Ask HN: Web application (primarily image based) hosting - S3?

[da288]

Hi,

I'm looking to deploy my startup on a scalable solution and was hoping you experienced folks at HN could give me a few wise words and tips. The start up is effectively an image editing service which will allow users to host the edited images for use wherever. I anticipate about 1 MB storage per edited image including all overheads. I intend to take a freemium approach with a free service for up to X images edited/hosted and a charge beyond that. I will possibly consider in-image advertising on the free images as a source of revenue. The problem is, I have totally no sense of scale for anticipated take up, although doing a few quick calculations for a worst case scenario (no paid subscribers) shows a significant cost per user that can potentially skyrocket in terms of Bandwidth where one simply cannot anticipate demand. How do I deal with this? Do I start off in a private beta on a simple shared/virtual server and then consider dedicated/S3/others? Also, possibly dodgy, but what about considering free image hosting solutions out there for free users on the freemium approach - I realise this is a huge liability - but just thinking about it the porn industry is probably a pretty good paradigm. I have read through the other discussions on HN on AWS/S3/Smugmug etc but they are outdated if I'm not mistaken. Any advice much appreciated, thanks!

[wwortiz]

Maybe you should look through this: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9tlwi/im_the_imgur_guy...

and search for more information from MrGrim on reddit.

I think one thing about free image hosting is that it can really add up in bandwidth.

[da288]

Thanks, that was really useful. Another basic thing I was wondering about was User Management (i.e. getting users to sign up, assigning password protected dirs etc). From browsing around there seems to be some good scripts but are there any classic recommended solutions that would be easy to integrate and allow payments etc.