[carise]

I've used OpenShift and it's pretty straightforward to use. I don't feel like it's as easy to use as Heroku, but it got the job done. If I left my app idle (I think for 24 hrs or more), I noticed that it took awhile for it to awake when I tried to access it again.

[shostack]

So is it not in fact up for 24hrs if it has to wake up when you try to access it again?

[iza]

According to https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing/plan-comparison the free plan idles after 24 hours of inactivity (https://developers.openshift.com/en/managing-idling.html)

However you can work around it by hitting your server with an http request every 24 hours, or upgrade to the Bronze Plan which apparently has $0 base price anyway so I'm not sure what the downside is.

[area51org]

Openshift user here: there is no downside. Bronze truly is $0/mo. It's just that you have to given them a CC number (while you do not need to do that for the "free" plan). Why the CC number? Bronze lets you pay for more features if you want them—but there's no obligation.

[shostack]

Are there any ways to be hit by surprise charges on Bronze? I'm assuming setting up a ping via the New Relic trick people used on Heroku is sufficient.

Also, for a relative novice, how easy is it to get a Rails or Sinatra app up and running?

My concern longer-term is that Openshift would go the same route as Heroku. Is there anything about their business model that might indicate that's not a major risk?

[BlackMonday]

Do you know how powerfull the free gears are that one gets with each price plan? I have a fantasy basketball league that a few of my coworkers and I play and a free service would be ideal for that. Can the free gear (as a scaled app) manage a postgres database with around 600 MB, or would that be too much?