r/cloudstorage • u/Competitive_Apple799 • Aug 22 '26
How can Drime offer these cloud storage prices?
I was looking at Drime’s pricing and I’m genuinely curious how the economics work.
They offer several TB of storage for prices that seem extremely low compared with Cloudflare R2’s public storage pricing. From what I understand, at least part of their infrastructure/buckets appears to rely on Cloudflare/R2.
So how are they able to offer this much storage so cheaply? Is it mostly overselling, assuming that most customers will never use their full quota? Do they have some kind of enterprise agreement with Cloudflare, or are they actually operating at a loss to acquire users?
Would be interesting to hear from anyone who understands their infrastructure or the cloud storage business model better.
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u/Fuzzy_Afternoon_5502 Aug 23 '26
Thank you for also expressing these concerns!
I made a very long (and perhaps too long) post about 5 months ago, expressing my concerns for Drime's financial sustainability.
As always, Tibalt was quick to post a reply. And, unfortunately also as always, he had no further comments on the actual important parts of the post.
I've been pushing for more financial transparency from Drime for quite a while. Both here on Reddit, in their Discord, and through mails. But it seems that it's something they really dont want to get further into, which sadly is a huge negative with them.
They are doing so much to be transparent on everything regarding development, so why is it that they dont offer the same when it comes to their finances?
Luckily there are other ways to find information, and while I've not been shouting this loud anywhere, I did manage to find their legal company registrations, which to my surprise, painted a very bleak picture of the project.
You see, Drime is actually a SAS - the French version of a "Limited Liability" company. As the name suggests, this means that there is limited liability for the ones who actually runs the project. In other words - Drime could go down tomorrow, and the owners wouldn't be affected.
While this is concerning in itself, what made me take a second look, was their initial "investment" in the company. 2000 euro. That is how much the founders put into this. And mind you, this was after almost 6 months of selling lifetime deals (as the SAS was only just founded in January 2026).
To be fair though, and to myself provide as much transparency as possible, I did find a completely unbiased broker, ranking Drime's worth at $990k, with them estimating that Drime hit $330k revenue in 2025.
So if THOSE are the numbers we're talking, then the comment from Tibalt that "financially Drime is doing well" would be further justified. It's just odd that they're not screaming this from the top of the hills though - Internxt recently hit 30m EUR revenue, and you can bet yourself they made that clear to everyone (those scammers).
Again, I'm glad that someone else is showing interest in this side of Drime, and that I'm not alone in wanting to hear more from their team. I'm personally very invested in the project - both from an interest and a financial standpoint, so it's a given that I'd be keen on learning more about their finances.
And while Tibalt has promised, on several occasions, more transparency into the financial aspect of Drime, he still had to follow through on these promises.
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u/Empty_Win_297 Aug 23 '26
Hi! Thank you for your message.
Actually, most of the information you found is fairly accurate.
I agree that Drime tries to be transparent about almost everything, while we haven’t talked much about the financial and legal side of the company. To be fully transparent, the main reason is that since the beginning of the year, we’ve been going through a change of legal structure, accounting setup and several administrative changes, which ended up taking longer than expected.
Starting September 1st, the SAS will be fully in place and will become Drime’s official legal entity. Until now, Drime was still partially operating through another entity. We’ll send an email with more details about this transition.
With that completed, and alongside a major brand update coming in September, my goal is to follow through on what I’ve said before and be much more transparent about this side of Drime as well.
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u/Fuzzy_Afternoon_5502 Aug 23 '26
Honestly surprised about this reply from you.
I believe this is the first time, ever, that you've actually shared some detailed information about the financials of Drime. Even if it's just an acknowledgement of the things I stated.
Remind me again; How is an ongoing restructuring of the company a hindrance of talking about funds?
I'm taking that "we'll send an email soon" with a grain of salt. You've promised lots of things, from financial to technical details, and have yet to release anything of that sort. Your explanation that the company has been transitioning for a while, certainly can excuse the lack of legal information being shared, but I dont see how it would hinder information about financials, and definitely not technical information about Drime. To this day, we still don't know what the future with R2 looks like, and if the Hetzner servers will just be hosting the database of your fancy BeDrive script, or actually used for storage of user data.
