5 ms·

I'm hesitant to use "fancy" cloud service/hosting providers for reasons like this. I don't understand why they won't just raise a 503 if the traffic exceeds th

by injuly 3y ago

I'm hesitant to use "fancy" cloud service/hosting providers for reasons like this. I don't understand why they won't just raise a 503 if the traffic exceeds the spend limit, or at the very least provide that as an option.

sshine 3y ago
What's spend limit? Autoscaling is a feature!
- carlmr 3y ago
  I guess we need regulation for this.
  - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    Or, rather than creating more regulations, people could read the contracts they agree to when they get service, and use a competitor if they don't like it
    - baq 3y ago
      Yeah exactly why we need regulation - so contracts aren’t 100 pages long. DRY.
      - anomaly_ 3y ago
        So, go to a different provider?
        baq 3y ago
        More like don't start a business at all because of provider risk.
        immibis 3y ago
        Or use a provider with a predictable cost structure. There are PLENTY. You didn't need to choose this exact one.
        carlmr 3y ago
        The problem is that it isn't entirely clear which ones have predictable cost to the non-lawyers eye. I.e. they should have to have sane defaults, like reasonable spending limits and opt-out, by regulation, since the market is failing here.
        immibis 3y ago
        It was clear though. Does Netlify not tell you their bandwidth pricing?
    - malka 3y ago
      I don't know many people knowledgeable enough to read and understand legalese. Except lawyers ofc.
    - bigfudge 3y ago
      There is such a thing as an unfair contract. Moreover, there are business practices that can become a local maxima in an industry and squeeze out competition which would actually be a net benefit to most consumers. Mobile roaming was the same before the EU intervened, and were now going back to the shitshow tjat preceded it in the uk.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Why do we need regulation? "Keep the service up no matter what happens, no matter the cost" is a useful business model for companies that make the mistake of promising too many nines to their customers. The issue at hand is that people put small websites on hosting providers designed for megacorporation wealth, like Netlify. I highly doubt the average blog needs more than a $10 VPS located in one single country without automatic fallback to another data centre. You can probably even go with a $5 VPS if you don't care about the first wave of HN front page bots not being able to reach your site.
    - Root_Denied 3y ago
      > "Keep the service up no matter what happens, no matter the cost" is a useful business model I mean, yeah - but that shouldn't be the default and it shouldn't be something that you can't opt out of if it is, which is what sounds like happened with Netlify.
      - jeroenhd 3y ago
        Why would Netlify offer the option to opt out when extreme availability is their core business? I'd argue that people are using the wrong service provider if they need to opt out in the first place. Same goes for most of the other pay-as-you-go providers that turn HN into billing support every now and then; very rarely do I see "we suddenly got a $20k bill" posts about services that these extreme availability products make sense for.
    - jpc0 3y ago
      > You can probably even go with a $5 VPS... You wouldn't believe the amount of times I've said this and the response was "but it costs me nothing right now"...
  - arthur_sav 3y ago
    We don't need regulation for everything. Let customers vote with their wallet or even start a few lawsuits. Adding more regulation makes the system slower.
    - rajamaka 3y ago
      Regulation is needed for lawsuits
    - immibis 3y ago
      I'd be in favour of a regulation to allow them to set a spend limit, opt-out. I'm fine with their pricing structure right now, since you have PLENTY of providers to choose from - people can easily vote with their wallets and there's no problem that needs solving. However, the unexpected spikes are a problem, and providers seemingly don't provide any way to solve them because they make more money by not solving them. A regulation to require all providers of post-billed services to provide spending limits would make a lot of sense. Of course, customers should also have the option to opt out of the limit or set a very high limit. This should apply to any service that's billed by usage calculated afterwards, not just web hosting, and not just technology.
    - xdennis 3y ago
      Microsoft is the only cloud provider with a spending limit. One choice is not competition. That's why regulation is needed.
      - leerob 3y ago
        Vercel offers spend limits: https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-spend-management-realtime-usage-alerts-sms-notifications https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-spend-management-realtim...
jpalomaki 3y ago
Playing ”devil’s” advocate: tracking spend in real-time is not trivial. It adds complexity to stack. Bugs in the feature can cause sites to go down (for long time) without a reason. Larger online businesses likely rather sort out the problems later than risk shutting down in the middle of unexpected success. (But I also would like to see this feature)
- interstice 3y ago
  Vercel will happily tell you how much you are spending in pretty much realtime as it sails past your budget
  - leerob 3y ago
    OP is right though, realtime alerting is non-trivial to build. It looks us a lot of work at Vercel to get right. We also offer budgeting options where you can set spend limits now, too.
    - interstice 3y ago
      Oh wow sorry didn't mean to be personally flippant to the VP! Hacker news is wild. I just had a look at the billing screen and I can see notifications but not budgeting options (on the Pro plan). Ideally I'd like to monitor/configure spend per deployment as some of our sites have big sales which can = big fees. Is this possible?
- INTPenis 3y ago
  Not really. AWS has budget alerts right? And I can read those budget alerts through their API. So it would be trivial for me to poll their budget API for an alert, and immediatly trigger a shutdown of my Cloudfront service. Why can't they do that for me?
  - bsder 3y ago
    > AWS has budget alerts right? Nope. Not in real time, they don't. You can significantly overspend before the warning comes in.
Saris 3y ago
Yep, for a static site you can throw nginx on some VPS for $10 a year and it'll handle a decent amount of traffic.

