7 ms·

Wow, this is _really_ expensive! I'm sorry, but $0.05/1000 requests is really really premium. 1000 request/s is $0.05/s. 86400s/day * 30 days * $0.05 -> $129.6

by Xorlev 10y ago

Wow, this is _really_ expensive! I'm sorry, but $0.05/1000 requests is really really premium. 1000 request/s is $0.05/s. 86400s/day * 30 days * $0.05 -> $129.6K/30d. 1k req/s is not that uncommon either. And that's before 'paid middleware'! APIs and sites that'd truly benefit from this are immediately priced out. I see why you priced it the way you did (gotta start somewhere with such a large upfront investment if you're not using cloud capacity), but you aren't exactly going to get any large customers with numbers like that. Project it to when you have ~500k req/s going through your service (778M ARR!): you cannot expect to still be making $0.05/1000 requests. To put it into perspective, costs to call S3 are 10x-100x cheaper (GETs are 0.004/10000, PUT/POST/LIST/COPY is 0.005/1000) and S3 arguably does a lot more per request. I really want to like it. The service sounds _awesome_, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge nerd for smart loadbalancing. I've written more loadbalancing code than I care to admit, but the economics just aren't there for me to even consider adopting your service. It's a lot cheaper for me to keep a pool of nginx servers in AWS regions around the globe with pre-established TLS connections back to the home DCs for much of the benefit fly.io brings.

AtheistOfFail 10y ago
Digital Ocean's new Load Balancers are $20/month, WTF is this thing?
bpicolo 10y ago
That makes 1k r/s about as much as 6-12 full time engineers to configure your load balancers.
mrkurt 10y ago
This math isn't right, we bill based on total requests (not req/s capacity). It's $0.05 per thousand requests. So 86k/day * 30 days / 1000 * $0.05 means $129/mo. Can we tweak the wording to clarify what we mean? We'll add examples, too. I really hate opaque pricing and wanted to make this as simple to understand as possible.
- Xorlev 10y ago
  This math _is_ right. 1000 requests/s is 86.4M requests per day. So for 1000 requests in a given second, that's $0.05 per second if you substitute the term. But to show you otherwise: 1000 req/s * 86400s * 30d / 1000 * 0.05 = 129600 It's only $129/mo if it's 0.05c and not $0.05, which is not what the website says.
  - mrkurt 10y ago
    Oh I see what you're saying. Then yes, your math is right, but our assumptions probably don't match. :) 1. This is our earliest launch. We're very expensive for 86mm requests per day right now. We have volume pricing planned but not rolled out. If you're interested, I'd suggest trying a low volume site to see how it feels and then get ahold of me to talk about volume pricing. 2. Our service is designed for "valuable" requests, not any ol' asset. API calls and pageviews are usually a good fit. Sustaining 1k "valuable" requests/s for a full month is pretty rare. I know you and other people on HN run that level of infrastructure, but our value prop for you won't be very high until we're more mature.
    - pvg 10y ago
      Sure but even at dozens or 100s of rps, the point where a loadbalancer really starts making sense, it's quite pricy. I think you just priced out $126 for a monthly average of one rps above. One.
      - mrkurt 10y ago
        This is an interesting point. I actually think our service makes sense from 0 requests, because we can (a) speed ssl stuff up immediately (and latency sucks at any volume) and (b) let people ship faster. If you're building a SaaS that's doing ~2.6mm pageviews per month, you've probably saved enough time using our features that $126 is nothing. The economics for a free service or media property are different, but we'll be valuable for different reasons too (and possibly even have a different pricing model for stuff like that).
garry 10y ago
Software costs money — great software makes your life easier and lets you do things by clicking checkboxes instead of spending half your week in server config. Half a week of an engineer (or founder) working on a thing is on the order of thousands of dollars. So as with all software, yes, you can roll it yourself with other things, if you assume your time is worth zero. But we all know that is not true.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- specialp 10y ago
  Yes, that is what I consider when I get my car washed for $10. I could do it myself, but my time is worth more. It is also why we moved from COLOs to the cloud. When a service is 10x your entire AWS bill the metrics of "Is my time worth that?" shifts. This is like a $500 car wash. We do moderate traffic and the pricing would make it the highest cost besides labor.
  - mrkurt 10y ago
    I'm super curious to hear more about your workload. Will you email me (kurt at fly dot io)? I've worked on very large sites and the DB / app layer was always substantially more expensive than what we're charging. I'd really like to know if we're totally mis-estimating a common use case, or we're just confusing things with our pricing (a launch is mostly just a test for pricing). :)
  - overcast 10y ago
    When I consider a car wash, I consider the time/money having to repair all the scratches, and swirl marks, some 18 year old kid is going to put into the paint at the local Delta Sonic. A proper car wash is a science, and you're not getting it for $10. One hour out of your day for a break, and some exercise is a better option in more ways than one.
    - cuu508 10y ago
      Are you maybe mixing up car wash and car detailing?
ricardobeat 10y ago
While I agree it is expensive, some perspective is good: 1000rps is Alexa top-1000 level traffic, unless you plan to route every static asset or a high-volume API through this. At this point 100k/month is not that dramatic.
davidlumley 10y ago
Two points: 1) The fact in a latter comment you seem to have priced yourself out of being unable to afford this service doesn't make it not worth while 2) I imagine if you're looking at 500k rps you probably qualify for an enterprise level plan where you'd have a sit down chat and negotiate terms rather than just extending the pricing linearly.

