It’s free to you, as in, you aren’t the one paying for their infrastructure, advertising, system keeping, data storage and so forth. The system runs regardless of how often you use it, if at all. That’s “Free to you.”
It was running functionally before it was popular or profitable and it doesn’t need the help of a thousand independent notaries to maintain that status. You can avoid touching Notarize for months and you won’t be charged for any of the above, even if they kick you off the platform you won’t be paying for anything. You’re paying them a portion of your profits to use what they built and that’s it, all of the storage and sourcing of customers and user experiences and etc. is free (to you).
I feel like I have to explain something. Notaries are not a pure benefit to Notarize. Please give me a moment to go through how much this is nowhere near what you should be paying.
For future reference, 1 Terabyte is 1000 Gigabytes. 1 Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes. Alright, SO!
A typical 1 Terabyte (TB) NAS Drive runs for about 60-134 dollars (discounted) if you take Amazon’s pricing as a standard.
1 Minute of 1080P video at 60 Frames Per Second (like my webcam) takes up 175 Megabytes of space. Remember, that is PER MINUTE. Most calls run about 10-15 minutes, assuming the signer has everything they need for the signing and there are no technical errors, or misunderstandings or hand-holdings you need to go through.
This means in a typical call, I will consume about 1,750 to 2,625 Megabytes. Meaning I am consuming about 1-2 and a half Gigs per session. Assuming I get to finish the notarization.
I’ve had sessions run as long as 20-30 minutes to an hour, simply because the signer is an elderly person or it’s a large notarization and they need to be guided through the process or the aforementioned technical errors - only to find out that I can’t notarize for them. Meaning on those calls I’m eating about 10 or so Gigs a session. However, even if you don’t get to finish a notarization, Notarize still keeps the recording. The space is still getting used. So not only did I run through 10 gigs, I did so on their dime.
I’ve had entire days where all the customers I seem to be getting, can’t have their stuff notarized by me and I just go “Screw it” and log off for the day. I’ve probably got like 40-50 maybe even 100 gigs of failed signings. Note, I am not the only notary on Notarize. There are thousands. I know of a guy who did 2000 (successful) signings and wanted to be promoted to the next level but they weren’t open to invites at that time. If we assume a super conservative and lucky 5 percent rejection rate of those signings, and that he never had a signing last longer than 10 minutes, he has at least 100 failed signings all running about 175 gigs off the failures alone. In total he’d likely be using 332 gigs (assuming my math is correct). If he kept going, he’d obviously get over 1000 gigs and likely have paid off the space he’s used in spades… but only if he continued. If he stops then his space is eating up 1TB by itself every day, every week, every month, every year without any positive reinvestment. That’s not small.
Storage Costs only go up (drastically so if you’re a public facing entity). They do not go down, they do not even out. Notarize keeps the recording for 7 years after it’s finished. Meaning Notarize will continue to eat the cost of storing his videos, regardless of if he continues or not. Notarize has kicked off a lot of people for not following their platform rules and a lot of people have just found that the platform isn’t for them after a while. Notarize is still paying for the space they’re using. Imagine how many notaries stopped using Notarize or got kicked off, imagine how many long sessions and rejected calls they’re holding onto that will never be paid back by the person recording them. That adds up very quickly (we’re not going to get into the numbers required to maintain a corporate server setup, we’d be here all day). Suffice to say it’s not hard to run through 1TB of space on Notarize and that is expensive.
Now, Notarize COULD make you pay for the space usage. I know there are notary platforms that make you pay month to month to use them and charge you per stamps and signatures and whatnot, without giving a payout higher than Notarize’s. They could very well ask you to pay for all the space and storage of the videos you record, failed signings included. But if they did that, you’d wrack up a debt so quickly that it’d be financial murder of your business.
If you sat down and let a session go on for (God forbid) three weeks straight, and then reject the call, Notarize would not ring you up for payment nor would they kick you off for it (unless the signer complained in which would be unlikely at that point), meaning you would be free to waste even more space if you so chose. Even if by some miracle they found out (They don’t look over rejected signings) and kicked you off, they’d still keep that massive space dump.
So no, it’s not “Free” in the strictest sense. I don’t think anyone took it that way but you. But it is free to you since regardless of if you make money with them or not, the resources you have consumed will continue to be with them for years to come and you’ll never hear them badger you about it. In respect to the amount they could charge you and by all rights should charge you, but don’t, you might as well be paying nothing.
Forgive the long winded rant, felt like that needed to be pointed out.
Edited for clarity.