by injuly 3y ago

sshine 3y ago

What's spend limit? Autoscaling is a feature!

carlmr 3y ago
I guess we need regulation for this.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  Or, rather than creating more regulations, people could read the contracts they agree to when they get service, and use a competitor if they don't like it
  - baq 3y ago
    Yeah exactly why we need regulation - so contracts aren’t 100 pages long. DRY.
    - anomaly_ 3y ago
      So, go to a different provider?
      - baq 3y ago
        More like don't start a business at all because of provider risk.
        immibis 3y ago
        Or use a provider with a predictable cost structure. There are PLENTY. You didn't need to choose this exact one.
        carlmr 3y ago
        The problem is that it isn't entirely clear which ones have predictable cost to the non-lawyers eye. I.e. they should have to have sane defaults, like reasonable spending limits and opt-out, by regulation, since the market is failing here.
        immibis 3y ago
        It was clear though. Does Netlify not tell you their bandwidth pricing?
  - malka 3y ago
    I don't know many people knowledgeable enough to read and understand legalese. Except lawyers ofc.
  - bigfudge 3y ago
    There is such a thing as an unfair contract. Moreover, there are business practices that can become a local maxima in an industry and squeeze out competition which would actually be a net benefit to most consumers. Mobile roaming was the same before the EU intervened, and were now going back to the shitshow tjat preceded it in the uk.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Why do we need regulation? "Keep the service up no matter what happens, no matter the cost" is a useful business model for companies that make the mistake of promising too many nines to their customers. The issue at hand is that people put small websites on hosting providers designed for megacorporation wealth, like Netlify. I highly doubt the average blog needs more than a $10 VPS located in one single country without automatic fallback to another data centre. You can probably even go with a $5 VPS if you don't care about the first wave of HN front page bots not being able to reach your site.
  - Root_Denied 3y ago
    > "Keep the service up no matter what happens, no matter the cost" is a useful business model I mean, yeah - but that shouldn't be the default and it shouldn't be something that you can't opt out of if it is, which is what sounds like happened with Netlify.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      Why would Netlify offer the option to opt out when extreme availability is their core business? I'd argue that people are using the wrong service provider if they need to opt out in the first place. Same goes for most of the other pay-as-you-go providers that turn HN into billing support every now and then; very rarely do I see "we suddenly got a $20k bill" posts about services that these extreme availability products make sense for.
  - jpc0 3y ago
    > You can probably even go with a $5 VPS... You wouldn't believe the amount of times I've said this and the response was "but it costs me nothing right now"...
- arthur_sav 3y ago
  We don't need regulation for everything. Let customers vote with their wallet or even start a few lawsuits. Adding more regulation makes the system slower.
  - rajamaka 3y ago
    Regulation is needed for lawsuits
  - immibis 3y ago
    I'd be in favour of a regulation to allow them to set a spend limit, opt-out. I'm fine with their pricing structure right now, since you have PLENTY of providers to choose from - people can easily vote with their wallets and there's no problem that needs solving. However, the unexpected spikes are a problem, and providers seemingly don't provide any way to solve them because they make more money by not solving them. A regulation to require all providers of post-billed services to provide spending limits would make a lot of sense. Of course, customers should also have the option to opt out of the limit or set a very high limit. This should apply to any service that's billed by usage calculated afterwards, not just web hosting, and not just technology.
  - xdennis 3y ago
    Microsoft is the only cloud provider with a spending limit. One choice is not competition. That's why regulation is needed.
    - leerob 3y ago
      Vercel offers spend limits: https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-spend-management-realtime-usage-alerts-sms-notifications https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-spend-management-realtim...

jpalomaki 3y ago

Playing ”devil’s” advocate: tracking spend in real-time is not trivial. It adds complexity to stack. Bugs in the feature can cause sites to go down (for long time) without a reason. Larger online businesses likely rather sort out the problems later than risk shutting down in the middle of unexpected success. (But I also would like to see this feature)

interstice 3y ago
Vercel will happily tell you how much you are spending in pretty much realtime as it sails past your budget
- leerob 3y ago
  OP is right though, realtime alerting is non-trivial to build. It looks us a lot of work at Vercel to get right. We also offer budgeting options where you can set spend limits now, too.
  - interstice 3y ago
    Oh wow sorry didn't mean to be personally flippant to the VP! Hacker news is wild. I just had a look at the billing screen and I can see notifications but not budgeting options (on the Pro plan). Ideally I'd like to monitor/configure spend per deployment as some of our sites have big sales which can = big fees. Is this possible?
INTPenis 3y ago
Not really. AWS has budget alerts right? And I can read those budget alerts through their API. So it would be trivial for me to poll their budget API for an alert, and immediatly trigger a shutdown of my Cloudfront service. Why can't they do that for me?
- bsder 3y ago
  > AWS has budget alerts right? Nope. Not in real time, they don't. You can significantly overspend before the warning comes in.

Saris 3y ago

Yep, for a static site you can throw nginx on some VPS for $10 a year and it'll handle a decent amount of traffic.