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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

#81

Post by mewpmewp2 »

rafram wrote: post #38
dhaavi wrote: post #7

> And since my amount is too large, they offer to discount to 5%, which means I still need to pay 5 thousand dollars. If they just reduce to 5% like that, it shows how disconnected this is from their real bandwidth cost. Really does feel like a scam.

Eh, I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily the case. AWS support, for example, tends to be really good about waiving charges for things that are clearly your mistake, like an unused instance that you forgot to turn off for a couple months. That’s not because hosting instances doesn’t actually cost Amazon anything! It’s because they want to keep you as a customer even if it loses them a bit of money right now. In the Netli…

I would say it is a scam, because you can't set a budget limit.

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

#82

Post by SXX »

mythz wrote: post #46

More reasons why I avoid clouds with outrageous bandwidth fees, and prefer Hetzner's low cost fixed pricing with Cloudflare R2's 0 egress fees. Even if the DDoS wasn't caught by Cloudflare, the total cost for 192TB bandwidth on Hetzner would be €172. Although even after 10 years on Hetzner I've never paid for any bandwidth, always well within their generous 20TB free bandwidth.

First of all Hetzner would't let your server to be DDOSed for 192TB if it's not your normal usage. They'll likely just null route your IP if serious attack hit.

They also likely drop any charges if you escalate via support in case it was actually DDOS. E.g if you normally have 100GB / month and now you magically have 50TB / day.

What Netlify does is a scam.

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

#83

Post by tjosepo »

ssijak wrote: post #33

Put Cloudflare proxy in front of Netlify/Vercel deploys

Every Netlify project is assigned a Netlify subdomain (i.e. `example.netlify.app`) that cannot be removed or proxied.

If anyone figures out what your Netlify subdomain is, it's my understanding that they can DDoS you and there's nothing you can do about it.

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

#85

Post by injuly »

jzebedee wrote: post #13

The most bizarre thing is that this is a known issue that folks have asked them for ways to mitigate, to no avail. The reddit thread even links to an extremely weird dialogue where Netlify's response boils down to, "if you're hosting a small site that gets DDoS'd, don't." https://answers.netlify.com/t/limit-bandwidth-to-avoid-high-...

I'm hesitant to use "fancy" cloud service/hosting providers for reasons like this.

I don't understand why they won't just raise a 503 if the traffic exceeds the spend limit, or at the very least provide that as an option.

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

#86

Post by johngladtj »

Johnny555 wrote: post #64
rafram wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily the case. AWS support, for example, tends to be really good about waiving charges for things that are clearly your mistake, like an unused instance that you forgot to turn off for a couple months. That’s not because hosting instances doesn’t actually cost Amazon anything! It’s because they want to keep you as a customer even if it loses them a bit of money right now. In the Netli…

That’s not because hosting instances doesn’t actually cost Amazon anything Except it doesn't cost them anything. The marginal cost of keeping your single instance running is $0 (unless they were 100% out of capacity and they could have sold that instance to someone else either at full price or spot price)

Electricity costs money

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

#87

Post by gnicholas »

kosolam wrote: post #31

Any lawyer here can suggest if a class action suit is appropriate?

The test for federal class action lawsuit includes 4 prongs, all of which must be satisfied: numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy. [1]

I would think (as a former lawyer with only passing familiarity with class actions) that 'typicality' would be the key question.

> to determine typicality the courts consider to what extent plaintiffs’ claims are markedly different or are generally the same (for instance arising from the same event or pattern) as those of other class members with respect to the relevant legal theory and factual circumstances of the case. [1]

The defendant would probably claim that each plaintiff's issues are quite unique. However, this prong is apparently not based on the typicality of the specific facts giving rise to the lawsuit, but rather the typicality of the nature of the claim or defense. And it's apparently hard to 'win' (defeat a class action) via this prong. [2]

1: https://www.bonalaw.com/insights/legal-resources/what-are-th...

2: https://california-business-lawyer-corporate-lawyer.com/clas...

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

#88

Post by mdhb »

rKarpinski wrote: post #21
fbdab103 wrote: post #10

Woof. I was considering kicking the tires on Netlify, but they are officially out of consideration now.

Doesn't make me feel great about Vercel either (which I was looking at)

Id recommend avoiding Vercel like the plague. Their entire business model is poorly aligned with your interests as a customer.

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

#89

Post by DANmode »

serial_dev wrote: post #68
Lammy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.netlify.com/security/ sez “Active DDoS mitigation — Netlify monitors for traffic pattern anomalies and spikes, and effectively controls for them as needed” and now I'm curious about what that actually means .

It means that they will charge you 20k (a year's rent for me, no biggie) instead of 100k for your free website, or 5k if you got lucky.

If you value uptime, even through being massively attacked, they can offer you that.

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

#90

Post by jamesdepp »

I recently rewrote a website/small backend API for a non-profit organization. I could've gone with a serverless architecture for our forms handling API and reduced spending to nearly the free tier, but I had no good way to protect against a scenario like this. There was just not good enough documentation about how to completely cut off spending in the scenario of an attack, and I wasn't comfortable leaving the organization open to a cost attack like this.

So we're using Github Pages for static hosting and a $5 box from OVH now. Unmetered bandwidth, plenty resources for our purposes. Cheap enough, and we will never, EVER, have to worry about an attack like this. Well worth it imo.

Imo, serverless is great for internal jobs where you can control spending. For public facing things, you have to be a lot more careful.

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