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by hota_mazi 1500 days ago
How about large traffic from a legitimate spike (e.g. front page of reddit or HN)?

You have enumerated a lot of alternatives so far (prepaying, waiving attack costs) but you still haven't addressed the number one scenario that everybody has been asking about, and which was the reason why Heroku was such a hit: do you offer a flat fee which, if exceeded, simply shuts down the app until the next billing cycle?
1 comments
mrkurt 1500 days ago
"We also waive fees from big, legitimate bursts."
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jen20 1500 days ago
Contractually?
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hota_mazi 1500 days ago
Great question. I want to know the answer to it.

I apologize for being skeptical but the wording in the contract seems to be extremely handwavy and they don't give me any confidence that if my bill goes from $4 to $200 that month because I made it to the front page of reddit, my bandwidth will magically be waived.

Right now, I feel 100% sure that my credit card would get charged.

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sodality2 1500 days ago
Contractually? I doubt it. But they have refunded many, many people on their forums after they report accidental charges. Whether they continue is a different story, but I feel safe using it and certain that I won't be overcharged.

To be clear a bandwidth limit would be awesome! And the pricing may not be for everyone. However there is a large amount of leeway as evidenced by the community forum posts.

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jen20 1500 days ago
Good will does not feel like a good way to scale this. For a business that might be ok, but I’m highly unlikely to recommend to a business something I haven’t personally investigated, and I’m not writing cheques whose value is dependent on the good will of a startup.

I don’t understand why cloud providers will not accommodate this basic “prepay to X and allow me to use the credit” model.

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sodality2 1500 days ago
>I don’t understand why cloud providers will not accommodate this basic “prepay to X and allow me to use the credit” model.

They actually do:

> You can configure fly.io apps with a max monthly budget, we'll suspend them when they hit that budget, and then re-enable them at the beginning of the next month.

From their Launch HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857

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