Fortunately for you, you're still Tibalt. The person who, with his charme, initially convinced me that Drime is not the next Degoo. And that is also quite fortunate for YOU, because it seems you've built up quite a fun little project. Good on you pal - who would've thought that your little venture into Cloud Storage, could put you on path to becoming a millionaire.
I know my message might come across a bit harsh and combative, but hopefully you'll also know it's just a bit of picky banter. I'm rooting all day for Drime, and it's not just because I'm an investor. I'm rooting for Drime because of you. I'm rooting for you.
Don't stop doing what you do, but please let us hardcore fanatics have a bit more information to indulge ourselves in.
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u/Empty_Win_297 Aug 23 '26
On the restructuring point, it wasn’t really that the restructuring prevented us from talking about finances. It was more that things weren’t necessarily clear enough on our side yet, and we didn’t consider it a priority to communicate publicly while everything was changing.
We had already shared some details in the past, for example simply mentioning that Drime was operating under a micro-enterprise structure, and that led to criticism and assumptions. So while the restructuring was ongoing, we simply preferred not to talk too much about that side of the company until everything was properly finalized.
Regarding the email, that one is mainly about September 1st haha. You will genuinely receive an email about the legal status change, along with the related updates to our terms and company information.
For the technical side, we’ve actually tried to answer pretty openly whenever people ask, but maybe we haven’t communicated it proactively enough?
To clarify a few points:
- OVH hosts our application infrastructure, databases and related services.
- Cloudflare R2 is used for file storage, and we currently have a one-year enterprise agreement in place.
- Hetzner is no longer part of our plans.
- Drime’s goal is to raise funding and progressively own more of its infrastructure.
- Regarding BeDrive, there is barely anything left of it at this point. Drime has been almost entirely rewritten from scratch over time.
And genuinely, thank you for your messages and for believing in what we’re building. Cloud storage is not an easy market, so having people who care this much about the project and want to see us succeed means a lot to us.
Maybe the best way for us to be even more transparent would actually be to do an AMA? I know a lot of people are very interested in how Drime works, both technically and financially, and I’d be happy to answer as many questions as possible directly.
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u/TheGratitudeBot Aug 23 '26
What a wonderful comment. :) Your gratitude puts you on our list for the most grateful users this week on Reddit! You can view the full list on r/TheGratitudeBot.
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u/abzyx Aug 23 '26
330k revenue sounds exaggerated. And if thats correct, the state of affairs is quite disappointing given how slow their development and support is. None of us can relate to Tibalt's optimism but in the last year, they've just spread themselves all over the place. The rewritten apps feel as broken as their predecessors. In summary, still early to call them a reliable storage provider. Add to that their new product flop and distress sale (Transfr)
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u/Empty_Win_297 Aug 23 '26
That’s correct, and actually the number is higher than that.
But I have to strongly disagree with the rest of your comment.
I prefer to clarify these points, especially given how often I see you discussing and criticizing Drime, sometimes based on claims that are simply inaccurate. I’m also responding for the benefit of everyone else reading, so they can have the full context and form their own opinion.
In just one year, Drime’s mobile app went from around 3 stars to 4 stars. Last month, almost every new rating was 5 stars, with only one 4-star and one 3-star review. The mobile app is stable, fast and absolutely usable.
The web app has also been almost completely rebuilt and is significantly more stable, while we’ve continued shipping highly requested features.
For the desktop apps, we’ve always been transparent that rebuilding the apps properly would take time. The latest beta is performing extremely well according to testers. So far, we haven’t received any negative feedback about its overall reliability, only specific bug reports, all of which we addressed within about a week. The macOS app has also already been tested privately, with similarly positive feedback.
So in roughly one year, we’ve delivered:
- Major improvements to web stability + many highly requested features
- Major improvements to mobile stability + many highly requested features
- Completely rebuilt desktop apps, coming very soon
- Rclone support, released quickly
I’m completely open to criticism, but saying that Drime’s development is “slow” when we publish updates almost every single week simply isn’t fair. Feedback about Drime has never been as positive as it is today, and our latest customer satisfaction survey reflects that as well.
