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OTOH they don't even charge you if your bill is less than $5/month. I've had an app do nothing for a few months now, and my bills are always just thrown away du

OTOH they don't even charge you if your bill is less than $5/month. I've had an app do nothing for a few months now, and my bills are always just thrown away due them being under $5.

krab 4y ago
That's something I wonder about looking at AWS. My personal account has about $0.7 monthly spend. Doesn't it cost more to charge a credit card?
- oneepic 4y ago
  A few months ago, I found out I had an AWS account from college that was racking up $0.50/month in charges. After 40 months, I finally got an email from AWS warning me to pay the $20 or they'd just close my account. I paid it, and closed my account, but I guess I could've just left if I wanted to.
  - krab 4y ago
    Good to know. I'm paying anyway because I have other accounts there with bigger charges and I actually want the service, including the small personal account (which really shows as a separate transaction on a bank statement).
  - albert_e 4y ago
    I am guessing that 50cents per month is a Route53 hosted zone from one of your experiments with hosting a website? You may want to check if you also have a domain name purcahed through route53 that is set for automatic renewal every 3 years or whatever
    - oneepic 4y ago
      That's a good point, and you're spot-on about the Route53 zone. I did close my AWS account already. I'm hoping it just kind of doesn't renew that domain name.
- konha 4y ago
  Yes. But building an exception into the billing system and possibly accumulating charges below $x over a longer period might just not be worth the effort.
- vultour 4y ago
  AWS regularly cancels my invoices if they're under 1EUR, I assume precisely because it costs them more to do the transaction.
danjac 4y ago
My concern (for non-paying or low-paying side projects) is not so much the difference between $5 and $10 for monthly hosting - that's like the difference between one or two cups of coffee - but what safeguards are in place to prevent me from inadvertently exceeding an expected amount due to a high traffic spike, misconfigured cloud function or whatever. So I don't really care if one service costs x2 if the difference is between 5 and 10, but I care a lot if I could accidentally end up with a $2000 bill one day (and warnings don't count - not much good if I get a warning if I'm away from my laptop in a log cabin or something).
- margorczynski 4y ago
  I guess that's the modus operandi of the Cloud providers - fake your concern by an useless warning and hope that no one will react before they'll rake up the bill. That's why I stay away from e.g. AWS for side projects, too many histories of a stupid mistake that costed quite a bit of money when all that is needed is some breaker if usage is exceeded beyond a point.

OTOH they don't even charge you if your bill is less than $5/month. I've had an app do nothing for a few months now, and my bills are always just thrown away due them being under $5.

krab 4y ago

That's something I wonder about looking at AWS. My personal account has about $0.7 monthly spend. Doesn't it cost more to charge a credit card?

oneepic 4y ago
A few months ago, I found out I had an AWS account from college that was racking up $0.50/month in charges. After 40 months, I finally got an email from AWS warning me to pay the $20 or they'd just close my account. I paid it, and closed my account, but I guess I could've just left if I wanted to.
- krab 4y ago
  Good to know. I'm paying anyway because I have other accounts there with bigger charges and I actually want the service, including the small personal account (which really shows as a separate transaction on a bank statement).
- albert_e 4y ago
  I am guessing that 50cents per month is a Route53 hosted zone from one of your experiments with hosting a website? You may want to check if you also have a domain name purcahed through route53 that is set for automatic renewal every 3 years or whatever
  - oneepic 4y ago
    That's a good point, and you're spot-on about the Route53 zone. I did close my AWS account already. I'm hoping it just kind of doesn't renew that domain name.
konha 4y ago
Yes. But building an exception into the billing system and possibly accumulating charges below $x over a longer period might just not be worth the effort.
vultour 4y ago
AWS regularly cancels my invoices if they're under 1EUR, I assume precisely because it costs them more to do the transaction.

danjac 4y ago

My concern (for non-paying or low-paying side projects) is not so much the difference between $5 and $10 for monthly hosting - that's like the difference between one or two cups of coffee - but what safeguards are in place to prevent me from inadvertently exceeding an expected amount due to a high traffic spike, misconfigured cloud function or whatever. So I don't really care if one service costs x2 if the difference is between 5 and 10, but I care a lot if I could accidentally end up with a $2000 bill one day (and warnings don't count - not much good if I get a warning if I'm away from my laptop in a log cabin or something).

margorczynski 4y ago
I guess that's the modus operandi of the Cloud providers - fake your concern by an useless warning and hope that no one will react before they'll rake up the bill. That's why I stay away from e.g. AWS for side projects, too many histories of a stupid mistake that costed quite a bit of money when all that is needed is some breaker if usage is exceeded beyond a point.