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Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

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Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#331

Post by aurareturn »

bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

There are only two questions everyone have:

1. Would Netlify forgive the bill if this didn't go viral?

2. How do you plan to address this issue so that it never happens again?

Everyone here knew someone from Netlify would come and say OP wouldn't have to pay. That was a given. Now we want to know the important answers.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#332

Post by Sephr »

bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

Can you respond to the allegations that Netlify has inadequate spending limit controls? Are there plans to improve this situation?

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#333

Post by croemer »

bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

How long has this been the "current" policy? 2 hours?

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#334

Post by MikeDelta »

niceice wrote: post #148
ji_zai wrote: post #74

This is my worst nightmare as a bootstrapped founder. And that there's no way to put a limit on spend is ridiculous. Someone that doesn't want me to do well can simply ddos me into bankruptcy out of nowhere. Just went through Vercel's docs: --- "Vercel helps to mitigate against L3 and L4 DDoS attacks at the platform level. Usage will be incurred for requests that are successfully served prior to us automatically miti…

How do these hosting providers sleep?

I guess on eiderdown pillows.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#335

Post by ryanjshaw »

b112 wrote: post #176
WyvernDrexx wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you lost your job. So you are here enjoying creating and hosting your hobby projects in theses services. Now, suddenly one fine morning you get slapped with $104K bill because someone decided to randomly ddos your one page dog lover website. Now, who in the would would be thinking of having ddos protection for their hobby project? This is just absurd thinking.

This may seem weird, but I believe ToS ae the real problem here. I call it the "car rental" problem. When I rent a car in person, I am often given a contract. And this contract is filled with tiny print, and pages of it. There are often people behind you, waiting, and bored/annoyed people behind the counter, waiting. This is beyond unreasonable. A point of sale contract should be short, in readable text, and understa…

This applies even offline! Have you ever tried to get a hold of exact insurance policy wording before going through their entire sales process? Impossible, in my experience, whether it's long-term insurance, vehicle insurance, pet insurance, etc.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#336

Post by twixfel »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #75
gullevek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like in the past, when you went over your limit your page went offline. The good old Slashdot effect

Yeah Like wtf is wrong with that? Are people just to lazy to check what the conditions are when exceeding traffic? I'd never ever sign up for anything that just keeps charging...!?

People don't check for every possible thing that can go wrong, otherwise we wouldn't have time to do anything. I remember when I got charged a "cancelling fee" for cancelling my Adobe subscription that accidentally went past its free trial. The situation was so ludicrous that I had never imagined that they would charge something like 6 months worth of subs me to cancel a monthly subscription. In the end I got out of it and paid nothing but I have absolutely hated Adobe ever since.

These things are scams because they prey on the fact that they're the only one shitty enough to do something so shitty and are counting on you not realising just how shitty they are.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#337

Post by tledakis »

bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

> It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact.

Well, giving the option to users to plan ahead would be best, no? Like a setting to choose whether they want a potentially unlimited bill versus downtime. Instead of that, you are choosing to stress and make people scared/anxious/homeless even (if they don't think of raising the issue on HN).

Seriously, this is not rocket science. This must have been discussed before in your company, and someone actually made this decision to stress people about such bills.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#339

Post by Gys »

cowoder wrote: post #325
kaeruct wrote: post #187

I have a bunch of pet projects on netlify free tier and I could never afford to pay this amount of money. What are some good alternatives that don't have this issue? I've already noticed cloudflare pages mentioned in these comments.

My pipeline and hosting solutions are: Static: Github Actions to build and deploy to BunnyCDN Non-static: selfhosted Dokku on Hetzner Neither is free, if you're looking for free, Github Pages or Cloudflare for static sites. Free non-static, I'm not sure there are solutions that don't have the same problem Netlify has.

Dokku is free (the Pro version is paid but that is really more an enterprise kind of thing).

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#340

Post by swyx »

croemer wrote: post #333
bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

How long has this been the "current" policy? 2 hours?

ex employee here, left 4 years ago. was policy back then too.
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