[celsoazevedo]

Check the other two screenshots.

The reason for the email was the bandwidth I was using. Since I could only spend up to $500/month, I asked if they had any plan inside my budget. I was open to have less features, less POPs or POPs only in cheaper places (eg: US or EU). If not, and since I couldn't afford the $3000 plan, I would have to leave the service and move everything to a new server (I was using a VPS, was in a place with bad internet, and asked for a few days to migrate everything).

The 3rd screenshot shows their reply to this:

> At the moment we offer the plans that are listed on our website and the Business Plus plan, which I cannot offer for less than $1500. If this is not an option for you please let me know when you have moved your traffic to a new server.

English is not my native language, so I might be missing something here. I understood it as "it's either the $1500 plan or leave the service".

As I said, traffic costs money and I don't really expect unlimited bandwidth. I'm also aware that it using something like Cloudfront would cost more than $1500.

I only replied to jgrahamc because he asked for the example and because it's not first time that I see CF people saying bandwidth is not a reason to force an upgrade. Since Matthew (CEO) and and jgrahamc (CTO) keep saying that bandwidth is not an issue, I assume that they don't know about these emails.

[krn]

> The reason for the email was the bandwidth I was using. Since I could only spend up to $500/month, I asked if they had any plan inside my budget. I was open to have less features, less POPs or POPs only in cheaper places (eg: US or EU).

As of October 2018, Hetzner is the best choice in such scenario[1]:

"Hetzner Online has permanently removed the traffic limitation for all Dedicated Root and Managed Servers with 1G Uplink. This means that outgoing traffic is now unlimited and free of charge. Therefore, we will no longer throttle the connection if you have higher levels of traffic.

In the past, if you permanently wanted to exceed the traffic limit on your server, you could pay an extra fee for each additional terabyte of traffic you used. But now this is not necessary. We will no longer invoice you for using more traffic."

[1] https://www.hetzner.com/news/traffic-limit/

[ambicapter]

I checked your screenshots before replying to you (and regardless of jgrahamc apologizing with a convenient "we don't do that anymore"). It seems like the second screenshot came after you told them you were thinking about leaving the service. At least that's the way the screenshots are linked in your post. I think your english skills (from two years ago) failed you here. You told them you were possibly going to leave the service, and in their follow-up they asked you to notify them if/when you moved off the service. I don't see any threat here.

You told them "If you have nothing cheaper, I'm going to have to leave" and they replied with "We have nothing cheaper. Let us know when you leave". That's not a threat, that's calling you out on >your< threat.

[celsoazevedo]

On my first reply I asked them: "So, tl;dr, my website uses too much traffic and I need to upgrade to an enterprise plan?" Then I explained that I probably couldn't afford an enterprise plan, explained why, and said if the business plan ($200) or a solution that reduced their costs (eg: no expensive POPs) wasn't possible, my only option (since I couldn't afford it) was to leave.

When I noticed that they had plans not available on their website, I asked if they had anything up to $500 and if not, if they could give me a few days to migrate everything to a server that could handle the traffic.

I was simply explaining my position, but I guess their sales representative could have perceived it a "threat". That wasn't my intention though. Also, I should have asked "what happens if I don't upgrade?".

Anyway, all this saved me some money and allowed me to learn a lot.

[jgrahamc]

And I appreciate you sharing this. We are looking into this internally. This _should not_ happen.