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Heroku Beta Pricing

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Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#71

Post by stolio »

erjiang wrote: post #25
stolio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the free-tier just drop from 750 to ~350 dyno-hours/month? Does no custom domains mean no DNS redirects? https://devcenter.heroku.com/categories/billing edit: I read TFL, no more free tier with a cron job hitting it hourly to keep it awake 24/7. Can't say I'm surprised.

Under this tentative scheme, if you want to point example.com to exampleapp.herokuapp.com then you'd need to be on the $7/month tier. I don't know why you'd want to point your domain to an app that's only up half the time anyways, so I don't think this is a big deal.

Good to know.

Domain redirects are useful for portfolio apps if you'd like to have some coherency in your urls, and maybe you're not trying to showcase that your app is on Heroku's free tier at that moment. That's legitimate, it's also a use case where 12 hours/day is likely sufficient. However users breaking TOS and keeping those apps awake 24/7 so recruiters don't have to wait ~30s for them to load is probably a problem Heroku's trying to solve.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#72

Post by metasean »

jagthedrummer wrote: post #44

Here's an analysis of how these rumored changes will affect apps of various sizes. http://www.octolabs.com/blogs/octoblog/2015/03/31/analysis-o... tl;dr : Current paying customers will see a discount of up to 30%. Current freeloaders will have to pay $84/year for functionality equivalent to what they get now. Anyone who is technical enough to use Heroku effectively can charge AT LEAST $84/hour for their time, meaning…

I have multiple smallish projects that don't need to be up 24/7, but that may evolve into something more. I'm not going to pay $84/year per project to keep them on Heroku. So, I'll end up moving them, and as they evolve, they'll evolve on the other platform.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#73

Post by sleepyhead »

moe wrote: post #56
sleepyhead wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The database pricing looks pretty much like before. What is problematic about paying $50 for a database that you don't have to manage, has continous backups, dataclips, and ability to easily scale and set up replication for? How much would a db admin charge you per hour to do the same?

How much would a db admin charge you per hour to do the same? I think that's the wrong question. A better question would be why you don't just rent a $50 dedicated server and run everything, including the database, on that. If you think you need a "db admin" to do that then you should really re-evaluate your team.

If you don't need a db admin to do that then you should really re-evalute your team.

Regardless. If you do it yourself you still ned to spend time on it. For most of us that time is not free.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#74

Post by moe »

nasmorn wrote: post #70
moe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would a db admin charge you per hour to do the same? I think that's the wrong question. A better question would be why you don't just rent a $50 dedicated server and run everything, including the database, on that. If you think you need a "db admin" to do that then you should really re-evaluate your team.

Finding someone who can setup Postgres wal archiving and replication in only 6 hours per year is surely costing you 600$ in additional salary per year. I don't think your argument holds any merit at the level of hosting costs we talk about. Also as someone who does host stuff on a dedicated machine too, have you looked at what is involved in upgrading to say Postgres 9.3 from 9.1. If you have single server you will j…

Finding someone who can setup Postgres wal archiving and replication

Your $50 database doesn't need that. A simple backup works fine for a great many people.

I don't think your argument holds any merit at the level of hosting costs we talk about.

In order to match the performance of a measly $50/mo dedicated server you'll pay in the ballpark of $1300/mo to Heroku (16GB DB + 16 "dynos"). In between these two figures there's a lot of merit to be had.

have you looked at what is involved in upgrading to say Postgres 9.3 from 9.1

Yes, you stop the db, run pg_upgrade, and start the db.

But as you correctly state, most people in this bracket have no reason to upgrade their database software ever.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#75

Post by kentt »

ryanSrich wrote: post #61
geoffharcourt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an excellent point. The $84/year tier also allows users to keep an app always on without needing a second dyno, which used to be the requirement to prevent apps from sleeping.

I used to just ping my sites on the free to tier to keep them alive using uptime robot. I wonder if that was against the TOS?

The big change is that you can't do that on the free tier. The free tier has a maximum of 12 hours uptime per day.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#76

Post by hanley »

ryanSrich wrote: post #61
geoffharcourt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an excellent point. The $84/year tier also allows users to keep an app always on without needing a second dyno, which used to be the requirement to prevent apps from sleeping.

I used to just ping my sites on the free to tier to keep them alive using uptime robot. I wonder if that was against the TOS?

I have a handful of little apps that I do that with. Too bad that won't work anymore, they aren't worth $84/yr each to me to have them running 24/7.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#77

Post by dangrossman »

imdsm wrote: post #22
bovermyer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that just nuked my blog, and also my company's hubot. Ah well, guess I'll need to properly support that hubot now.

I'm in the same boat with my blog. I'm not paying $7 for a single dyno when it's footprint is no-where near 512 mb. They should offer a smaller dynos at say 128 mb for $1.75, that I might be interested in. I'll be interested to see what they do to my existing apps.

Viable business models for B2B businesses that involve charging the price of a fountain soda per month for anything are few and far between. Just charging your card that dollar costs a quarter or two, and sets up expectations that free tiers don't come with. So you may want a $1.75 fully managed PaaS, but it's doubtful anyone wants to sell that to you.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#78

Post by hanley »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #48

I think this is great! I was never very comfortable with the free tier where apps are swapped out (leading to a long loading request time) after an idle period. A low cost $7/month plan for a dyno to always be running sounds good.

You can get around that by using a service like Uptime Robot to ping your site every hour and keep the dyno running. That way you have a free 24/7 app that doesn't go idle. I think Heroku is trying to get rid of that with these changes.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#79

Post by hopeless »

jagthedrummer wrote: post #44

Here's an analysis of how these rumored changes will affect apps of various sizes. http://www.octolabs.com/blogs/octoblog/2015/03/31/analysis-o... tl;dr : Current paying customers will see a discount of up to 30%. Current freeloaders will have to pay $84/year for functionality equivalent to what they get now. Anyone who is technical enough to use Heroku effectively can charge AT LEAST $84/hour for their time, meaning…

Thanks for writing this analysis. I think the pricing changes are long overdue and great news for developers.

I hope Heroku gets to focus more on the people who understand how many hours/year it takes to run a server safely and securely. At the same time, the free tier still exists and 12hrs/day is plenty for code schools and various tinkering.

Re: Heroku Beta Pricing

#80

Post by practicalpants »

jhkjkhljh wrote: post #52
practicalpants wrote: post #32

If Heroku actually does make the free tier unusable (12 hours a day availability), and if custom domains aren't free anymore... then Heroku, time to part ways, and no more referrals to others. This is the reason I chose Heroku as my platform in the first place over competitors, and if my experience is common, it worked out well for them because I have paid for premium tiers on certain apps along the way, and spoke gl…

Light-traffic personal apps will probably be just fine with 350 hours per month

Isn't this 350 hours of 'awake' dynos per month? I get more than 1 visitor on all of these sites per hour... Thus, this will not be fine at all.

I will be moving everything off Heroku and investing in a new platform for my workflow if this is the case. Simple as that.

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