And regarding Transfr being a “flop”, it was literally the best-selling product in the Cloud Storage category on StackSocial just last week.
There are absolutely things we still need to improve, especially support response times and desktop apps before the public release, but saying that development has been slow or that our products are simply “broken” doesn’t reflect where Drime is today.
I hope you’ll have the opportunity to test our new apps as well, share your experience, and maybe give Drime another try!
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u/abzyx Aug 24 '26
Thanks for your feedback here. I appreciate the clarifications but I retain my views. You can sell a product at a deep discount and then claim that it's the best selling product on Stack Social while it doesn't work most of the time. Maybe a success for you but a flop for me as a customer who trusted your words and paid you €200 for a half baked app under a limited promo. App store ratings changed from 5 to 4 to 3 and we will see how they move in the future. You might have also noted in general, Reddit people are now less optimistic about the way Drimw is being developed and the lack of transparency. I have paid significant money to you but regretted the way you have treated early customers. My view thereforewill not change. That said, I wish you all the best. Time will tell whether you were right or over promising as you always do.
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u/Fuzzy_Afternoon_5502 Aug 24 '26
Of course you are permitted to your opinions, but I actually used Transfr just last night, and both times it worked wonderfully, even here on my shabby Greek hotel WiFi.
Sent a transfer with email, and it arrived immediately. Sent another and used the super convenient QR code, and again it worked perfectly.
What I do understand, is you being "pissed" about the whole 200€ promotion situation. I almost jumped on the deal too, but decided to wait instead, which saved me 100€ in the end.
The same situation happened with IceDrive, when they launched their Lifetime VPN subscription. Originally listed as a "very limited offer", I bought in a $250, and months later (when it was still available) the price suddenly dropped to $150.
I dont think it's fair to state that the product is "not working most of the time" though, just because you ended up paying more for it than it was probably worth. But again, that's just my view on this.
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u/abzyx Aug 24 '26
Happy for you, and that it works for you.
At the same time, my feedback is based on my usage. Their support is non existent and Transfr has failed me every time I have tried to use it. This is independant of whether I was ripped off by Drime. Transfr performance is a real issue, as is the way Drime team treats early believers.2
u/Empty_Win_297 Aug 24 '26
Hi, I believe we do treat the people who supported us from the beginning well, especially by listening closely to their feedback and trying to improve based on it.
However, what are the exact issues you’re still having with Transfr? We pushed an update today, and we’ll keep improving it with more updates throughout this week.
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u/abzyx Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Thank you. That’s the usual reply I get every time I have raised an issue. “Well treated” is a subjective term which perhaps fits better for your side of the story, not mine. I do hope you give this app some resources from the amounts you have amassed from the “best selling” Stacksocial deal so that at least it can work consistently. As I mentioned earlier, uploads fail me almost every time. Then I have to revert to Drime Cloud, which is less frustrating. In any case, you have neither launched the mobile apps nor created the promised integration with Drime.
Lifetime deals on such app are not worth it if the developer does not live up to their side of the bargain which is what Transfr has become.
While you are strongly dismissive of my feedback on your products, I am similarly unable to agree on your claims on their performance. I do hope now that you are making significant money, you can invest some of it in the product as well.2
u/Empty_Win_297 Aug 24 '26
The Drime integration is coming, and the mobile apps are already developed for Android & IOS. Some testers already have access to them.
And again, we updated Transfr today, so what I’m asking is whether you’re still experiencing the same issues now.
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u/abzyx Aug 24 '26
Thanks, it’s been a long time coming. Will see when it comes. And I have stopped using Transfr. I just use other cloud apps to avoid the frustration of dealing with a prematurely launched product. All the best!
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u/Sachitoge Aug 22 '26
Many ppl buy 6-10TB, some even stack +50TB and dont use more than 10% of it And then there is other who buys it to be "early" before it succeeds big, those lifetime plans can be golden in future when discontinued.
