I can't get past why Netlify's infrastructure continued serving a 3MB file to a botnet 55,000,000 times? I would've assumed their system was smarter than the ubuntu/apache install in my basement.
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
#592So if I want to migrate off of netlify to something better, where?
Infomaniak
Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#593This is true for all businesses but maybe more so for tech:
Don't have a business model that charges customers for your mistakes.
This customers bandwidth usage jumped from free tier to $100k in very short time. To be honest, this shouldn't even be possible. Any "free" tier that allows for a surprise $100k bill is not a free tier.
This bandwidth usage is the result of a mistake on Netlify's part. That much seems clear.
To go and suggest that the customer is responsible for any portion of the bill is where things really went sour imo. Don't do this. Ever. Unless you want your company to go viral for all the wrong reasons.
If you want another good example of how badly this can backfire, look at what happened when Unity announced their new pricing scheme. Unity's new pricing scheme also allowed for unbounded bills. At first they didn't even deny this. Later they said it was a customer misunderstanding. I.e., they blamed the customer for their mistake.
Thankfully, the CEO of Unity was fired.
The lessons are very straightforward:
1) Don't implement predatory pricing schemes (this can even be done unintentionally, but the intent doesn't matter).
2) If you do implement predatory pricing, the worst thing you can do is put on your surprised pikachu face when the customer asks why their bill is bigger than their annual income.
Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#594Earlier quoted context omitted.
You assume that the hardware would be unneeded, but that's a very strong assumption. It would be very bad for any cloud provider to leave hosts with only one VM running on it, and you can be pretty sure only very small minority of their park that end up in that situation where shutting down a single VM would lead to a shut-down of the entire host, because it means that the host was vastly under-used in the first plac…
As far as I know, most cloud hosts don't actually support automatically moving live VMs, so I think it's fairly common for a host to be left running a single VM. At least in AWS, they never supported this, and in fact may require you to reboot an instance occasionally in order for it to be moved to a new hardware host (typically when they are upgrading their hardware).
But why are you talking about moving VMs?! Looks like you're adding tons of far-fetched speculations at every step of your reasoning.
The way you easily deal with this issue is very simple and does not require moving VMs: you just allocate newly spawned VMs to existing hosts with available room! When you do so (and they obviously all do!) you end up with little unused hardware…
Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#595I love it that the reddit post asks him straight away to make a post on HN. Its like everyone knows HN is the default customer support for these 10x web 2.0 hyperscale companies...
Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really buy that to be honest. I read this whole thread before the CEO posted and after, and neither time thought any of the comments were out of line or even that the general mood was any more heated than any other random HN thread. People are politely asking pertinent questions. And I think once the CEO makes a statement which contradicts the company's support response, that becomes very interesting. Particu…
You're welcome to disagree, of course. My main concern is to explain what the principles are. I'm not saying we apply them perfectly—sometimes we make bad calls. I can tell you pretty much for certain though, that we'd hear many more complaints if a Reddit thread about a customer support shitstorm stayed on HN's front page for very long. Btw, the Customer Support Fuckup category is one of several $X where HN has beco…
Thanks for explaining.
Something that makes me feel uneasy about the fact that the post gets hidden is that this strongly benefits Netlify. It seemed like lots of people moved off Netlify after reading the post.
I'm not suggesting that HN actively took an action in Netlify's favor, but the potential is there. Is the algorithm for flame war detection open source? Or do we essentially need to trust you that there was no interference from Netlify? (I do trust you but others might not).
Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#597Netlify 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.
By the time you forgive the bill you may have caused significant psychological distress, maybe even irreparable. This doesn't feel like a responsible approach.
This is the way most companies work unfortunately. Paypal limits your account and makes you wait 6 month to (maybe) give you a way to get the money back.
Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#598Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d rather be shut down than have a heart attack from a $100k bill. That could literally kill me from stress, even if you pinky swear to refund any oopsies.
See the Robinhood user who committed suicide after misunderstanding his liabilities from selling options.
Honestly I'd probably commit suicide if a hosting provider gave me a $100K bill.
Collect this from my corpse you scummy fucks.
Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#599Netlify 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.
I assume you'll be offering this user a good amount of credit on their account for having to deal with this BS and the stress of being told they owe you $100k?
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Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
A debt is still a debt even charged back. There would be many attorneys interested in collecting a $105k debt.
No, not really. Not really what attorneys do. There might be collections agencies interested in recovering the debt, but if it's some rando guy who doesn't have the money, even that is open to debate. I mean I'm not familiar with every debt collection scenario under the sun but Internet randos seem to think this is a real thing where like a cloud/hosting company sends an army of lawyers to repo some guy's house and r…
Traffic doesn't cost money. Bandwidth costs money. Unused bandwidth doesn't cost less than used bandwidth. So, no, you shouldn't pay so much for something that doesn't cost them any money?