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A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

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Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#101

Post by moduspol »

kbart wrote: post #52

That's the same, old vendor lock-in approach. It has happened with the servers, databases, network equipment etc. now it happens with cloud -- nothing unexpected, prepare to see more of these when cloud market stabilizes and clear leaders emerge. That's why I always prefer open solutions, that can be moved/migrated/replaced easily and advise others to do the same.

Eh, it looks like the service provider hadn't taken into account an oddball use case in the pricing / metering, and then suddenly did.

They certainly should have communicated that better and their tools / charts should have a way of showing the billable data, but it's a bit of a stretch to call it vendor lock-in. It's not like everyone on Firebase is complaining and the author admits they made major mistakes.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#102

Post by bitexploder »

dkersten wrote: post #66
flipp3r wrote: post #14

Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch'd by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10's of euros to 1000's. > They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options. Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsi…

The easiest way of dealing with Google is to just cancel your credit card... You won't get your money back (unless a CC dispute gets it back). Google are impossible to get any customer service from, which is why I refuse to use any of their non-free offerings (and have limited my use of their free stuff to hangouts and google docs).

Take them to small claims court, if you have a legitimate grievance. In most jurisdictions a lawyer cannot represent a defendant. At best it will get them moving. It will be sure to at least make them take notice, even if you you have at least costed them and made them account for your grievance.

edit: Meant, even if you lose you have cost them significantly an that has the intended effect of signaling they should improve customer service.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#103

Post by mstade »

mgkimsal wrote: post #84
mstade wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet they also have a "community" support forum or Google Group full of helpless people talking to a virtual wall. This is Google support summed up perfectly in a single sentence. It really is appalling.

> It really is appalling Never quite understood what's "appalling" about it. They've never had strong support for any dev/cloud-oriented services. I know some folks who've had good experiences , but those were exceptions, not the rule. I'll say, I get the frustration with it, but it's why I've never considered using their cloud services for anything. I had a client who asked me to migrate all their stuff to google 'c…

I don't think it's fair you're being down voted, I get your point of view, so I gave you an upvote. But the thing is, this isn't some kid-in-a-basement free-but-ad-supported service where you-get-what-you-pay-for. Google's cloud offering isn't free (for any use beyond hello world anyway) and as a paying customer I'd expect:

1. Things to work 2. People to answer when things don't work 3. Things to start working again in a timely manner, with timely and concise updates along the way

Points two and three carry a lot of nuance, but Google's support does not. It's a virtual wall that people cry to and get no response back from, except for the rare few occasions when the Google deities decide to grace forums or mailing lists with their presence. It's just not a serious offering.

Now, you can pay extra for support, but even so it's going to be appalling. You probably will get to talk to someone at least, but in my experience you rarely get ahold of anyone who'll actually read what you've sent them, much less actually try to help.

My take away is that support and customer service is just not a priority for Google, what so ever. It's not even a low priority thing, it's a no priority thing.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#104

Post by gman83 »

factsaresacred wrote: post #16

I use Firebase and find it easy, useful and constantly improving (cloud functions etc.). Their support, however, is a joke. 5 questions can be logged per year for one-on-one email support and then you're on your own. And this is for urgent requests. I can understand not wanting to be inundated with wasteful questions but when Firebase is changing their API and pricing plans and you're trying to scale a product, and p…

https://firebase.community/

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#105

Post by corford »

flipp3r wrote: post #14

Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch'd by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10's of euros to 1000's. > They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options. Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsi…

I learnt this lesson the hard way. Solution: get a separate debit (not credit!) card for all cloud stuff. Make sure you only transfer enough money on to it each month to cover what you reasonably expect your bills to be (and that you can quickly top it up in hours if you legitimately need to).

Worst case, if AWS or Google decide to fuck you over, let the bill bounce. This way you've still got funds on hand to deal with the fall out and some leverage to negotiate a solution.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#106

Post by darklajid »

cwmma wrote: post #71

They said the issue was due to TLS tickets and not setting keep alive values. TLS tickets are await of resuming a TLS session without having to renegotiate it, considering that you are only polling for a boolean, that negotiation overhead could be much greater then the actual being passed. This isn't something specific to firebase so that's why no library would mention it. Keep alive is a flag that allows you to reus…

I agree with you, but I also agree with the other voices here stating that you should keep prices the same for customers that, according the the article, use your product in the same way for quite a while.

Yeah, maybe this wasn't the best or most efficient way to poll. But if it worked for years and doesn't destroy the (Google..) infrastructure?

Your mistake, FB. Suggest changes, but don't inflate the prices in an instant.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#107

Post by stemuk »

yunolisten wrote: post #95
awjr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be very careful here. The developer may not have used TLS BUT any failed authorisation attempts are also counted in the bandwidth. So a bot net could absolutely wreck your credit card by just repeatedly trying to access your API with invalid credentials.

> So a bot net could absolutely wreck your credit card by just repeatedly trying to access your API with invalid credentials. You could argue that for pretty much anything being hosted, anywhere.

No, because most self-hosted services are 10-20x cheaper than comparable SaaS offerings. In the realtime space Firebase is particularly known for being really expensive for the scalable plans (blaze plan).

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#108

Post by victorNicollet »

Dolores12 wrote: post #96

Going cloud is like selling naked options, the risk is not limited.

I was wondering: who is really allowed to sell naked options (as opposed to options that get killed if you can't afford a margin call) ?

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#109

Post by GFischer »

kuschku wrote: post #42
flipp3r wrote: post #14

Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch'd by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10's of euros to 1000's. > They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options. Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsi…

Funnily, I was working on cloning a particular piece of Firebase functionality, and inquired if they could help me with that (or if they had that particular piece in open source), and got more replies from them for that than apparently this paying user ever got. Very typical from Google.

Some individual Google employees are very helpful and open.

Unfortunately Google as a company and their corporate practices are nothing like that.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#110

Post by Ygg2 »

Yizahi wrote: post #31

Google is famous for not having any humans in support. One robot will write abuse on you and another robot will happily oblige and ban you with no appellation possible. Building whole business on one of such platforms takes some "courage" :) .

I assume a same way a man sticking his hand in a blender and turning it on, is courageous.
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