by Xorlev 10y ago

AtheistOfFail 10y ago

Digital Ocean's new Load Balancers are $20/month, WTF is this thing?

bpicolo 10y ago

That makes 1k r/s about as much as 6-12 full time engineers to configure your load balancers.

mrkurt 10y ago

This math isn't right, we bill based on total requests (not req/s capacity). It's $0.05 per thousand requests. So 86k/day * 30 days / 1000 * $0.05 means $129/mo. Can we tweak the wording to clarify what we mean? We'll add examples, too. I really hate opaque pricing and wanted to make this as simple to understand as possible.

Xorlev 10y ago
This math _is_ right. 1000 requests/s is 86.4M requests per day. So for 1000 requests in a given second, that's $0.05 per second if you substitute the term. But to show you otherwise: 1000 req/s * 86400s * 30d / 1000 * 0.05 = 129600 It's only $129/mo if it's 0.05c and not $0.05, which is not what the website says.
- mrkurt 10y ago
  Oh I see what you're saying. Then yes, your math is right, but our assumptions probably don't match. :) 1. This is our earliest launch. We're very expensive for 86mm requests per day right now. We have volume pricing planned but not rolled out. If you're interested, I'd suggest trying a low volume site to see how it feels and then get ahold of me to talk about volume pricing. 2. Our service is designed for "valuable" requests, not any ol' asset. API calls and pageviews are usually a good fit. Sustaining 1k "valuable" requests/s for a full month is pretty rare. I know you and other people on HN run that level of infrastructure, but our value prop for you won't be very high until we're more mature.
  - pvg 10y ago
    Sure but even at dozens or 100s of rps, the point where a loadbalancer really starts making sense, it's quite pricy. I think you just priced out $126 for a monthly average of one rps above. One.
    - mrkurt 10y ago
      This is an interesting point. I actually think our service makes sense from 0 requests, because we can (a) speed ssl stuff up immediately (and latency sucks at any volume) and (b) let people ship faster. If you're building a SaaS that's doing ~2.6mm pageviews per month, you've probably saved enough time using our features that $126 is nothing. The economics for a free service or media property are different, but we'll be valuable for different reasons too (and possibly even have a different pricing model for stuff like that).

garry 10y ago

Software costs money — great software makes your life easier and lets you do things by clicking checkboxes instead of spending half your week in server config. Half a week of an engineer (or founder) working on a thing is on the order of thousands of dollars. So as with all software, yes, you can roll it yourself with other things, if you assume your time is worth zero. But we all know that is not true.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
specialp 10y ago
Yes, that is what I consider when I get my car washed for $10. I could do it myself, but my time is worth more. It is also why we moved from COLOs to the cloud. When a service is 10x your entire AWS bill the metrics of "Is my time worth that?" shifts. This is like a $500 car wash. We do moderate traffic and the pricing would make it the highest cost besides labor.
- mrkurt 10y ago
  I'm super curious to hear more about your workload. Will you email me (kurt at fly dot io)? I've worked on very large sites and the DB / app layer was always substantially more expensive than what we're charging. I'd really like to know if we're totally mis-estimating a common use case, or we're just confusing things with our pricing (a launch is mostly just a test for pricing). :)
- overcast 10y ago
  When I consider a car wash, I consider the time/money having to repair all the scratches, and swirl marks, some 18 year old kid is going to put into the paint at the local Delta Sonic. A proper car wash is a science, and you're not getting it for $10. One hour out of your day for a break, and some exercise is a better option in more ways than one.
  - cuu508 10y ago
    Are you maybe mixing up car wash and car detailing?

ricardobeat 10y ago

While I agree it is expensive, some perspective is good: 1000rps is Alexa top-1000 level traffic, unless you plan to route every static asset or a high-volume API through this. At this point 100k/month is not that dramatic.

davidlumley 10y ago

Two points: 1) The fact in a latter comment you seem to have priced yourself out of being unable to afford this service doesn't make it not worth while 2) I imagine if you're looking at 500k rps you probably qualify for an enterprise level plan where you'd have a sit down chat and negotiate terms rather than just extending the pricing linearly.