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Why We Migrated from Neon to PlanetScale

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Re: Why We Migrated from Neon to PlanetScale

#51

Post by gausswho »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #14
gausswho wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Netlify told me as I had blown past 20 bucks for 1TB of traffic that paying 50 bucks for every additional 100GB was 'a good problem to have'. Well no, not at all. If your project is one of love, the end game is not subjecting your audience to boatloads of ads.

But if your project is getting more and more usage, surely that requires more expenses. What is your alternative?

For the moment, streamlining bandwidth delivery and distributing across other free/cheap tiers. After that, the plan is to find a sales team that'll discount/sponsor the site in exchange for putting their logo in the footer. After that, maybe self-host or close up.

Re: Why We Migrated from Neon to PlanetScale

#52

Post by gausswho »

JavierFlores09 wrote: post #50
Illniyar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a business model. Just like a dark pattern is a pattern :) The counter to that argument is that it's creating an adverse effect on your most profitable customers, with an incentive to move to offerings that don't have free tiers (or where the free tiers are not considerably affecting your own costs). If your free tier is so lucrative that you need to 25x the cost, then your free tier is too expansive…

> The counter to that argument is that it's creating an adverse effect on your most > profitable customers, with an incentive to move to offerings that don't have free tiers (or where the free tiers are not considerably affecting your own costs). > If your free tier is so lucrative that you need to 25x the cost, then your free tier is > too expansive and you need to tone it down until the economics make sense. It doe…

> Also as a side rant, I honestly don't think "projects of love" are a good counter argument to anything. They're clearly not of love because otherwise they would find a way to make them profitable.

I appreciate the... tough love here, and also acknowledge that 'doing it for love' is ambiguous. But I strongly disagree that declining to make something profitable indicates that it's not out of love.

To clarify my own situation, it's more out of wanting to share knowledge with the world and build a community. It's a very popular site, ubiquitous in its niche, but that's about as much as I'll divulge.

I'll grant that we've been benefitting from the subsidy/hook up to now. But I'll also add the wrinkle that a substantial increase in bandwidth is due to AI harvesters. They are becoming an existential threat to projects like these.

Re: Why We Migrated from Neon to PlanetScale

#53

Post by jorams »

anthonyronning wrote: post #6
asib wrote: post #3

> Beyond reliability, we faced other challenges: > - Usage-based pricing that punished our success, the more users chatted, the more we paid This is such a strange position on usage-based pricing and seems telling.

Yeah, at a certain point it's just always running 24/7, which they charge you usage-based if your company is over 750 hours in a month. If you're running databases continuously, I find a lot of their original unique selling point pretty moot, especially if you're paying them extra for it.

Having plugged your numbers into the pricing for both Neon and Planetscale I'm rather confused. At Planetscale, given the numbers cited in the post, you're paying for 4 servers (+ replicas) with one eighth of a vCPU each, running 24/7. That's equivalent to about 375 Neon compute-hours per month. Your $69 Neon plan included twice that. Neon only goes down to 1/4th of a vCPU, but that does include the same amount of memory as the 1/8th at Planetscale, so take that 4 times and you have 4 databases running all month for the price of your $69 plan at Neon. How did you get to $250?

Re: Why We Migrated from Neon to PlanetScale

#56

Post by thinkingtoilet »

abound wrote: post #17
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if your project is getting more and more usage, surely that requires more expenses. What is your alternative?

I think GP is calling out the highly non-linear nature of the pricing. $20 for the first TB and then $50/100 GB after is a 25x jump in pricing. Linear usage cost makes sense, but the more common/sane thing is cheaper unit pricing as you hit scale.

Ah. Makes sense. Thanks.

Re: Why We Migrated from Neon to PlanetScale

#57

Post by clarkbw »

asib wrote: post #3

> Beyond reliability, we faced other challenges: > - Usage-based pricing that punished our success, the more users chatted, the more we paid This is such a strange position on usage-based pricing and seems telling.

I think this was actually trying to say, Neon prices were high. Because otherwise I agree it doesn't make sense.

And Neon will be lowering prices dramatically... a day from now?

Re: Why We Migrated from Neon to PlanetScale

#58

Post by anthonyronning »

jorams wrote: post #53
anthonyronning wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, at a certain point it's just always running 24/7, which they charge you usage-based if your company is over 750 hours in a month. If you're running databases continuously, I find a lot of their original unique selling point pretty moot, especially if you're paying them extra for it.

Having plugged your numbers into the pricing for both Neon and Planetscale I'm rather confused. At Planetscale, given the numbers cited in the post, you're paying for 4 servers (+ replicas) with one eighth of a vCPU each, running 24/7. That's equivalent to about 375 Neon compute-hours per month. Your $69 Neon plan included twice that. Neon only goes down to 1/4th of a vCPU, but that does include the same amount of me…

Honestly, I don't even know. My last month bill was for 1947 compute hours for a total of $260. I just have the 4 databases. Looks like two of them are at .5 instead of .25, maybe that's it? Unless they are auto scaling me up occasionally and I'm not aware?
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