Refrakt
A more meaningful home for photography, built by photographers.
Refrakt is a platform where your images are shown without compromise, where you retain ownership and copyright of the work you share, and where you are supported and valued by other photographers (subscriptions coming soon).
There are no ads, vanity metrics, or recommendation algorithms. It's a quieter place to form meaningful connections with other photographers, and to inspire you to get out and make your best work. A place where community reigns over algorithms.
Team
Refrakt is currently a one-person operation. Sam is doing engineering, design, support, and everything else in between! He would love to get to a point where he can hire a small team to help him build and grow Refrakt, but for now, it's just him.
If you feel like you'd be able to help out in any way, either with coding, marketing, moderation, or anything else, then please get in touch!
Funding and longevity
We're taking possibly the hardest but most rewarding path to funding Refrakt.
Refrakt will never have advertising. It will never sell your data or your attention. Instead, we're relying on the support of our users to help keep things going, and ensure the longevity of the platform. We'll do this through subscriptions, both user to user, and optionally user to platform.
Our only customers will be the people who use Refrakt. This model means that we're motivated to build a platform that you truly get value from.
Our goal is to build a sustainable business that can truly support photographers. We don't want to be a big faceless tech company. So long as we can keep the lights on and do some cool stuff for the folks on Refrakt, that's all that matters.
Current costs
Hosting the website and API
$30/month
Image hosting and processing
$10/month
Emails
$20/month
Other miscellaneous costs
$25/month
Curious about investing?
We're not actively seeking investment right now but we're always open to conversations. You can reach out to Sam on sam@refrakt.app.
Patronage
Refrakt is currently independently funded by Sam with runway to cover the first year or so of operational costs.
In addition, some of our early members are helping to keep the infrastructure running through a patronage model. As the platform grows and other features launch such as user subscriptions, or if external funding is raised, then relying on this support will become less necessary, but for now it's helping a tonne and we're super grateful!
Roadmap
In the spirit of building together, we're open about what we're working on and what's coming next. By sharing this, we hope to give some insight into what goes into building a platform like this, especially as a small self-funded team.
We have lots of ideas of our own, and lots of challenging things to build, but we also want to hear from you. If you have any ideas, feel free to make a suggestion!
Upcoming
Changelog
Improving how you stay up to date with each other, and Refrakt
An extension of likes to give more context and meaning
Better discovery of Series across Refrakt
Preparing for the future of feeds
Want to see photos shot on Portra 400? Now you can
Contact & Support
In lieu of a help center, you can reach us by email at support@refrakt.app. You can also find us on Threads @refrakt.app and Instagram @refrakt.app.
P.S. if you know how to get the @refrakt handle on Instagram, we'd love to grab it!