I imagine this would be backing up to Signal's servers, not restricting local backups? Seems like a harmless way to raise money; I'd wait for a blog post for them to explain their reasoning.
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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Yeah I hate the overt monetization of absolutely everything in general, but charging for optional persistence to their cloud seems pretty reasonable.
I can confirm that, as someone else who has been passively listening to discussions about it, that's the exact impression I got.
Information is available on the unofficial Signal wiki, if you feel like digging around.
Edit: apparently discussions go back at least a year. Here's one titled "Signal is getting Cloud Backups"
I've been waiting for this feature for a while actually 😅
When I last saw people talking about it, there were rumors that there would be a reasonable free backup (ex. up to 1 Gb) with relatively cheap paid options above that. I scrolled through the GitHub link and couldn't confirm or deny if this is still/actually the case.
Backups are the #1 pain point for friends that tried to switch to Signal, especially for those on iOS. I have a local backup + sync setup for my own phone, but it's a lot to expect for the average casual user to set up.
Whatsapp has backups to Google Drive, which is better than nothing but not ideal. It's time Signal had a reliable backup method for casual users
there were rumors that there would be a reasonable free backup (ex. up to 1 Gb) with relatively cheap paid options above that. I scrolled through the GitHub link and couldn't confirm or deny if this is still/actually the case.
There's no concrete pricing plan, although there were specifics that were originally tied to those rumors.
It has been confirmed that these plans are only test data. They will change before release and were never meant to be actual plans.
Not sure how I feel about this but hey, if they encrypt it properly and make it not too expensive, it could help them gain money to run signal so it’s nice
I would buy a "family plan" for this just to encourage others just to stay on the platform
~~Heavy sigh~~
~~Once again, I will be looking for alternatives to Signal.~~
Edit: If it's just paying for cloud backups, then I don't care at all
Have you looked at simplex yet?
Yeah, and one of my friends stood up a matrix server too. Getting everyone on just one like Signal though... it's the "now there are fifteen standards" problem. I know there are bridges available for Matrix that can make it a central place for all your messaging traffic, but at least one person has to go through the effort of setting all of that up, and then maintaining it if it breaks.
I dunno, maybe I'll be that guy. Just toss it on the pile of things I have to teach myself... Seems like it only ever keeps getting bigger no matter how much I learn, though...
Simplex doesn't require you to setup a server. You just need to make a local profile on your device. And it walks you through that.
Sorry, I was talking about Matrix at that point. Of the issues I raised, Simplex just suffers the standards problem.
Edit: Clarity
SimpleX also suffers several more problems, like
- Verifying you're talking to the same person in two different chats
- Synchronizing rooms with more than a tiny handful of users
It's still very experimental at this point
Desktop apps are not there yet either.
Hopefully can start moving there next year