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Free (as in beer) Dynos

blog.heroku.com

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Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#21

Post by pvh »

mapleoin wrote: post #4
task_queue wrote: post #2

So they're getting rid of their free option for another free option that gives you only 18hrs of non-sleep time a day. How is this not a downgrade?

It is a downgrade. The whole post sounded like a downgrade since they felt the need to emphasize their commitment to experimentation. I am one of the people affected by this since I was running a one-page website dyno and had pingdom keeping it out of sleep mode. This is what they are referring to as well in the last paragraph. I didn't know it was that many people doing this, though the solution for me would be a si…

A better static files offering is definitely something we've been asked for a few times. Near-term, if you put a CDN in front of a static app your dyno will wake up on release, fill the cache, and go to sleep. You shouldn't see much, if any difference for your apps at all.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#22

Post by pvh »

jackcarter wrote: post #6

Seems like they're walking back from the previous announcement, which said they'd give 12 hours of non-sleep time per day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9295874 There's a huge difference between 24 hours/day and 18 hours/day, but I don't think there's such a big difference going from 18->12, so I don't think many people will care about this improvement.

We looked at the numbers and it's actually a very, very small percentage of applications that run between 18 and 24 hrs per day.

Eighteen hours a day is enough to keep your app running from 9AM to 3AM every day, and unless your application has a global reach, it should naturally equilibrate into a comfortable place.

We are asking that if you want 24x7 wake-time that you pay for a hobby dyno, but if you can let your application sleep when you do, you won't see any difference at all.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#23

Post by Shank »

As one of a small niche group who hosts Hubot on Heroku, this is horrible news. Chatroom bots are useless if they aren't in a room 24/7; that's the only reason why we have a keepalive. It's not as if the chat bot is doing a lot of computation, but this really does make it sound like I'll have to toss Heroku despite the convenience factor with it.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#24

Post by briandear »

Shank wrote: post #23

As one of a small niche group who hosts Hubot on Heroku, this is horrible news. Chatroom bots are useless if they aren't in a room 24/7; that's the only reason why we have a keepalive. It's not as if the chat bot is doing a lot of computation, but this really does make it sound like I'll have to toss Heroku despite the convenience factor with it.

Or pay $7 per month?

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#25

Post by Shank »

briandear wrote: post #24
Shank wrote: post #23

As one of a small niche group who hosts Hubot on Heroku, this is horrible news. Chatroom bots are useless if they aren't in a room 24/7; that's the only reason why we have a keepalive. It's not as if the chat bot is doing a lot of computation, but this really does make it sound like I'll have to toss Heroku despite the convenience factor with it.

Or pay $7 per month?

It's for an open source project, not an internal work instance or anything. As a student at uni with no full time job, adding more monthly charges is hard to deal with.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#27

Post by arsenide »

pvh wrote: post #17
task_queue wrote: post #2

So they're getting rid of their free option for another free option that gives you only 18hrs of non-sleep time a day. How is this not a downgrade?

You could call it a side-grade. We're also allowing users to add a worker dyno and use up to 18hrs/day of `heroku run` and scheduler one-off dynos as well. All told you can get quite a few more compute-hours for free applications now than before.

You can call it what you want, but for what I (and others presumably) use it for, the 24/7 uptime is essential. Sure an argument can be made for needing to pay for 24/7 uptime, but it is very clearly a downgrade in such a case where such an argument even needs to be made!

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#28

Post by danneu »

Artemis2 wrote: post #18
websitescenes wrote: post #12

Heroku has great services/integrations and deployment is dead simple but when you commit to them you introduce a level of uncertainty into your stack. Services being deprecated, pricing changes and addons breaking are all very real issues. I initially enjoyed the simplicity of the platform but find myself feeling a little jerked around lately.

A pricing change was long overdue. AWS (which Heroku relies on to host everything) has been getting a lot cheaper in the last few years, but Heroku never changed its pricing and pocketed the difference.

Unfortunately it's strictly a price increase for everyone who bought a second dyno to get out of the freeloader tier. $35/mo (one free + one standard dyno @ $35/ea) to $50/mo (two standard dynos @ $25/ea).

It's only a price decrease for people with 4+ dynos.

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