Interested in a daily project snapshot service?

Since a few weeks, microStudio has a new, very cool backup system, based on the BTRFS file system. Warm thanks to my good friend @Mattamore for setting this up for me :-)

With this new system running, it would be very feasible to add a project recovery service to microStudio. It would allow you to download an archive of your project, as it was yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, or any x days ago in fact. I am sure some of you would be interested in this service, however I would like to ask first:

• if such a service already existed, how often do you think you would have used it? How often would you plan to use it in the future?
• do you think I could ask users to pay for such a service? If yes, please tell me how you see it working (is it pay-per-use? is it part of some premium account?)

I am just exploring ideas for now, definitely not trying to monetize microStudio at all costs. microStudio itself will always be free and I have no problem continuing to run it without direct revenue for years. But it could be interesting to build a revenue stream from additional services!

Oh I would have used it quite often. Don't ask how often I forgot to clone a backup while I was tinkering and when I realized that I went down the wrong track it was too late :)

And paying for it? Now backups require storage, storage on a server doesn't come for free, I think it's more than fair to somehow get some compensation for this extra feature.

You wouldn't be the only one where the 'basic' version of a software is free and in itself fully functional and (paid) premium features give some sort of income. Fair enough in my opinion.

Not sure about the 'pay per use' option though.

I'm not sure I get the mechanism, but without a way to commit some kind of description to the project, it would be quite complex to roolback to the desired point in time you're looking for. Not something I'm going to pay an extra for in this form. Maybe if it include a versioning system or an integration to an existing one (like: commit this to GitHub)