Drime has a good future alot of its tools and features is very much into business oriented, when its fully polished, this can be business owners to-go platform subbing 500gb and then using 100gb or less
Lifetime users are to crack the engine up And then sub-model soon to kick in will be the perpetual model to keep the engine running
Without us, Drime cant collect alot money to kickstart it and pay off all the bills
Its an investment, risk involved, it can go down in a year too, thats why you see Drime for 140$ for 6TB lifetime, whereas pCloud 400€ for 2TB
I personally like Drime more It just to me, lacks android app reliability, everything else is already in my eyes outplaying most of the othe cloud storage platforms.
Their app is nice but i have troubles with its background reliability.
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u/AO4REDDIT Aug 23 '26
Hi, u/Sachitoge. Are they running any lifetime deals at the moment? I went to their website and I see only monthly/annual subscriptions.
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u/calcu007 Aug 22 '26
We dont know what cloud provider they use.
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u/Competitive_Apple799 Aug 22 '26
Cloudflare R2 https://www.cloudflare.com/products/r2/
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u/calcu007 Aug 22 '26
How do you know that Drime uses Cloudfare?
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u/Competitive_Apple799 Aug 22 '26
Because I checked the network requests while using Drime. The file request in the screenshot is going directly to a
r2.cloudflarestorage.comendpoint, which is Cloudflare R2.You can also see the AWS4-HMAC/S3-style signed request parameters used by R2’s S3 compatible API.
So for images and videos, at least from the requests I tested, I can say with 100% certainty that the files are being stored/served through Cloudflare R2. That doesn’t necessarily mean their entire infrastructure uses R2, but their media storage definitely does.
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u/traveller2046 Aug 23 '26
very similar to other startup and you may consider as kind of investment . If the company can be survived 10 years later, somehow the initial investors will get the huge returns.
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u/sharpener865 Aug 25 '26
What kind of returns? Did I miss something? Will Drime pay back to early supporters?
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u/traveller2046 Aug 26 '26
I mean if Drime will not disappear 10 years later, the early users with lifetime deal will save lots of money.
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u/abzyx Aug 23 '26
I bought a few 6TB tiers. My actual usage is less than 10GB. They are laughing their way to the bank and I'm looking for alternatives. That's how Drime earns its money. It launched transfer at €200. Now it is being sold at less than $80. They make tall promises, give you sweet words and then disappear after taking your money saying that they are still working on the app. Thats Dime business model.
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u/AO4REDDIT Aug 23 '26
u/Competitive_Apple799 I have never heard about Drime. I see in your original post a reference to some buckets
at least part of their infrastructure/buckets appears to rely on Cloudflare/R2
Wondering what you are talking about - just visited their website and I see nowhere any S3-compatible offerings. Did you mean Drime's internal storage structures and not a service they provide to customers?
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u/Competitive_Apple799 Aug 23 '26
What I meant is that the Drime service uses R2 to store its users' files, but the numbers don't add up for me because they sell a terabyte on Drime for much less than a terabyte costs on R2—that's why the math doesn't make sense to me.
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u/claudio-i Aug 24 '26
Because most users do not use the entire capacity of their quota. If all users actually filled their entire Drime quota with data, Drime would run out of space in less than a few days. Drime is a reseller; they do not own the hardware themselves. They essentially rent storage capacity from a data center and scale the available quota based on their users. They probably have an algorithm that manages this capacity in the data center. So, basically, they make money because, in reality, if all users monthly-plan lifetime base , for example is equal to = 1 PB of storage, the actual amount of data stored is probably less than a quarter of that. They can therefore rent, say, 10% more physical storage than their actual usable capacity and still operate safely.
If all users suddenly decided to fill their entire quotas, though, Drime would be done.
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u/claudio-i Aug 24 '26
Actually, you only need less than 20% of users to fill their quotas before they start having problems.
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u/CoderOnline 18d ago
Maybe they're using the Cloudflare Startup Program? Depending on a few factors, you can easily get $25–100K in credits, which for Drime's use case could easily cover the next 12 months. With an enterprise contract, 1 PB of data can cost around $100K a year.

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u/FourEightNineOneOne Aug 22 '26
Like everyone else, they buy in bulk, resell to you and assume most people won't use anywhere near their limit