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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

#41

Post by emnudge »

LiamPowell wrote: post #12

I don't see why people are surprised by this or why people are calling it a scam. Netlify and others are extremely transparent about the fact that there are no limits. I completely understand not liking it and can see why the lack of limits would make it a bad option for plenty of people, but I don't see how it can possibly be called a scam.

My previous understanding was that service would be stopped once you hit past the free tier.

Upon review, it does not look like this is the case. I have several very low traffic projects on which would have never been anywhere close to the free limit. However, if I get involved in a random spam attack, it seems I could be on the hook for several thousand dollars.

This is incredibly dangerous. Netlify is often used as a beginner friendly free tier for static hosting. Not as something that is cheap, but as something that is free. This is just an overall dangerous position to put people in.

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

#42

Post by dvko »

triyambakam wrote: post #2

So if I want to migrate off of netlify to something better, where?

Hetzner VPS + nginx works fine and goes a looong way. Alternatively, SourceHut pages or GitHub pages is okay too.

If it’s been a while since you did any server work: https://www.dannyvankooten.com/blog/2024/static-site-hosting...

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

#43

Post by whatever1 »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #26
triyambakam wrote: post #2

So if I want to migrate off of netlify to something better, where?

For less than 1% of OP's monthly bill, you can build or obtain a more-than-enough server, drop your static files on it, and serve through nginx. And you get to keep it forever; there's no monthly subscription fee! Seriously, maybe I'm just old, but I look at the pricing of these hip and modern SaaS products for dead simple software and I cannot believe my eyes. The "old fashioned way" works just fine (and has always…

But you need a static IP, stable internet, UPS, and permission from your wife to have a 24/7 powered noisy box in a room

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

#44

Post by nindalf »

Since the author has gone viral I expect some netlify exec is going to take over and write this bill off to $0. In the words of Kramer “these big companies, they just write it off!”

A moment of silence for the people who got DDoS-ed, didn’t go viral and still had to pay $5k.

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

#45

Post by LiamPowell »

romwell wrote: post #25
LiamPowell wrote: post #12

I don't see why people are surprised by this or why people are calling it a scam. Netlify and others are extremely transparent about the fact that there are no limits. I completely understand not liking it and can see why the lack of limits would make it a bad option for plenty of people, but I don't see how it can possibly be called a scam.

>Netlify and others are extremely transparent about the fact that there are no limits Are they also transparent about the fact that they 1. Won't do anything about a DDoS, and 2. In case there's a DDoS (or some other unusual traffic spike), you'll only get notified waaaaay after the fact when you get the $100K bill, instead of getting a timely alert that would allow you to shut your site down to prevent getting extre…

The primary purpose of these services is to be able to scale up and continue working under heavy load, shutting the site down when this occurs would defeat the entire purpose of the service. I would say that they are transparent about both of the things you have listed by virtue of being one of those scaling serverless hosting services.

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

#46

Post by mythz »

More reasons why I avoid clouds with outrageous bandwidth fees, and prefer Hetzner's low cost fixed pricing with Cloudflare R2's 0 egress fees.

Even if the DDoS wasn't caught by Cloudflare, the total cost for 192TB bandwidth on Hetzner would be €172. Although even after 10 years on Hetzner I've never paid for any bandwidth, always well within their generous 20TB free bandwidth.

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

#47

Post by jefozabuss »

apsurd wrote: post #15
triyambakam wrote: post #2

So if I want to migrate off of netlify to something better, where?

https://render.com/ is free for static sites with custom domain support and SSL included. been happy so far! used to use s3 for the longest time, but aside from costing a nominal fee, it's so unnecessarily complicated in this day and age.

Just something to keep in mind: this also has about half of additional bandwidth costs (above 100GB) of the reddit post, so in your case you'd be billed for ~$57k or so with similar DDOS. At least they seem to provide monitoring/alerts based on their Security page.

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

#48

Post by diputsmonro »

LiamPowell wrote: post #12

I don't see why people are surprised by this or why people are calling it a scam. Netlify and others are extremely transparent about the fact that there are no limits. I completely understand not liking it and can see why the lack of limits would make it a bad option for plenty of people, but I don't see how it can possibly be called a scam.

It smells like a scam, because they can suddenly bill any user they want for a scary number like $100,000, then when the user complains they "generously" reduce that to only 5%, or $5,000, hoping the user will just pay the massively reduced cost. This kind of thing - showing a huge number upfront then reducing it to a "small" number - is a classic scam.

Who controls the DDOS bots? Are they truly a separate entity? There is no direct evidence to link them together, but you would think that an honest company would be more proactive in preventing problems like this for their customers.

According to the linked reddit story, this is a known issue with Netlify and their response to past incidents is basically to pound sand. It all adds up to them purposefully trying to find ways to generate a high bill for their customers and hoping a small amount will pay for it.

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

#49

Post by PaoloBarbolini »

This is the reason I've never used all of these user-facing serverless services. The price depends on the usage, but if anything goes wrong they are the ones to decide what you pay. It's not comfortable thinking that you could screw up, or get DDoS'd, and the remedy is hoping they wave the bill.
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