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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

#691

Post by mcapodici »

rjzzleep wrote: post #395
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. is obviously what should have always been the case, but it's good news to hear you've now gotten there. Every single hobbyist website would always choose downtime over a hundred thousand dollar charge.

With a properly configured nginx, you can easily serve 10's of thousands of requests a second on vserver type hardware. Netlify just offers these build pipeline kind of static site with cms UI. But this is a good reminder why my gut feeling always made me avoid these overengineered solutions.

It wasn't the engineering that did it, it was the egress charges. But I think the IaaS tend to charge more for this than the clouds, who in turn charge more than the "servers for rent" people.

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

#692

Post by harrycharound »

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.

This leaves all your other small business users potentially on the hook and at the mercy of your mercy.

Not only should this stuff be capped rather than the dam allowed to flow, but your systems should have picked this up immediately and known it for its nature.

Thus must have been a nice little earner for you over the years.

I'm moving all my netlify sites elsewhere, bob.

I'm probably not the only one.

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

#693

Post by dns_snek »

juandemarco wrote: post #277
stanac wrote: post #173

I just checked pricing on hetzner (not affiliated with them). First 20 TB are included with VM price, after which it's 1.19 euros per TB. If this happened to someone hosting there it would cost them additional 50 euros. Can't believe the difference in traffic pricing. Netlify is over 1000x more expensive per TB.

Hetzner doesn't bill incoming or internal traffic [0], only outgoing, so in OP's case he would not have had this problem. [0] https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/billing/faq/#how-do-you-bill-...

He would, the attacker was requesting a 3MB .mp3 file, so that was all outbound traffic.

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

#694

Post by hnbad »

SXX wrote: post #432
bobfunk wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Yes. We've forgiven lots and lots of bills over the last 9 years and they haven't gone viral 2. While I've always favored erring towards keeping people's sites up we are currently working on changing the default behavior to never let free sites incur overages

> 1. Yes. We've forgiven lots and lots of bills over the last 9 years and they haven't gone viral No offence, but this sounds like "trust me bro" billing and it is not good enough. Someone could literally get a heart attack from getting $100,000 bill - this amount of debt can literally ruin someone financially. > 2. While I've always favored erring towards keeping people's sites up we are currently working on changin…

> Someone could literally get a heart attack from getting $100,000 bill - this amount of debt can literally ruin someone financially.

Not a heart attack but there has literally been at least one suicide over an unexpected life-ruining bill like that:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-y...

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

#695

Post by frankjr »

brisvegas wrote: post #445
frankjr wrote: post #422

Posted 4 hours ago with 958 points and it's already sitting at 68th place? Was the story too inconvenient for Y Combinator given that Netlify has bought 2? of YC backed companies?

very strange indeed, never seen anything like this on HN before...

And back to the front page at #23.

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

#696

Post by NoPedantsThanks »

jotaen wrote: post #520
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.

One additional feedback, for consideration: to me, your Pricing page[1] doesn’t make it sufficiently clear that the “Starter” plan may incur costs at all (let alone in this ballpark). It’s now more apparent when looking at it in hindsight, but you have to either read very carefully, or go to the separate “View Features” page to understand this. “0$ to get started, then pay as you go” reads to me: “0$ to get started,…

[dead]

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

#697

Post by jrockway »

dboreham wrote: post #612
coryrc wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Traffic doesn't cost money. Mostly false. Either transit is billed on a 95th%ile basis (so...more money for more traffic), or if it is flat/netted, you're still paying for the capex for the switch ports (fatter connection to support more traffic means more $$$ for the gear to support it).

What switch port costs $105,000 a month?

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

#698

Post by bradly »

kej wrote: post #555
noir_lord wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any cloud platform should have a spend-stop amount built in. i.e. if I know I average $10 a day, I should be able to put in a "If it hits $50, email me and take it offline". Of course the opposite problem is then people setting that limit too low but since the user defines the limit that's on them not you. This is one of the reasons I still in 2024 rent physical boxes and run the modern stuff on top of them directly,…

This is something I really like about Nearly Free Speech.net. Their model is that you deposit funds up front, and they will deduct from those funds as you use services. It helps that they actually are nearly free so that a single $20 deposit can last for months or years in many cases. It's bizarre to me that more services don't support billing this way, since there are tons of situations where I would much rather hav…

A couple years ago I switched from a standard, contract-based US cell phone plan to a prepaid service it has felt so much more natural. Have a messed up my autopay and my phone just stop working in the middle of the day? Yep. But You just find some WIFI, pay, and its back on in minutes. I know exactly what my service costs: $35 dollars. No fees, taxes.

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

#699

Post by xatax »

jotaen wrote: post #520
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.

One additional feedback, for consideration: to me, your Pricing page[1] doesn’t make it sufficiently clear that the “Starter” plan may incur costs at all (let alone in this ballpark). It’s now more apparent when looking at it in hindsight, but you have to either read very carefully, or go to the separate “View Features” page to understand this. “0$ to get started, then pay as you go” reads to me: “0$ to get started,…

> 0$ to get started, then pay as you go” reads to me: “0$ to get started, and then you can order add-ons and extra features as you need them

I think I disagree with this, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

Pay as you go sounds strongly to me that you pay based on your actual usage, not that it's free except for add-ons. A pay as you go phone, for example, does not imply you need to buy a telephony add-on, an SMS add-on, etc.

PAYG phones, however, were always prepaid, so I think I would expect PAYG hosting to be similar. That said, if my site was publicly accessible without my prepayment, I think it would be clear that it works the way it apparently does.

It's potentially misleading, but I don't think it's intentionally dishonest.

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

#700

Post by throw1230 »

sph wrote: post #547
ignoramous wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cloudflare's ddos protection Yeah, we got hammered once with over 10TB/mo and noped out of Netlify as fast as we could: https://twitter.com/rethinkdns/status/1370342245841342466 Had to pay the bill in full. Cloudflare's free tier is ridiculous: We do over 30TB+ of genuine traffic for $0. Makes it hard to move to any other platform. As a small tech shop, this is my Hotel California I'm happy to never leave.

> Cloudflare's free tier is ridiculous: We do over 30TB+ of genuine traffic for $0. Makes it hard to move to any other platform. As a small tech shop, this is my Hotel California I'm happy to never leave. Yeah that's how Cloudflare can reach total control over the Internet. With thunderous applause by people that should know better. I know that my position is outright blasphemous in this day and age, where even self-…

That's not CloudFlare's fault.
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