That is indeed true, there are currently no mechanisms in place for ensuring users' data in case of insolvency. However, we're working on getting an escrow agreement in place that would ensure that Glacier vaults can be transferred to their "owners" in the case of insolvency. Additionally, there are some provisions in german GmbH laws that give warning before insolvency occurs and allow clean processing in the case.

Concerning the price, it is indeed a multiple of pure Glacier. However, they include, apart from lots of convenience, also all auxiliary costs that you'd have to manage yourself for a "pure" Glacier account. As noted in another comment, you'd have to keep an eye on retrieval cost, early deletion and additional S3 storage for metadata.

If you're not interested in tinkering with IAM keys and retrieval rates, I still think Bit Chest is a good value proposition.

Disclaimer: I am the owner of Bit Chest.

You should have pointed the disclaimer on your original, blatantly advertising, comment.

I prefer to use the space I have on Amazon S3, under my own account with them, which I pay directly to them, than using some other obscure, third party, close beta service.

What is "ct" on your pricing? Just curious.

I edited to add the disclaimer. Thanks for calling me out on that.

I understand that most people on HN will probably use Glacier directly, and that is totally OK. The service that I am offering is not "making it possible", rather it's "making it simple, so much so that your grandmother can use it". You do use Dropbox in the same way, don't you? Also, the reason it's obscure is that is less than a week old and has less than 40 users. I wouldn't expect any offering of that age/size to be well-known, so I'm quite satisfied with my obscurity.

ct is cents. For Europe, that will be Euro cents, all other areas will be billed in USD cents.