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A fun fact (and I'm not violating any NDA here) my client https://paireyewear.com https://paireyewear.com is growing very fast and last year they raised $73 mil

A fun fact (and I'm not violating any NDA here) my client https://paireyewear.com https://paireyewear.com is growing very fast and last year they raised $73 million from VC investors. They have their main store on Shopify, so they didn't need too much on the backend: only their CRM for keeping customers happy and handling returns and damaged goods and refunds and special sales. Also, on the backend, they had all the integrations with the 3PL, that is, 3rd Party Logistics, which is to say, they worked with external warehouses, because they weren't ready to have their own warehouses. They did have integrations with the warehouses so they could track inventory levels. So the fun fact is this: they were running entirely on free Heroku dynos. This year they successfully transferred to AWS, but they got to a fairly big scale while running entirely on free Heroku dynos. I'm still kind of amazed by that.

rubyist5eva 4y ago
Why did they not just start paying for Heroku?
- rekttrader 4y ago
  They’re part of the reason it’s not free any more.
  - gl-prod 4y ago
    Well, Salesforce could have made the free dynos non-commercial only
    - 999900000999 4y ago
      That's even worse, so when your hobbyist project accidentally makes 40$ Salesforce can send it's legal team after you?
      - Marsymars 4y ago
        I would prevent any hobbyist project of mine from making $40 for tax reasons alone, where the difference the to tax authorities between $0 and $40 is basically the same as the difference to a Saleforce non-commercial clause. At $0 I don’t have to do anything about taxes. At $40 it’s immediately in the red due to whatever time I have to spend sorting out taxes for $40 in revenue.
        TJSomething 4y ago
        I'm not an accountant, but for the US in 2021, that was Form 1040, Schedule 1: Additional Income and Adjustments to Income, Part 1: Additional Income, line 8: Other income, sub-line i: Activity not engaged in for profit income. You would just put $40 on that sub-line and add it to your adjusted gross income. If you made only $40 on it, I don't it can reasonably be called self-employment income, per Publication 535. [0] https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi#en_US_2021_publink100079520 https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi#en_US_2021_publink1... [1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf
        Marsymars 4y ago
        Right, and I'm not in the US, but my point is that even if it is that simple, figuring that out for my country and filling out the form is going to take more than $40 worth of my time, and introduces downside risk that I've gotten it wrong somehow.
crazysim 4y ago
How could they stay on free dynos? You can't be running on a free dyno 24/7. It's like 16/7 or something.
- ztgasdf 4y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, if you gave Heroku a valid credit card, it would add a few hundred extra hours for your dynos.
  - orliesaurus 4y ago
    that's correct, you could be have it on 247 with trick!
- davidmurdoch 4y ago
  I have several legacy free tier dynos that don't have the restriction. They run 24/7, at least for another day or so.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  That was at one point true, but hasn't been true for at least a few years. Heroku could have gone back to that i suppose, instead of getting rid of free dynos entirely, but they didn't. Still... I think you could basically only run one free dyno per account 24/7. I am curious if they somehow fit their entire production in one free dyno, or were somehow splitting things between multiple accounts, or what.
arcturus17 4y ago
Cool story (really), but what were they hosting on Heroku then?
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> they were running entirely on free Heroku dynos. This year they successfully transferred to AWS, but they got to a fairly big scale while running entirely on free Heroku dynos. I’ve read so many of these stories now that I understand why Heroku is phasing out the free tier. It’s kind of fascinating to see how some engineers see free tier limits as an optimization target. I wonder how many engineering hours across the industry went into arbitrarily keeping services small enough to fit in the free tier.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > I’ve read so many of these stories now that I understand why Heroku is phasing out the free tier. To me, those stories seem like good arguments for reducing the usage limits of the free tier, but not getting rid of it entirely.
  - nomilk 4y ago
    You don't need to profit off every single customer. Many business models make 90%+ of their revenue from 'whales' and crumbs from the rest. Optimising for consistent margin from every single customer could be a waste of time; a distraction, and could even hurt a business.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Why do all the big clouds have generous free tiers with reasonable limits then?
- yumraj 4y ago
  > I wonder how many engineering hours across the industry went into arbitrarily keeping services small enough to fit in the free tier. Why is that wrong? If everyone optimized their services and applications like it used to be in the past, will substantially bring down compute and memory requirements and reduce overall bloat.
  - dcow 4y ago
zincly 4y ago
Shopify does logistics now too, you could use that and get rid of the whole backend altogether. Disclosure, I work there.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Perhaps conways law is now more about cloud pricing tiers tham teams!

