1. VERY clearly state that when you sign up for the service, then you are on the hook for up to $18*500 = $9000 + tax in charges for any month. Even Google compute engine (and Amazon) don't create such a trap, and have a clear explicit quota increase process.
2. Instead of "HUGE $15" newline "(small light) per host", put "HUGE $18 per host" all on the same line. It would easily fit. I don't even know how the $15/host datadog discount could ever really work, given that the number of hosts might constantly change and there is no prepayment.
3. Inform users clearly in the UI at any time how much they are going to owe for that month (so far), rather than surprising them at the end. Again, Google Cloud Platform has a very clear running total in their billing section, and any time you create a new VM it gives the exact amount that VM will cost per month.
4. If one works with a team, 3 is especially important. The reason that I had monitors on 50+ machines is that another person working on the project, who never looked at pricing or anything, just thought -- he I'll just set this up everywhere. He had no idea there was a per-machine fee.
1. VERY clearly state that when you sign up for the service, then you are on the hook for up to $18*500 = $9000 + tax in charges for any month. Even Google compute engine (and Amazon) don't create such a trap, and have a clear explicit quota increase process.
2. Instead of "HUGE $15" newline "(small light) per host", put "HUGE $18 per host" all on the same line. It would easily fit. I don't even know how the $15/host datadog discount could ever really work, given that the number of hosts might constantly change and there is no prepayment.
3. Inform users clearly in the UI at any time how much they are going to owe for that month (so far), rather than surprising them at the end. Again, Google Cloud Platform has a very clear running total in their billing section, and any time you create a new VM it gives the exact amount that VM will cost per month.
4. If one works with a team, 3 is especially important. The reason that I had monitors on 50+ machines is that another person working on the project, who never looked at pricing or anything, just thought -- he I'll just set this up everywhere. He had no idea there was a per-machine fee.