans as they are growing.

Its only like 35 Euro for a 200GB lifetime client-side encrypted cloud storage with no bandwith limits. I despise subscriptions so hard to argue with that for me.

I plan on using this for my offsite backups mainly.

EDIT: For christ sakes folks, Lifetime obviously means the lifetime of the company as is the case for ANY "LIFETIME" PRODUCT. That's been the legal meaning of the term when it comes to warranties and such for decades. Should I rename it "One Time Payment" so you guys can stop commenting that a company can go under? Newsflash if you pay monthly for dropbox and that company fails, same thing happens, except you'll have paid hundreds or thousands over the years (depending how long we're talking) for 200GB storage instead of a one time payment of 35 Euro. It will take ~13 months to break even with GDrive's 200GB plan so as long as filen lasts more than 13 months you still come out ahead. They have also stated in their blog that lifetime plans will increase in price down the road as they are currently being partially funded by their monthly plans. I would expect they will likely increase in price to similar to what pcloud charges for lifetime plans? IDK don't quote me.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

“Cloud” + “lifetime” are not a real thing. Caveat emptor.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Lifetime is implied to be the lifetime of the company as is the case with LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

From an economic view: In this case as soon as you hit 13 months without filen going bankrupt you are literally free compared to the 200GB plan with Google Drive which you would still be stuck paying $4 CAD/month for 200GB long after the lifetime plan has paid for itself (assuming they don't increase monthly rates as time goes on, which they always do).

Go ahead and pay monthly if you want but you'll be in exactly the same position if a company goes under, except you would have paid a hell of a lot more than 35 Euro by that point.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They look good, I tried it, but the issue for me is that I can’t use rclone to backup my files

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Ya it seems like accessibility via other protocols is in development... After reading more into today it sounds like rclone is being actively worked on at least.

They stated on their blog webDAV syncing won't be compatible with their E2EE though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Why are so many replies focusing on the "lifetime" part? Of course nothing is eternal

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Ya the "lifetime of the service" is always mentioned (you're still SOL if a service ends and you've been paying monthly, you just would have massively overpaid in the meantime); and I agree when its a large premium for a "lifetime". But in this case considering it would only need to stay viable for 13 months in order to get your ROI on 35 euro invested compared to a monthly subscription (GDrive is $4 CAD/month for 200GB) that is also known for randomly deleting your data/accounts without warning (GDrive), I think its worth the risk. If in 5 years they go under you can always migrate to another service and you saved 5 years - 13 months of monthly payments. And ofc basic data storage practices still should be followed. Min 3 copies, one offsite.

Interesting about the SAF functionality and worth noting for anyone wanting it for that use; I wonder if its on their roadmap at all. As I said, I'm using this as an offsite backup so should work fine for that.

As an aside do you have a recommendation for solid SAF functionality with Keepass (esp on linux)? I currently use gdrive linked through gnome accounts in order to sync my keepass file across all my devices since I haven't found a better option but KeepassXC constantly overwrites the file with temp files (randomly generated string file names) which causes errors when I try to open it on KeepassDX on my phone since the database file is no longer there but replaced with a temp file. Not sure if its due to Gdrive constantly revoking file manager permissions or what.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hmm that's disappointing for pcloud. Ya I agree with not really trusting MEGA as your only cloud backup due to the previous wipe of free accounts. I have a free account that I use here and there but you never know when they could get wiped again. With a paid plan I'd be less worried about that but still.

Well, I just migrated my kdbx from gdrive to filen and it seems to be syncing properly to the local folder on pop_OS22.04 linux appimage. Not SAF or Rclone but atleast all their apps are opensource. It won't be usable for kdbx on android until the next android app update which they stated in their blog will add local files integration (I believe this means you will be able to pick files from filen in keepassDX like you can with GDrive) and background uploads. I guess time will tell if there's the same issues with overwriting files with temp ones I had on GDrive since I'm not 100% sure if that's an issue with file permissions being pulled by drive or if its an issue with KeepassXC.

Bitwarden is a great option; I keep putting off migrating to it cause I keep having to relocate around the country and have my homelab offline for extended periods. Figured I should wait to host that one till its reliably accessible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

While I don't have much to add to the discussion of cloud storage, I was curious if either of you have tried out Syncthing to maintain your KeePass database across devices. Been doing so for years and have never had a single issue. Every modification/update is propagated to all linked machines (mobile/desktop/laptop). Has version history if that is a concern as well. Just a handy little FOSS P2P sync tool. Might be a valid way to avoid having to switch from KeePassXC to Bitwarden. I personally find it more reliable than most cloud solutions. But that last bit is 100% my opinion. Best of luck! 🍻

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Filen is not secure enough. Follow discussion here https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/is-filen-io-not-secure-enough/14874

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

I mean, not a great source... That's just a link to a forum post and the only thing they reference for it "not being secure" was a github PR from 2021... Not saying its great they had teething issues, but that's literally a year within starting up and they fixed all those issues right away, and had an independent audit done. So I kinda feel like using it to say they're not secure now isn't very useful. But if you have something showing their current deployment is insecure please share.

They did a complete infrastructure overhaul at the start of 2023 too moving to their own hardware and such so I imagine more might have changed since 2021 than just those issues.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do not trust it to be lifetime and do not trust it to be e2e.

Always use your own OSS encryption on top of it and never trust it to be lifetime. They can not promise you to be lifetime since they can not promise they are still in business in 5 years.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

This is literally client-side encryption using fully open source programs... If you "do not trust it to be e2e", verify the code yourself. Doing your own encryption on top would be redundant.