Exactly correct we are running on Azure also so it's slightly more expensive. The idea is eventually as we load the service with users our cost will come down and we can pass some of those saving on to our users. We have built out a network that can run on any cloud so in the future we will be able to further optimize cost by finding less expensive routes that have the same level of performance.
AWS/GCP/Azure bandwidth is already incredibly overpriced. You can easily find $0.005/GB and less from other providers, if you’re only interested in server hosting.
For many applications, you can host servers elsewhere while using AWS for S3, DynamoDB, etc.
We wanted to stand up a high performance service to start and took on extra cost to do so. We intend to continuously optimize our system to maintain that performance but access it through more affordable options. Even just being smarter about how we spin up and down servers could reduce costs for us outside of also adding other providers to the mix. Ideally once we have some mass of users we will be able to get better pricing and optimize our cost further which should enable us to pass on savings.
The pricing includes 10 days of storage and the cost of the bandwidth. Today an upload can be downloaded many times but in the future we will be deploying download based billing which will charge you for the data downloaded. We are also working on a pay-as-you-go storage option so you can extend the expiry beyond 10 days and pay some low cent amount per GB for the data stored.