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My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

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Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#41

Post by PedroBatista »

jon-wood wrote: post #12
PedroBatista wrote: post #8

Since the very beginning AWS has been an adversary to their own customers. Either you invested your time/money in deeply knowing their ins and outs ( And you're fine spending your life that way ) or you're just a cog inside someones else's big wallet and don't care. If you're not a big corp or don't have VC money to burn, there are much better options than AWS. The feeling of not getting f"#$ed over every step of the…

Amazon have entire teams of people who's job is to optimise customer's bills so that you end up paying less, and they're incredibly good at it. You need to become a big enough customer that they assign an account manager to you for that to become apparent without doing some digging, but I'm pretty sure if you open a support ticket asking about this they'll help you out.

Their job is to make you don't pay over the threshold where you would leave. They are obviously not on your side.

If Amazon wanted to solve these problems they would change the pricing structure, they are not stupid, they know exactly what they are doing since day one and it's working. The moment it stops working for them they will do something about it.

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#42

Post by asynch8 »

tjbiddle wrote: post #37

So, let me get this straight: - OP ignores the obvious "This does not fit the free tier" warnings when setting up their app. - OP does not pay attention to any billing metrics or even bother to try and understand the pricing beforehand. - OP gets hit with a $990 bill. - Amazon gives all the money back, plus free credits. - OP complains. AWS should have kept their money and OP should've learned their lesson proper.

The problem that I had AWS was that it felt hella confusing, flooding you with information about services they provide and their AWS-specific buzzwords, sort of drowning out a lot of the important info

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#43

Post by bovermyer »

tjbiddle wrote: post #37

So, let me get this straight: - OP ignores the obvious "This does not fit the free tier" warnings when setting up their app. - OP does not pay attention to any billing metrics or even bother to try and understand the pricing beforehand. - OP gets hit with a $990 bill. - Amazon gives all the money back, plus free credits. - OP complains. AWS should have kept their money and OP should've learned their lesson proper.

The author of the post also calls out that the mistake was his, despite the occasional muttering about "dark UI patterns."

I spend a lot of time in AWS, and I have trained myself to be extra careful about reading the fine print when using the UI exactly for the reason the author describes.

The author calling out his own stupid mistakes elevates him in my eyes, not the reverse. Honesty and recognition of wrongdoing in oneself are important traits.

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#44

Post by txcwpalpha »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #28
javagram wrote: post #14

If using AWS for personal use the first step should always be to set up a billing alarm. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitori... It’s very helpful. You can still end up overspending but at least you get an email within a day letting you know what’s going on, which can solve a lot of the cost overruns by giving you a chance to act quickly and only get hit with 1/30 the monthly fee.

Why is this an extra step instead of something AWS always does? As both services and permissions multiply, the user experience of AWS is getting worse and worse. How would you even know to setup CloudWatch if it’s your first time using the service?

By default, AWS already automatically notifies you when you exceed 85% of your free tier usage. The author did not get these alerts because he ignored the multiple warnings that he was using services not included in the free tier. Because he wasn’t using the free tier, he didn’t get alerts for the free tier.

And even when not using free tier, one of the first things AWS tells you to do when creating an account is set up billing alerts.

I’ll be the first person to line up and say that the AWS console and UI is atrocious, especially for hobby devs. But this wasn’t that. The author completely ignored the multiple warnings, got himself into a pickle, got it resolved, and is still complaining about it.

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#45

Post by robohoe »

tasogare wrote: post #31
code4tee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just setup billing alarms. Spend is reported continuously. These people surprised by end of month bills just aren’t paying attention to all the data AWS shows you on your spend. If they hard shut people down then people would be posting “AWS turned off my services and took my site down blah blah blah”

What about having choice? Hard limit and alert? I’m been bite by overspending accidentally on Azure (only ~30€ but still) so the hard cap is a real reassuring thing.

Set up a lambda function that looks up billing. If billing reaches certain threshold, start shutting down resources. We do that and it works just fine.

