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PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

planetscale.com

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Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody built a service to try out planetscale or the fact that planetscale was constantly hyped around / sponsored some big names atleast in the youtube scale, I am pretty sure that some people went there thinking about the free forever and everything... I do think it was a little bad move because now you can't even test planetscale and the memories of its free stuff still might haunt some people

Were we supposed to just keep it up until we go out of business or something? Out of sheer duty. Like burn everything we built to the ground to keep the free tier going as long as possible? Endlessly indentured to provide a free service on the internet for people that will never pay us money so that the people that do pay us money can eventually have to move provider too because we are shutting down? I didn't enjoy d…

Just apologize for misleading those who depended on your "free" promises. That's it, simple as that.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#132
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hard shutting down services and nobody wants to do it. I've been there as a CTO and co-founder, but you made the right decision. Glad to see the new $5 plan because, imo, Planetscale is the best database to build with for majority of applications.

thank you

Just don't forget to add 5$ "forever"

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#134

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.

Many of us grew up on stuff like SDF/Freeshell and IRC and ad-supported web hosts. "Free forever" actually meant "free forever" to us, until services that used the same language to make promises ripped us off and turned us more cynical.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody built a service to try out planetscale or the fact that planetscale was constantly hyped around / sponsored some big names atleast in the youtube scale, I am pretty sure that some people went there thinking about the free forever and everything... I do think it was a little bad move because now you can't even test planetscale and the memories of its free stuff still might haunt some people

Were we supposed to just keep it up until we go out of business or something? Out of sheer duty. Like burn everything we built to the ground to keep the free tier going as long as possible? Endlessly indentured to provide a free service on the internet for people that will never pay us money so that the people that do pay us money can eventually have to move provider too because we are shutting down? I didn't enjoy d…

Yes, that was the promise you made. You said 'besides our commercial offering we're going to support your personal projects you run out of passion, forever' and then you changed it to 'actually, we're going to delete your passion projects unless you pay us money'.

You should absolutely regret making that promise. As I understand it you're wrapping hardware at AWS and GCP, and likely have since the beginning, so you should absolutely have understood that this was a bad promise because it was dependent on recurring costs towards those suppliers that you did not have control over.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#136

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.

I want to like it too.

Though, I wonder with any cloud provider of databases: why?

You’re basically giving your data to a 3rd-party to have access to and to be reliant on.

You have a backup of your source, but I bet many don’t have local non-cloud backups of their databases, maybe because it’s too much data to do easily, and everyone assumes the provider’s backups will suffice. This is a main reason I think that more recognized cloud brands like AWS and Azure are used.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#138

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

I am yet to experience an outage, and I have been using for several months.

Re: PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

#139

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.

Indeed. I'm a user of Cloudflare free and Oracle(tm) Always Free(sic) services, but for hobby projects where I'm not under the illusion that they owe me anything.

I think the longevity of Gmail, Youtube etc being both (a) absolutely free and (b) personally critical to many people has rather warped expectations in this regard. Take the freebie, be grateful, but don't imagine that giving no money to a corporation is going to incur any obligation from them to you.

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