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Free (as in beer) Dynos

blog.heroku.com

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Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#31

Post by senorprogrammer »

arsenide wrote: post #27
pvh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> 24/7 uptime is essential

And all that for only $7/month. Seems reasonable, for an essential service.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#33

Post by danneu »

yebyen wrote: post #20
addandsubtract wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A real dyno costs $34. So in essence, they're replacing the 24h free tier with an 18h free tier, but lowering the cost of the first paid dyno to $7. At least that's how I'm reading it...

They also lowered the cost of that 1x dyno in the Pro tier, and if I'm reading correctly that $7 actually buys you two full-time dynos (but only one of them can be web, the other has to be a background worker.) You can use both 1x web and 1x worker in the free tier too, as long as you abide by the new policy of sleeping 6 hours.

I hadn't considered that interpretation, but it's less confusing than mine:

My initial suspicion was that since the hobby dyno has "10 process types", I would think the "1 web, 1 worker" restriction for the free dyno is just another way of saying "2 process types". But would that mean the worker is prorated up to an additional $7/mo?

I think this could be cleared up on the pricing page.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#35

Post by kevinoconnor7 »

thinkbohemian wrote: post #15
mapleoin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you've got a static files you could still serve it using Heroku free. Put cloudflare or another CDN in front of it and boom you've got 24 hours of fast responses. Though if it's a static site why do you need Heroku? Kind of like using a cannon to kill a mosquito.

Isn't that the exact purpose Divshot aims to fill?

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#36

Post by thinkbohemian »

Shank wrote: post #25
briandear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At Georgia Tech we got a very small server space which was used in a few CS classes, it would have been large enough to run hubot. Your university might have a similar setup.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#37

Post by seanwilson »

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…

Why not use GitHub Pages? It's free, supports static sites only and has Git based deployment.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#38

Post by Grue3 »

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?

Pretty sure you can get a cheap VPS for less than that and it will allow you to do much more.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#39

Post by task_queue »

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…

Given the blog post calling people who use pingdoms freeloaders for using the service they advertised as free and changing offerings like this, there are other VPS hosts that don't pull a bait and switch after encouraging dependence that are cheaper.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#40

Post by yebyen »

danneu wrote: post #33
yebyen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also lowered the cost of that 1x dyno in the Pro tier, and if I'm reading correctly that $7 actually buys you two full-time dynos (but only one of them can be web, the other has to be a background worker.) You can use both 1x web and 1x worker in the free tier too, as long as you abide by the new policy of sleeping 6 hours.

I hadn't considered that interpretation, but it's less confusing than mine: My initial suspicion was that since the hobby dyno has "10 process types", I would think the "1 web, 1 worker" restriction for the free dyno is just another way of saying "2 process types". But would that mean the worker is prorated up to an additional $7/mo? I think this could be cleared up on the pricing page.

For sure.

My interpretation is $7/mo buys you two dynos, but not more than one web type, and this seems to be consistent with what the heroku rep here in this discussion seems to be saying. (eg. comments that Free tier actually potentially gets more compute time under this arrangement)

But it's not at all clear on further reflection (that if you do choose to do this 2-dyno 1 web, 1 worker arrangement on the hobby tier, you don't wind up paying $14/mo rather than the total of $7/mo). I think that's what it says, but I'm not at all sure.

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