rubyist5eva 4y ago

Why did they not just start paying for Heroku?

rekttrader 4y ago
They’re part of the reason it’s not free any more.
- gl-prod 4y ago
  Well, Salesforce could have made the free dynos non-commercial only
  - 999900000999 4y ago
    That's even worse, so when your hobbyist project accidentally makes 40$ Salesforce can send it's legal team after you?
    - Marsymars 4y ago
      I would prevent any hobbyist project of mine from making $40 for tax reasons alone, where the difference the to tax authorities between $0 and $40 is basically the same as the difference to a Saleforce non-commercial clause. At $0 I don’t have to do anything about taxes. At $40 it’s immediately in the red due to whatever time I have to spend sorting out taxes for $40 in revenue.
      - TJSomething 4y ago
        I'm not an accountant, but for the US in 2021, that was Form 1040, Schedule 1: Additional Income and Adjustments to Income, Part 1: Additional Income, line 8: Other income, sub-line i: Activity not engaged in for profit income. You would just put $40 on that sub-line and add it to your adjusted gross income. If you made only $40 on it, I don't it can reasonably be called self-employment income, per Publication 535. [0] https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi#en_US_2021_publink100079520 https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi#en_US_2021_publink1... [1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf
        Marsymars 4y ago
        Right, and I'm not in the US, but my point is that even if it is that simple, figuring that out for my country and filling out the form is going to take more than $40 worth of my time, and introduces downside risk that I've gotten it wrong somehow.

crazysim 4y ago

How could they stay on free dynos? You can't be running on a free dyno 24/7. It's like 16/7 or something.

ztgasdf 4y ago
If I'm not mistaken, if you gave Heroku a valid credit card, it would add a few hundred extra hours for your dynos.
- orliesaurus 4y ago
  that's correct, you could be have it on 247 with trick!
davidmurdoch 4y ago
I have several legacy free tier dynos that don't have the restriction. They run 24/7, at least for another day or so.
jrochkind1 4y ago
That was at one point true, but hasn't been true for at least a few years. Heroku could have gone back to that i suppose, instead of getting rid of free dynos entirely, but they didn't. Still... I think you could basically only run one free dyno per account 24/7. I am curious if they somehow fit their entire production in one free dyno, or were somehow splitting things between multiple accounts, or what.

arcturus17 4y ago

Cool story (really), but what were they hosting on Heroku then?

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> they were running entirely on free Heroku dynos. This year they successfully transferred to AWS, but they got to a fairly big scale while running entirely on free Heroku dynos. I’ve read so many of these stories now that I understand why Heroku is phasing out the free tier. It’s kind of fascinating to see how some engineers see free tier limits as an optimization target. I wonder how many engineering hours across the industry went into arbitrarily keeping services small enough to fit in the free tier.

josephcsible 4y ago
> I’ve read so many of these stories now that I understand why Heroku is phasing out the free tier. To me, those stories seem like good arguments for reducing the usage limits of the free tier, but not getting rid of it entirely.
- nomilk 4y ago
  You don't need to profit off every single customer. Many business models make 90%+ of their revenue from 'whales' and crumbs from the rest. Optimising for consistent margin from every single customer could be a waste of time; a distraction, and could even hurt a business.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Why do all the big clouds have generous free tiers with reasonable limits then?
yumraj 4y ago
> I wonder how many engineering hours across the industry went into arbitrarily keeping services small enough to fit in the free tier. Why is that wrong? If everyone optimized their services and applications like it used to be in the past, will substantially bring down compute and memory requirements and reduce overall bloat.
- dcow 4y ago

zincly 4y ago

Shopify does logistics now too, you could use that and get rid of the whole backend altogether. Disclosure, I work there.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Perhaps conways law is now more about cloud pricing tiers tham teams!