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#46

Post by robohoe »

digitalsushi wrote: post #40
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this an extra step instead of something AWS always does? As both services and permissions multiply, the user experience of AWS is getting worse and worse. How would you even know to setup CloudWatch if it’s your first time using the service?

Why is it an extra step to request a wake up call when you get a hotel room? Just call every room at 6am. Why is it an extra step to set a timer when you turn the oven on? Just set it to 60 minutes. Why doesn't every toothbrush beep when you didn't brush long enough? Why aren't the police keeping track of my children when they go outside?

Because personal responsibility and due diligence is hard! /s

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#47

Post by dfdz »

isugimpy wrote: post #35

As somebody who deals with AWS professionally on a daily basis, I will 100% admit that it can be confusing for people to figure out pricing and scale. I have to talk with engineers every week about design decisions and their cost impacts, and the implications of the things they want to run, and it's clear that AWS doesn't give enough guidance in the UI or documentation structured in a way that a layperson could find…

My favorite part is how half of the screenshots include a clearly marked "Free Usage Tier" option that OP did not select

https://blog.andrewray.me/content/images/2018/03/Screen-Shot...

Dark UI indeed.

https://blog.andrewray.me/content/images/2018/03/aws-rds-now...

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#48

Post by srndh »

javagram wrote: post #14

If using AWS for personal use the first step should always be to set up a billing alarm. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitori... It’s very helpful. You can still end up overspending but at least you get an email within a day letting you know what’s going on, which can solve a lot of the cost overruns by giving you a chance to act quickly and only get hit with 1/30 the monthly fee.

Why not have a system of pre-paid service? Cut-off once the fund dries up. This will be ideal for a testing.

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#49

Post by raxxorrax »

PedroBatista wrote: post #8

Since the very beginning AWS has been an adversary to their own customers. Either you invested your time/money in deeply knowing their ins and outs ( And you're fine spending your life that way ) or you're just a cog inside someones else's big wallet and don't care. If you're not a big corp or don't have VC money to burn, there are much better options than AWS. The feeling of not getting f"#$ed over every step of the…

Heh, my company hosts a very small service with We don't pay for support tiers and I was extremely surprised that we got a response within ~6-8 hours to unlock their mail-service (SES). You have to do your homework to convince the support employee that you are not building the next spam-network. So they actually have to read all your antics.

It can be a solution for small business with lower traffic applications and after being surprised that they didn't just ignore my request I cannot say their service is bad.

I have another AWS-account, but that is unrelated to the one I use for my current company. Billing of all cloud services is intransparent and I can only believe them if they say I used n hours of CPU time. Don't even know how I would begin in calculating that. Still, their billing console is very helpful. I just ask myself why they put links to your requests for payment everywhere, but not to the actual tax-invoice. That one is ridiculously hidden.

I never had any training for AWS and I tend to skip reading documentation if it gets too boring. They are certainly expensive buttons, so my advice would be to use the credit card of your employer to check it out.

Re: My First AWS “Free Tier” Hosting Bill Was $990

#50

Post by znpy »

bovermyer wrote: post #43
tjbiddle wrote: post #37

So, let me get this straight: - OP ignores the obvious "This does not fit the free tier" warnings when setting up their app. - OP does not pay attention to any billing metrics or even bother to try and understand the pricing beforehand. - OP gets hit with a $990 bill. - Amazon gives all the money back, plus free credits. - OP complains. AWS should have kept their money and OP should've learned their lesson proper.

The author of the post also calls out that the mistake was his, despite the occasional muttering about "dark UI patterns." I spend a lot of time in AWS, and I have trained myself to be extra careful about reading the fine print when using the UI exactly for the reason the author describes. The author calling out his own stupid mistakes elevates him in my eyes, not the reverse. Honesty and recognition of wrongdoing in…

> The author of the post also calls out that the mistake was his, despite the occasional muttering about "dark UI patterns."

Yeah I saw that like, and lolled. The author does indeed admits his/her mistakes, but proceeds to kinda blame it on AWS anyway.

It's like like saying "look I am no racist but ".

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