PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases • Hacker News Board

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#11

Post by carlm42 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #5

I like PlanetScale, but they already have precedent very recently for having a free-tier and then cancelling it for a minimum of $40/month plan, which made many people switch. What's to stop them from doing the same here? Be wary of building a cheap hobby project on it expecting pricing to stay consistent. If $40+ isn't feasible for you, you may be trying to switch off to a hosted PostgreSQL option, with all the pain…

(Planetscale employee) This is very different though: it's not a free tier, it's an actual single node DB as a paid product. It's definitely not a good fit for every usecase, but if you have a hobby project it's a great way to start with plenty of room to scale if/when you get actual usage

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#12

Post by randomNumber7 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:15 PM UTC

samlambert wrote: post #6

reducesuffering wrote: post #5

I like PlanetScale, but they already have precedent very recently for having a free-tier and then cancelling it for a minimum of $40/month plan, which made many people switch. What's to stop them from doing the same here? Be wary of building a cheap hobby project on it expecting pricing to stay consistent. If $40+ isn't feasible for you, you may be trying to switch off to a hosted PostgreSQL option, with all the pain…

Why would we? we make a (small) profit on these cheaper tiers. We are a sustainable and profitable company. Also the free tier wasnt cancelled very recently it was 1.5 years ago so you are reaching a bit here.

Why would a company squeeze customers after making them dependendent? Never heard of it.

Also what was capitalism again?

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#13

Post by samlambert » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #9

samlambert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we? we make a (small) profit on these cheaper tiers. We are a sustainable and profitable company. Also the free tier wasnt cancelled very recently it was 1.5 years ago so you are reaching a bit here.

A bit of unsolicited advice: This post is the first time I've heard of your company and your blog post interested me. When proprietors go to the mat in the comment section, I immediately lose any interest in patronizing them.

why is it going to the mat? i had to correct something that was untrue. 1.5 years is not very recently.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#14

Post by samlambert » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

randomNumber7 wrote: post #12

samlambert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we? we make a (small) profit on these cheaper tiers. We are a sustainable and profitable company. Also the free tier wasnt cancelled very recently it was 1.5 years ago so you are reaching a bit here.

Why would a company squeeze customers after making them dependendent? Never heard of it. Also what was capitalism again?

the reason we make sure all our products are gross margin positive is so this doesn't have to happen.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#15

Post by mrbluecoat » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #9

samlambert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we? we make a (small) profit on these cheaper tiers. We are a sustainable and profitable company. Also the free tier wasnt cancelled very recently it was 1.5 years ago so you are reaching a bit here.

A bit of unsolicited advice: This post is the first time I've heard of your company and your blog post interested me. When proprietors go to the mat in the comment section, I immediately lose any interest in patronizing them.

I think it's great evening entertainment. Keep fanning the flames while I go make some popcorn!

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#16

Post by saxenaabhi » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

samlambert wrote: post #8

saxenaabhi wrote: post #4

I wonder why other providers don't use metal ssd sync replication technique that planetscale uses? Most of them just default to EBS. My interest in it peaked when I heard about NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe/TCP) and SPDK from Xata[1] and apparently with that performance is as good as planetscale metal, but planetscale found their methodology flawed[2] and they Xata never responded. [1] https://xata.io/blog/reaction-to-the-…

It's very hard to do. They all want to do it but can't so now it's their marketing team's jobs to lie to people about why they shouldn't want it.

@samlambert what exactly makes it hard? Isn't it as simple as setting synchronous_commit=remote_apply or does planetscale have a custom strategy or are there other operational issues?

Just asking since I find it both the planetscale's engineering and its impact on competitive landscape very interesting.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#17

Post by samlambert » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

saxenaabhi wrote: post #16

samlambert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very hard to do. They all want to do it but can't so now it's their marketing team's jobs to lie to people about why they shouldn't want it.

@samlambert what exactly makes it hard? Isn't it as simple as setting synchronous_commit=remote_apply or does planetscale have a custom strategy or are there other operational issues? Just asking since I find it both the planetscale's engineering and its impact on competitive landscape very interesting.

you have to make sure you will never terminate these nodes, that you have all the operations maturity to cycle them responsibly, and resize them. I am sure they will get there one day but most people are still figuring out how to run databases on k8s so it's a long road.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#18

Post by beoberha » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #9

samlambert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we? we make a (small) profit on these cheaper tiers. We are a sustainable and profitable company. Also the free tier wasnt cancelled very recently it was 1.5 years ago so you are reaching a bit here.

A bit of unsolicited advice: This post is the first time I've heard of your company and your blog post interested me. When proprietors go to the mat in the comment section, I immediately lose any interest in patronizing them.

Sam is a great twitter follow

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#19

Post by gdulli » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #9

samlambert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we? we make a (small) profit on these cheaper tiers. We are a sustainable and profitable company. Also the free tier wasnt cancelled very recently it was 1.5 years ago so you are reaching a bit here.

A bit of unsolicited advice: This post is the first time I've heard of your company and your blog post interested me. When proprietors go to the mat in the comment section, I immediately lose any interest in patronizing them.

I know comments section drama is fun, but I'm not seeing it here and it feels like you're trying to create it from scratch.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#20

Post by samlambert » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

beoberha wrote: post #18

jszymborski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of unsolicited advice: This post is the first time I've heard of your company and your blog post interested me. When proprietors go to the mat in the comment section, I immediately lose any interest in patronizing them.

Sam is a great twitter follow

thank you