Our story
Hola Privacy App started more than 5-years ago when we were looking for an App that would allow us to feel comfortable having a private conversation. We looked hard at the options and none allowed for a secure conversation: one App was in legal issues over selling private data, another was clearly funded by a big government, a third was involved with some billionaires with dubious histories, another was linked to a foreign government intent on spying on its population; needless to say we decided to build our own. And, we did.
Risks and challenges
Hola Phone App currently operates a Basic and Premium service across all mobile and non-mobile devices. Our App is also in both Apple and Google Play online App Stores. It’s true to say Hola has a large number of Basic users who enjoy our services; however, we would like to increase our Premium user base to the extent that we could break-even on a monthly basis and edge towards business sustainability.
In terms of risk, of course in every business there are risks: we rely entirely on large service providers like AWS, Apple, Google to help us launch our services and keep them online and active. If these services change they impact us entirely, and if these changes involve increased costs, our plans will be delayed due to our necessity to live within our own budgets.
Of course, we have a tight team of developers and we have a dream, but at the end of the day we need to sell our product to users who will enjoy the features that we offer, and that are not found elsewhere.
Environmental Commitments
Hola Privacy App is a strong proponent of renewable energy, and supports AWS in their long-term commitment to use 100% renewable energy. For sure, we should not have to participate in harming our environment just to turn on an App.
Specifically, for our part, we have adjusted the way we run our platforms and manage our software through the reliance on automated systems. For example, our use of Kubernetes allows us to automate our operational tasks, which adjusts for necessary changes but also, kubernetes gives us the ability to scale and descale to fit constantly changing user platform requirements.
Further still, we have made full use of ‘micro-instances’, which allow us to direct a small amount of CPU capacity in short bursts when additional requirements are called on. A simple interpretation of this is like heating a house: whereas a large tech company will have all the heating on at one time, we have an automated heating pattern that only turns on when we enter a room or when someone is cold. All other times it is off. Thus, we are trying to minimize our consumption of power used. Yes, it lowers our bill too, but it also importantly lowers the resources used overall.