6 ms·

An extra 0.5% is going to cost you "tens of thousands of dollars"? You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not

An extra 0.5% is going to cost you "tens of thousands of dollars"? You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not a little bit of money. That's a lot. Own it. You're not a hostage. You're deeply integrated through nobody's fault but your own.

kempbellt 6y ago
Without knowing their business model, it really doesn't matter how much money is moving through their system. It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. Saying you are "held hostage" might be a bit of a dramatic way to phrase it, but for some companies a change like this actually makes a difference. Such is the life of relying on any third-party services though. Also, pointing out "faults" is not helpful. It's unproductive conversation. Many companies are built upon third-party services that they are (probably falsely) under the impression will not change. It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. This is the real problem. From the sidelines, it's easy to dismiss an additional 0.5% overhead as trivial. After all, that's less than 1%, right? But it's not so simple. That 0.5% comes out of the profit margin. If a company has 50% profit margins, losing that extra 0.5% isn't a big deal. However, if a company is operating on 10% margins, that 0.5% suddenly becomes an extra 5% overhead.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  > It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company. It's your fault if you chose lockin. If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :)
  - kempbellt 6y ago
    Most people don't choose lock-in. They choose a provider that works for them on the budget and timeline that they have, and they build on that. Expanding to multiple providers isn't always feasible depending on a company's business model and financial state - it takes time and development resources to do so, which can both be very sparse for company with tight profit margins. You have to start somewhere. Unless you have been handed a substantial amount of starting money and baked "we need to be provider agnostic" into your company beliefs from the beginning, it's rarely an early priority. Becoming profitable is usually what comes first. Securing a stronger foundation for your platform comes over time. > If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :) What is the point of saying this?
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      Yeah, I know. What I'm saying is taking the seemingly low-hanging fruit of locked in technologies is a conscious decision to be competitive. It has very obvious pros and cons. The cons potentially materialising is part of the choice. > What is the point of saying this? Whatever criteria you used to justify asking this question probably also apply to it.
whimsicalism 6y ago
> You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not a little bit of money. That's a lot. Own it. Nobody said it was a little bit of money? Where is this comment coming from?
- Loughla 6y ago
  I think OP's point was, if you're moving that much money, you shouldn't be relying on a third party vendor; doing so shifts the blame from them, to you, for not controlling your own payments. That's what I read in that post. I have no idea if it's a good point or not.
  - jm20 6y ago
    There’s a big difference between “millions of dollars” and “relying on a third party vendor for payments.” I don’t know of many sub-$1B companies that implement their own payments infrastructure...
    - conductr 6y ago
      > I don’t know of many sub-$1B companies that implement their own payments infrastructure... Yet everyone did before stripe.
xtracto 6y ago
> You're not a hostage. You're deeply integrated through nobody's fault but your own. Exactly this. We started being Stripe customers after they bought some third party several years ago. While Stripe maintained the deal it was good for our business but recently they decided to end the deal we had (I don't blame them, it was a very sweet deal for us). Fortunately my startup always have had more than one provider and now we can calculate a "least cost routing" process, which will definitely move a lot of our volume outside of Stripe. But it is just that, business. You should not trust any one provider with your business, not even AWS (i.e. not even at that level).

kempbellt 6y ago

Without knowing their business model, it really doesn't matter how much money is moving through their system. It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. Saying you are "held hostage" might be a bit of a dramatic way to phrase it, but for some companies a change like this actually makes a difference. Such is the life of relying on any third-party services though. Also, pointing out "faults" is not helpful. It's unproductive conversation. Many companies are built upon third-party services that they are (probably falsely) under the impression will not change. It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. This is the real problem. From the sidelines, it's easy to dismiss an additional 0.5% overhead as trivial. After all, that's less than 1%, right? But it's not so simple. That 0.5% comes out of the profit margin. If a company has 50% profit margins, losing that extra 0.5% isn't a big deal. However, if a company is operating on 10% margins, that 0.5% suddenly becomes an extra 5% overhead.
robertlagrant 6y ago
> It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company. It's your fault if you chose lockin. If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :)
- kempbellt 6y ago
  Most people don't choose lock-in. They choose a provider that works for them on the budget and timeline that they have, and they build on that. Expanding to multiple providers isn't always feasible depending on a company's business model and financial state - it takes time and development resources to do so, which can both be very sparse for company with tight profit margins. You have to start somewhere. Unless you have been handed a substantial amount of starting money and baked "we need to be provider agnostic" into your company beliefs from the beginning, it's rarely an early priority. Becoming profitable is usually what comes first. Securing a stronger foundation for your platform comes over time. > If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :) What is the point of saying this?
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    Yeah, I know. What I'm saying is taking the seemingly low-hanging fruit of locked in technologies is a conscious decision to be competitive. It has very obvious pros and cons. The cons potentially materialising is part of the choice. > What is the point of saying this? Whatever criteria you used to justify asking this question probably also apply to it.

whimsicalism 6y ago

> You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not a little bit of money. That's a lot. Own it. Nobody said it was a little bit of money? Where is this comment coming from?

Loughla 6y ago
I think OP's point was, if you're moving that much money, you shouldn't be relying on a third party vendor; doing so shifts the blame from them, to you, for not controlling your own payments. That's what I read in that post. I have no idea if it's a good point or not.
- jm20 6y ago
  There’s a big difference between “millions of dollars” and “relying on a third party vendor for payments.” I don’t know of many sub-$1B companies that implement their own payments infrastructure...
  - conductr 6y ago
    > I don’t know of many sub-$1B companies that implement their own payments infrastructure... Yet everyone did before stripe.

xtracto 6y ago

> You're not a hostage. You're deeply integrated through nobody's fault but your own. Exactly this. We started being Stripe customers after they bought some third party several years ago. While Stripe maintained the deal it was good for our business but recently they decided to end the deal we had (I don't blame them, it was a very sweet deal for us). Fortunately my startup always have had more than one provider and now we can calculate a "least cost routing" process, which will definitely move a lot of our volume outside of Stripe. But it is just that, business. You should not trust any one provider with your business, not even AWS (i.e. not even at that level).