[amatriain]

At the moment I'm afraid I can't offer an estimate of the user fees once out of the beta phase. The beta will among other things serve as a stress test, giving me an idea of the server resources necessary for the service. That will give me an idea of the costs associated with running the SaaS, which will help decide the user fees. For the moment I simply have too little data, sorry. I intend it to be very affordable, if it helps.

I understand you being worried that a service you use may disappear. But realistically that can happen with absolutely any SaaS. Being backed by a big company is no guarantee in this regard, as Google has shown with google reader and other services. My intention is to keep Feedbunch running for as long as possible, but I was also burned by the GReader shutdown so I understand your concern. The best I can offer is this: Feedbunch has an OPML export feature, so any user can take his subscriptions to any other feed reader that supports OPML whenever he wants. That's the best way to avoid vendor lock-in: to work with interoperable standards so that you can take your data elsewhere if necessary. And of course being opensource you can self-host it.

In case you're interested I originally built Feedbunch for myself when GReader closed down, because I was unhappy with the alternatives. I've been using it for my feed reading needs for some time. Offering it as a SaaS is an extension of that, but the project started as a way for me to have a reader I liked. I'm not aiming to catch the eye of a big company here, but to run a good service.

That was a bit all over the place but I hope I addressed your questions.