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> I've never been able to understand why so many usage-based hosting platforms don't give you the option to say "if my bill goes above X, shut down the service
by smt88 4y ago
> I've never been able to understand why so many usage-based hosting platforms don't give you the option to say "if my bill goes above X, shut down the service instead of continuing to charge me".
Large, valuable customers wouldn't use this option. It would only help the hobbyist types who aren't doing anything mission-critical and aren't the platform's most profitable (not big spenders, not particularly loyal because they aren't big enough to tailor their infra to that platform, etc.)
- encoderer 4y agoWith self-serve developer tooling like vercel they are hoping that devs bring the tools to work that they have been prototyping themselves. That’s why there’s a free tier.
- brundolf 4y agoI'm not sure that's true. It's probably a lower risk for them, but still, a runaway service can rack up unlimited bills. At some point it matters to everybody. Even if they set it to $CURRENT_CASH_RESERVES, that has non-zero value And when we talk about the in-between - startups - I'm pretty sure I read at least one anecdote on here about being put out of business by surprise hosting bills
- wruza 4y agoLarge, valuable customers wouldn't use this option Unless they prefer to rely on being large and valuable as a leverage, they just have much bigger limits. And even in such autoscale-type company there may be a separate department that would want to limit their budget because they have one. Imagine spending $100k extra accidentally in your office while the whole budget is around $10M and now you can’t simply reach support on terms of “that billion was clearly a mistake”, because $10.1M seems normal.