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ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

elephantsql.com

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Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#81

Post by twic »

This is new to me:

  2025-01-28
  Brownout
  Read more about the Brownout schedule below.
  
  2025-02-28
  Blackout
  Service terminated. All data deleted.

  Brownout schedule
    First week
    1 hour down each day
    
    Second/Third week
    8 hours down each day
    
    Forth week
    24h down each day
So, in case you haven't migrated off with a month to go before full shutdown (possibly because you haven't realised you're using the service, etc), they introduce intentional outages of increasing length. Harsh but effective!

What's the deal with the fourth week? The service is down, but data is not yet deleted - is there still a way to export your data at that point?

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#82

Post by eddd-ddde »

tbarbugli wrote: post #30
isodev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I’ve been a customer for many years and it’s always been a pleasure to interact with such a simple, transparent and “to the point” UI. The fact that they are a tiny team also bumps it up the list for me.

well, they shut this down probably because they cannot afford to keep a product that bring little revenue. I never heard of AWS retiring a product (I am excluding ancient stuff like VPC classic and SimpleDB, both had an upgrade path to something superior)

AWS can continue to provide you a product that consistently loses money because they have a gazillion million dollars.

They have the ability to kill comeptition by losing money until they go broke first.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#83

Post by eddd-ddde »

twic wrote: post #81

This is new to me: 2025-01-28 Brownout Read more about the Brownout schedule below. 2025-02-28 Blackout Service terminated. All data deleted. Brownout schedule First week 1 hour down each day Second/Third week 8 hours down each day Forth week 24h down each day So, in case you haven't migrated off with a month to go before full shutdown (possibly because you haven't realised you're using the service, etc), they introd…

Also 24h down each day it's a weird way of saying down the whole week.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#84

Post by eddd-ddde »

ralphc wrote: post #55

I was a "customer" since they had a free tier for my occasional hobby projects, the only free tier I found. Anyone else offering this?

Supabase or Neon Tech both have a form of free postgres. Not the same kind of free tho, I also loved elephant sql free tier.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#85

Post by eddd-ddde »

mythz wrote: post #25
jasongi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue there is limited/no market for Database as a Service where the database isn’t hosted on the same cloud provider and region as your application. Egress costs way too much for that. So you’d assume most people are already dealing with the AWS behemoth. And if the cloud provider is providing a competing Database as a Service then it’s almost impossible to compete.

Egress costs are only expensive if you're paying the artificially high mega cloud corp's inflated pricing. I've yet to pay for bandwidth for any servers on Hetzner or for Cloudflare's services.

Also Cloudflare just released the GA of Hyperdrive which makes it even more reasonable to use Postgres with them. Also it's free!

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#86

Post by npteljes »

renegade-otter wrote: post #66

I switched to DigitalOcean and it's been a delight. $15/month for a managed Postgres is a good deal, and I am really tired of the hellscape that has become AWS configuration even for the most simplest things. Isn't the whole point of the cloud is simplicity?

>Isn't the whole point of the cloud is simplicity?

Maybe for a few cloud offerings, but not for cloud in general. I think the point of the cloud is that businesses can exchange employees for services, and shift some of the maintenance responsibility.

No service is for the people who actually interact with it. It's for the ones that pay for it.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#87

Post by tempnow987 »

paulddraper wrote: post #74
renegade-otter wrote: post #66

I switched to DigitalOcean and it's been a delight. $15/month for a managed Postgres is a good deal, and I am really tired of the hellscape that has become AWS configuration even for the most simplest things. Isn't the whole point of the cloud is simplicity?

What has gotten more complicated that used to be simpler in AWS?

I started with AWS pretty early.

Networking was drop dead simple. Basically I think all my instances got an 10.x.x.x IP address. You had a basic firewall (security groups nowadays) but that was it.

Let's say you had another account for a separate project or a client with another account.

You could literally connect to their instance via private IP.

All your own resources and all theirs were in this same 10.x.x.x address space which seemed to be globally reachable inside AWS.

The layers of config to go across account now between different orgs is wild by comparison.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#88

Post by tempnow987 »

tbarbugli wrote: post #30
isodev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I’ve been a customer for many years and it’s always been a pleasure to interact with such a simple, transparent and “to the point” UI. The fact that they are a tiny team also bumps it up the list for me.

well, they shut this down probably because they cannot afford to keep a product that bring little revenue. I never heard of AWS retiring a product (I am excluding ancient stuff like VPC classic and SimpleDB, both had an upgrade path to something superior)

SimpleDB disappeared off the marketing pages - but I don't think it got shut down in reality until 2020 maybe? It was easily 5+ years after DynamoDB came along. There was definitely a period where there was little SimpleDB availability publicly but on the backend it kept working.

Would love it if someone had more of the detailed history.

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