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Show HN: Polybit – Build, Deploy, Host Node.js APIs

polybit.com

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Re: Show HN: Polybit – Build, Deploy, Host Node.js APIs

#31
I'm confused on my credit balance after signing up. The pricing printout shows a 1,000(x2) for the registration tier, and below the table seems to indicate that these (x2) markers represent the double credit offer for beta users.

However, the account I just registered shows a balance of only 1,000 credits. Is the credit bonus only applied to credits which were paid for? If so the (x2) in the first row is a bit misleading.

That being said, I'm excited to check out this service and don't mean to complain about getting something for free.

Re: Show HN: Polybit – Build, Deploy, Host Node.js APIs

#32
post #15
post #12

The premise of this is a great idea. The sign up is pretty neat - def. suited to expected audience/users. However, no pricing info? I'll come back once pricing is displayed.

I didn't found the pricing info either until I played around in the terminal, which gives us this: $ pricing Polybit offers pay-as-you-go services. Action | Cost ---------------------|--------------------------- API Request | 1 Credit Database Query | 1 Credit - FREE in Beta Project Deployment | 10 Credits - FREE in Beta Create New Project | 50 Credits Create New Database | 50 Credits Package | Credits | Price ------…

I realize this style of pricing is the new hotness and I get why it's appealing for the company providing the service, but as a developer this is really unappealing to me. The last thing I want to do is have to worry about how many API requests my application is making because it costs money.

For example; if I want to render a complicated page out and the API design will be better if that's done with 10 API requests then I want to make it with 10 API requests. I don't want to have to feel like I need to make some kludgy nasty single request in order to reduce my costs by an order of magnitude.

Similar with queries; I'd rather use multiple simple queries than craft some nasty monstrosity query that gets all the data I need at once.

Am I just crazy?

Full disclaimer: I work for a more traditional web host. But these views are totally unrelated to that (I think), it's just based on my personal thoughts/take on this pricing structure.

PS - I really dig the design of the site and think this is really cool and everything. Just the pricing structure seems like a friction point for me personally.

Re: Show HN: Polybit – Build, Deploy, Host Node.js APIs

#35

I'm confused on my credit balance after signing up. The pricing printout shows a 1,000(x2) for the registration tier, and below the table seems to indicate that these (x2) markers represent the double credit offer for beta users. However, the account I just registered shows a balance of only 1,000 credits. Is the credit bonus only applied to credits which were paid for? If so the (x2) in the first row is a bit mislea…

My bad. Misprint. Happy to honor it though, and give you an extra 1,000 credits. This goes to anybody on HN - E-mail me (keith at polybit) with the e-mail you used to sign up and I'll add the credits by the end of the day!

Re: Show HN: Polybit – Build, Deploy, Host Node.js APIs

#36

I'm confused on my credit balance after signing up. The pricing printout shows a 1,000(x2) for the registration tier, and below the table seems to indicate that these (x2) markers represent the double credit offer for beta users. However, the account I just registered shows a balance of only 1,000 credits. Is the credit bonus only applied to credits which were paid for? If so the (x2) in the first row is a bit mislea…

My bad. Misprint. Happy to honor it though, and give you an extra 1,000 credits. This goes to anybody on HN - E-mail me (keith at polybit) with the e-mail you used to sign up and I'll add the credits by the end of the day!

Oh, no need, I figured it was a misprint and just wanted to make sure you didn't get any unexpected complaints about it. Thank you for being so cool about it though!

Re: Show HN: Polybit – Build, Deploy, Host Node.js APIs

#38
post #32
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't found the pricing info either until I played around in the terminal, which gives us this: $ pricing Polybit offers pay-as-you-go services. Action | Cost ---------------------|--------------------------- API Request | 1 Credit Database Query | 1 Credit - FREE in Beta Project Deployment | 10 Credits - FREE in Beta Create New Project | 50 Credits Create New Database | 50 Credits Package | Credits | Price ------…

I realize this style of pricing is the new hotness and I get why it's appealing for the company providing the service, but as a developer this is really unappealing to me. The last thing I want to do is have to worry about how many API requests my application is making because it costs money. For example; if I want to render a complicated page out and the API design will be better if that's done with 10 API requests…

No your not crazy at all!

Sometimes it is better to do many smaller requests versus one bigger request, and it would be nice to see a pricing structure based on bandwidth at least.

Re: Show HN: Polybit – Build, Deploy, Host Node.js APIs

#40
Node JS developer here.

The idea of the project is great. It can be difficult to get folks up to speed on various Node JS topics, and one of the big ones (like with any code deployed on a web framework, really) is getting people up to speed on deployment. Anything that is working on making that easier, especially for new/young developers, is great.

That being said, I really do not like the pricing strategy because I think it completely incentivizes bad behavior and optimizing your API/apps for weird things at anything past micro-project scale. Things like when database queries happen are also not entirely opaque to developers, especially new developers, which is going to lead to them not understanding charges (for instance, would a new developer understand that on a fairly basic installation of Passport and Express, every page request, logged in or not, would result in DB activity as Passport tries to figure out if the session is logged in or not? That's likely to far overshadow the single API credit needed for the API hit.) I think that Heroku's free tier would be much more attractive for small projects, and for anyone more advanced than that, a $5 Digital Ocean droplet is simple enough to learn very basic server administration and quickly deploy your application. There are a number of other Node platforms (Modulus) who will give you good service for I think it would make a lot more sense to structure this more like EC2's burstable instances, which accrue CPU credits for times when they do not run at their allotted CPU, and then can expend those credits to burst above that CPU for smaller amounts of time. That achieves a lot of the good things you're working on, but doesn't push people toward minimizing trips to and from the DB or instance.

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