Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

planetscale.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 181 posts

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#121

Post by mping »

samlambert wrote: post #89
outlore wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apologies for sounding bitter. You stated you don't care what I think. Just wanted to say though that i've admired you and your company for a long time. I participated in user interviews so I could score one of your famous hats. I submitted copious feedback. I was an evangelist for branching workflows and recommended several colleagues to your product. I watched all the talks, interviews and devrel videos. I'm gla…

[flagged]

Jesus dude,just say it was a mistake to call it free forever. How can you be a founder or whatever, have a product and not expect people to judge the words your website had, or the words you say? You should know it comes with the territory.

Doesn't matter how hard you guys worked to be profitable, it's about building trust and relationship with your audience.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#122

Post by eskibars »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #72
andreybaskov wrote: post #67

I'm surprised so many replies here are about removing a free tier 2 years ago. Things cost money, what did you expect? Whenever I get free products that cost money I expect it's either temporary, or I'm being the product myself.

didn't help that they called it "Free forever" before taking it away. Lesson learned

So as some of my own feelings/thoughts on this: I've also sat on the "receiving side" of a "free forever" campaign now 2 times in my career. The first time driven by the CEO and the second time driven by the marketing team (and supported by the CEO). In both cases, I knew the truth (sitting on the product management side) that there was no sustainable way to have a "free forever" campaign: that there was finite end in both cases on the 2-5 year horizon before we needed to change plans. I advocated against adding the "forever" verbiage knowing this. The first time, I didn't push strongly: it was my mistake.

The second time, I pushed strongly and made sure the entire executive team knew that we would be misleading our users. I pointed to the horizon and talked about the problems with "forever" language. I had to push very strongly back on the marketing team to change verbiage and then they silently made updates anyway to add "forever" verbiage. They were eventually fired for this.

But what I find concerning here isn't that the "free" tier went away (it almost always must) but that there's denial and push-back in this set of threads about the verbiage. You made a mistake. Own it and apologize for the verbiage you put out there. Don't deny that it was ever there or argue over pedantic details about where/how that verbiage was placed.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#123

Post by crossroadsguy »

andreybaskov wrote: post #67

I'm surprised so many replies here are about removing a free tier 2 years ago. Things cost money, what did you expect? Whenever I get free products that cost money I expect it's either temporary, or I'm being the product myself.

So it’s important to point out when a company still engages in such practices.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#124

Post by davedx »

samlambert wrote: post #95
andrenotgiant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

didn't help that they called it "Free forever" before taking it away. Lesson learned

we never said that

https://web.archive.org/web/20240105211154/https://planetsca...

> Hobby

> Free forever for hobby use

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#125

Post by thepaulmcbride »

I want to like this so bad, but the free tier changes still haunt me. I ran a little hobby project for a while on it that helped junior developers find jobs. The work needed to switch from PlanetScale ultimately meant I just canned the project.

Fairly or not, when I see PlanetScale, that’s what I think of.

Seeing the CEO on here defending it as if they nailed the execution of it doesn’t help either.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#126

Post by nromiun »

andreybaskov wrote: post #67

I'm surprised so many replies here are about removing a free tier 2 years ago. Things cost money, what did you expect? Whenever I get free products that cost money I expect it's either temporary, or I'm being the product myself.

So? Maybe don't offer a free tier if you can't sustain it? And many other providers (like Neon, Koyeb, Supabase etc) still offer a free tier. Personally I don't like this type of bait and switch. If you can't sustain something don't offer it in the first place. Same with open source projects going closed source for money after getting free work from open source programmers.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#127

Post by LambdaComplex »

trial3 wrote: post #79
samlambert wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember. It was a very painful moment for everyone involved. I still miss the people who aren't here anymore. I am not happy that it happened but I am also I am very glad to be at a profitable company. I get to work at a company that is growing sustainably surrounded by people I admire. I love our customers and I think in the long run people will root for a company that isn't just lighting money on fire at the alt…

> Either way I don't care what you remember or think. it does feel to me that one way to demonstrate that is to not get pissy on hackernews. i know you’re in founder mode or whatever but this comment is the thing i’m now going to remember you for

Yeah, $5 databases is something that maybe I would actually use for some hobby projects, but that one sentence just killed any interest that I had in ever giving this company my money.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#128

Post by czl »

selcuka wrote: post #107
czl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a free plan attracts users that can be upsold is that free plan not profitable _vs_ paying for advertising? If such upselling is done via rug pull tactics it damages your reputation vs never having a free plan in the first place. If a new bank offered you free or discounted banking would you move over your accounts and payments and credit cards? What if that bank has a reputation for upselling via rug pulling? For…

I agree, removing the free plan was a bad move. They should have at least grandfathered existing free tier users. I was just explaining their point of view. When you don't need advertising anymore, the free plan starts becoming a net loss. If the $5 plan is profitable today, it will probably stay profitable forever as their costs will only go down, never up. There is little incentive to remove it (until Broadcom or O…

You did a good job explaining their view. What I am doing is explaining the view of users and judging by your last post I have not yet done a good job so let me try again:

If elimination of a service plan is expected to push enough users to a _more_ profitable service plan why would a business not do it? Does it matter if the plan to be eliminated, generates _some_ profit?

Hope this helps!

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#129

Post by JustSkyfall »

lateforwork wrote: post #68

Databricks Neon [1] has a free tier for their Postgres service. Neon's strength that allows them to offer a free tier lies in their serverless, cloud-native PostgreSQL architecture with a separation of storage and compute resources. This allows Neon to scale compute to zero automatically when the database is idle. [1] https://neon.com

They’re pretty infamous for having constant outages and downtime, wouldn’t recommend for something serious

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#130

Post by zenlot »

samlambert wrote: post #103
arthurcolle wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then call it something else

we did. we called it the Hobby plan. we never said forever.

What are you arguing about? People send you web archive links and you're still stubborn enough to say that it wasn't the case. Shame to even see you here, just shows what kind of company you are from the inside.
Post reply on HN