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Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

jpetazzo.github.io

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Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#81

Post by burnte »

jallmann wrote: post #80

I actually have a similar story about Cloudflare, image hosting, billing and support, but the amounts involved were nowhere near as high. I was evaluating image hosts a while ago. CF Images seemed promising but I was afraid that my use-case would grow to become cost-prohibitive, and I really didn't want to deal with a migration off it later. So I settled on rolling-my-own with R2 and ffmpeg to pre-generate a few rend…

I looked at Cloudflare for DNS and domain registration. It's so hypercomplicated that I can easily understand that people may not understand how billing really works, and that some of those people work inside CF. I'm not trying to be insulting, it's just that from my limited experience, man, they're complicated.

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#82

Post by judge2020 »

jallmann wrote: post #80

I actually have a similar story about Cloudflare, image hosting, billing and support, but the amounts involved were nowhere near as high. I was evaluating image hosts a while ago. CF Images seemed promising but I was afraid that my use-case would grow to become cost-prohibitive, and I really didn't want to deal with a migration off it later. So I settled on rolling-my-own with R2 and ffmpeg to pre-generate a few rend…

My CF billing seems to be "day of the month" which might explain the differing prices based on the month; R2 storage is supposedly "GB-month" but I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually GB-hour on the backend. Does it follow that scale (e.g. June with 30 days should be ~96.8% the cost of May's 31 days)?

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#83

Post by geodel »

normie3000 wrote: post #75
csande17 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Cloudflare really is serious about this for R2, that's going to be difficult for them to communicate in a trustworthy way. Their other products (in particular their flagship DDOS mitigation service) definitely seem to operate on a "free, but if your site is large enough you'll get an email from salespeople threatening to disconnect you unless you pay $$$" basis, using the boilerplate "don't overburden our servers"…

> don't overburden our servers Does this effectively mean DDoS protection that's free until you actually use it?

Thats basically for everything. Do you think home insurance will pay if you burn down house every year. Or car insurance if you trash it few times a year. I see DDOS protection as kind of insurance for event happening once in a while, if it happens all the time one definitely needs something more than a free service.

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#84

Post by menacingly »

ikiris wrote: post #68
milankragujevic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I honestly and wholeheartedly respect what you are doing with Cloudflare, and also yourself as a person and an engineer, and having been using Cloudflare and advocating for Cloudflare myself since 2011., I must correct you that given the recent scandals with "mandatory optional upgrades" and "waiving the abuse away - if you pay" (see the relatively recent post on robindev substack), nothing Cloudflare promises…

Almost all of those "scandals" have been a scummy site in some way that was unsurprising to people who have worked abuse in the space.

I'm not sure selectively enforced shakedowns instill a lot of confidence either

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#85

Post by menacingly »

jgrahamc wrote: post #49
Scaevolus wrote: post #6

I clicked assuming this was analyzing how hilariously expensive Images is compared to most of their offerings, but it's about how hilariously bad Images' payment structure is. Nice! > It’s likely that we will replace Cloudflare Images in the long run. Looking at storage costs alone, S3 would be 4 times less expensive for our use-case. Cloudflare R2 would likely be a good choice too, if you're willing to bet that the…

if you're willing to bet that the (inevitable?) shakedown for money once you find the limits of "unlimited egress with no fees" won't be too bad. R2 egress is free. There's no shakedown. If you look at https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-r2-object-storage (the original announcement) we said many times that egress is free. That's sort of R2's whole thing! See also: https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/r2/…

could something like steam or a linux distro use it to distribute software? seems crazy not to.

I think what people are saying is we know there is probably a silent line somewhere, and we have no way of knowing when we cross it. It feels like it has an implied "most of the people reading this can treat it as unlimited in practice"

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#86

Post by phreack »

> Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to you. We are experiencing an unprecedented demand for our service, which is causing delays for our customers.

This is such weasel wording. It's frustrating because it's most likely true and the people writing it are probably not lying and honestly swamped.

But considering that growth is the main purpose of most companies like this... by definition, they will at nearly all times be dealing with unprecedented demand!

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#88

Post by bgentry »

zaidf wrote: post #35

(I work on the Images product at Cloudflare) While I continue to dig in to the specifics of the billing and support issues described, I can confirm this bit from the blog post: if you stored 2 million images and delivered 1 million images, your total cost for that month for the Images product should be ~$210, not $400+ I've reached out to the author to get some additional information which will help me investigate th…

It seems like the author already went above and beyond to try to get this resolved through the proper channels. Why did it take an HN front page post to get it actually looked into? It does not inspire confidence in your service.

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#89

Post by SoftTalker »

zaidf wrote: post #35

(I work on the Images product at Cloudflare) While I continue to dig in to the specifics of the billing and support issues described, I can confirm this bit from the blog post: if you stored 2 million images and delivered 1 million images, your total cost for that month for the Images product should be ~$210, not $400+ I've reached out to the author to get some additional information which will help me investigate th…

Skimming through the blog post, it sounds like in the end they were not overcharged, but the timing and calculation of prorated charges for upgrades, vs. the credits for what what already paid, was a little weird and not obvious.

Re: Is Cloudflare overcharging us for their images service?

#90

Post by [deleted] »

bgentry wrote: post #88
zaidf wrote: post #35

(I work on the Images product at Cloudflare) While I continue to dig in to the specifics of the billing and support issues described, I can confirm this bit from the blog post: if you stored 2 million images and delivered 1 million images, your total cost for that month for the Images product should be ~$210, not $400+ I've reached out to the author to get some additional information which will help me investigate th…

It seems like the author already went above and beyond to try to get this resolved through the proper channels. Why did it take an HN front page post to get it actually looked into? It does not inspire confidence in your service.

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