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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

#701

Post by JasonSage »

valine wrote: post #349
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.

I’ve been a netlify user since 2017 and I just deleted all my sites. I can’t risk receiving a $100k bill for toy projects. Your “current policy” is not good enough.

Couldn't have worded it any better.

I did the same last night from my phone. My personal site and a project docs site are just going to not be online for a couple days. Easy choice.

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

#702

Post by brnt »

raiyu wrote: post #418
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,…

We did this at DigitalOcean for similar reasons, wasn't a feature that was commonly used. Additionally, when you set that limit people then get upset because usually when they go over it for a good reason, like going viral, they aren't anticipating it, and just when their traffic is most valuable the site is down. What Netlify is doing here is really the best approach for both parties. And typically speaking a $104k…

That sort of adversarial weaponization of credit cards is really a US thing. In most of the world, payment is not relevant to the question of liability: you create a debt, whether or not you can debit a card. So, looks like DigitalOcean is another name to avoid.

Also: what's common? At the scale these companies so desire, small percentages are still thousands of users. Supporting them with what's ultimately a fairly trivial option shouldn't be seen as such a hassle.

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

#703

Post by nemothekid »

dns_snek wrote: post #669
gazelle21 wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im out of the loop, what obvious reasons?

They profit when their customers can't hard limit their spend and end up racking up large bills by accident, or for reasons outside of their control. By the way, your comment was flagged which seemed odd, so I looked at your profile and it seems like all of your comments are being (automatically?) flagged and don't appear on HN by default. You might want to talk to the HN staff about that.

1. This doesn't seem like a rational thing to do. A trillion dollar business built on people making mistakes and actually running up a bill? Which exec is getting a bonus when little Johnny gets hit with a $1000 charge on his CS101 project? Doesn't seem likely.

2. To me, it's more likely they don't have one because there are edge cases to consider that make "hard limits" difficult to implement. What is AWS supposed to do when you hit the limit? Is it a hard limit? Ok, so when I hit my budget, all my s3 buckets get deleted and all my EBS drives get dropped? Do all my code deployments just get deleted? Do you "bless" certain services so that they continue to charge the user even after the hard limit? How is all of this communicated?

You can set an alarm in AWS today and the user can decide what to shut off. If you really need to, you can create a script that can hard nuke your account once a limit is reached; but I don't see why AWS should nuke your account for you.

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

#704

Post by jotaen »

xatax wrote: post #699
jotaen wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

That’s my interpretation as well.

The usage of the term “add-on” is not clear here in my opinion. On their main pricing page[1], Netlify currently lists “Additional bandwidth” as “Add-on”. To me, that sounds like “I can actively order additional bandwidth in case the included bandwidth isn’t enough.” Not: “Additional bandwidth is automatically allocated and charged for as it happens to occur.”

In addition to that, there is a big bold “$0” at the top of the “Starter” plan.

[1]: https://www.netlify.com/pricing/

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

#705

Post by user3113 »

ks2048 wrote: post #446
valine wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been a netlify user since 2017 and I just deleted all my sites. I can’t risk receiving a $100k bill for toy projects. Your “current policy” is not good enough.

Same. I'm looking at alternatives to get off netlify ASAP.

You can check https://stormkit.io though it does not have free tier.

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

#706

Post by sokoloff »

jedberg wrote: post #602
raiyu wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did this at DigitalOcean for similar reasons, wasn't a feature that was commonly used. Additionally, when you set that limit people then get upset because usually when they go over it for a good reason, like going viral, they aren't anticipating it, and just when their traffic is most valuable the site is down. What Netlify is doing here is really the best approach for both parties. And typically speaking a $104k…

> Also, that's the benefits of credit cards - that you can still issue a charge back, and credit card companies very much favor the consumer rather than the merchant. That has not been my experience. I've had to do a few chargebacks for services not rendered, and I've never won. I will submit my evidence, then the vendor will submit 100 pages of random emails, and then I will have my claim denied. Then I will appeal,…

That's strange. I think I've done about 10 chargebacks over 35 years. All but one I "won" with just an initial submission and waiting. One my card company came back to me for additional details before also siding with me.

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

#707

Post by ilaksh »

bobfunk wrote: post #351
aurareturn wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only two questions everyone have: 1. Would Netlify forgive the bill if this didn't go viral? 2. How do you plan to address this issue so that it never happens again? Everyone here knew someone from Netlify would come and say OP wouldn't have to pay. That was a given. Now we want to know the important answers.

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

But you realize that a small business or startup can't rely on "generosity" to avoid going bankrupt?

It seems that significant bills appearing without warning or cut-offs is clearly intentional. I am embarrassed that I recommended Netlify before.

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

#709

Post by epiccoleman »

Just switched my site to Cloudflare Pages. It took all of 5 minutes including futzing around with DNS stuff through the (ever-annoying) Google Domains settings page.

I'm usually pretty chill, and can't help but feel like I'm overreacting - but the risk of being sent an unexpected bill of even a few hundred dollars for something outside my control is unacceptable. Trusting that Netlify will do right by me and forgive the debt in a similar situation is not an acceptable strategy for managing that risk, so epiccoleman.com now lives at a provider without this risk.

This is the beauty of static sites, btw - switching to a new host is the work of mere minutes.

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

#710

Post by epiccoleman »

valine wrote: post #349
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.

I’ve been a netlify user since 2017 and I just deleted all my sites. I can’t risk receiving a $100k bill for toy projects. Your “current policy” is not good enough.

Same here. Will I ever get a level of traffic that would cause this problem? Extremely doubtful. Is it worth the risk when Cloudflare Pages is a similarly easy offering, and took 5 minutes to switch to? Hell no.
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