4 ms·

A small db isn't free to _operate_. The actual compute and storage costs are pretty low, but keeping the thing running is harder than you'd think. Keeping it r

by mrkurt 2y ago

A small db isn't free to _operate_. The actual compute and storage costs are pretty low, but keeping the thing running is harder than you'd think. Keeping it running with no users is easy. Keeping it running when someone ships an app that blows the DB up is hard.

tossandthrow 2y ago
It seems like the post is about someone who offers it for free. I just want to pay the cost price for an equally scaled down offering.
- bigiain 2y ago
  No no. The article makes it very clear it's costing them $1 - $2.50 per month to provide, but that they're treating that as marketing/acquisition costs. And "the cost price" for a free service isn't the cost price for exactly the same service as a subscription service. As others are pointing out, the risks to them of you assuming you're entitled to something more than their free offering users get - like having them respond to a support or billing query, or feeling entitled to doing term service availability - is problematic enough that it's not likely to be worthwhile. And at $2 per month, credit card processing eats a big chunk of each payment up front. And it requires setup of the recurring payments and account management, payment reminders and failed recurring billing notification, invoices and tax compliance crap. And to top all that off there's the fraud risk of people using stolen card numbers or using the service as a small transaction verifier for validating stolen card numbers. When a cardholder disputes a transaction you get hit with a chargeback fee, somewhere between ~$15 and as high as $100 depending on a bunch of stuff. If you don't have decent fraud detection and rate limiting, some asshole who's just bought 1000 credit card numbers off the dark web can make for a _very_ expensive day for you. And then there's all the internal accounting and reporting they'll need to do for this new class of paying user. I get what you want to do. But honestly? I can 100% see why most people would refuse to enter into a paid account type relationship with anyone for anything as low as $2/month. Hell, in the last few years Google hseem to have gone from their old price point of $5/month for paid Gmail accounts up to I think $12/month now.
  - tossandthrow 2y ago
    > assuming you're entitled to something more than their free offering users get I explicitly wrote "[same] limits as what these free databases offer". So there is no additional entitlement by taking payment. > And at $2 per month, credit card processing eats a big chunk of each payment up front You are over-indexing on a specific way to take payment. It could be loading 50$ on your account that is being deducted 2$ a month - Like Fly does it. Re. fraud risk, accounting etc. I think your assessment is completely opposite to the reality. The following is from a Fly newsletter: > Charging a credit card prevents most at-scale abuse. Abusive users are surprisingly loathe to pay even $5, and it's really difficult to keep fraudulent credit cards working over time. And when we run charges, we get really interesting Stripe data about the trustworthiness of a charge that we can use to restrict the platform. Fly has the business model, xata.io apparently has the budget to self-finance this. Why not just combine it? Really to understand that this is in addition to other offering. Of cause you can not expect to get an enterprise-grade Postgres instance for 2$ a month. But what Xeta claims to offer for 2$ a month should absolutely be possible, and enough for a small database that runs rudimentary analytics for a small-scale blog, etc.
    - bigiain 2y ago
      > I explicitly wrote "[same] limits as what these free databases offer". So there is no additional entitlement by taking payment. I honestly believe that's what _you_ would expect for your $2/month. And if everybody in the world was like you, it'd make sense for them to do it. But... You've met _people_, right? Enough of them are way too insane and over entitled, and ruin it for everybody else. And I think you misunderstand the credit card fraud risk here. It's not "abusive users" trying to buy your service at $5 or $2. It's _because_ the monthly price is so low that you become a fraud target for proper who were never interested un becoming a user. Criminals intentionally find and use low value purchase options with real time card processing, so they can "test" card details they have are valid right before making a big purchase if the small one succeeds. I've been on both ends of that, I've seen purchase of a dollar or two on one of my cards right before an attempt to buy a thousand bucks worth of electronics (which my Visa issuer blocked). I've also been involved in a website that mostly dealt in 50+ dollar purchases that without thinking/knowing added a $1.95 novelty sticker pack - and a few weeks later had several hundred purchases using stolen credit cards overnight. It happens.

by mrkurt 2y ago

tossandthrow 2y ago

It seems like the post is about someone who offers it for free. I just want to pay the cost price for an equally scaled down offering.

bigiain 2y ago
No no. The article makes it very clear it's costing them $1 - $2.50 per month to provide, but that they're treating that as marketing/acquisition costs. And "the cost price" for a free service isn't the cost price for exactly the same service as a subscription service. As others are pointing out, the risks to them of you assuming you're entitled to something more than their free offering users get - like having them respond to a support or billing query, or feeling entitled to doing term service availability - is problematic enough that it's not likely to be worthwhile. And at $2 per month, credit card processing eats a big chunk of each payment up front. And it requires setup of the recurring payments and account management, payment reminders and failed recurring billing notification, invoices and tax compliance crap. And to top all that off there's the fraud risk of people using stolen card numbers or using the service as a small transaction verifier for validating stolen card numbers. When a cardholder disputes a transaction you get hit with a chargeback fee, somewhere between ~$15 and as high as $100 depending on a bunch of stuff. If you don't have decent fraud detection and rate limiting, some asshole who's just bought 1000 credit card numbers off the dark web can make for a _very_ expensive day for you. And then there's all the internal accounting and reporting they'll need to do for this new class of paying user. I get what you want to do. But honestly? I can 100% see why most people would refuse to enter into a paid account type relationship with anyone for anything as low as $2/month. Hell, in the last few years Google hseem to have gone from their old price point of $5/month for paid Gmail accounts up to I think $12/month now.
- tossandthrow 2y ago
  > assuming you're entitled to something more than their free offering users get I explicitly wrote "[same] limits as what these free databases offer". So there is no additional entitlement by taking payment. > And at $2 per month, credit card processing eats a big chunk of each payment up front You are over-indexing on a specific way to take payment. It could be loading 50$ on your account that is being deducted 2$ a month - Like Fly does it. Re. fraud risk, accounting etc. I think your assessment is completely opposite to the reality. The following is from a Fly newsletter: > Charging a credit card prevents most at-scale abuse. Abusive users are surprisingly loathe to pay even $5, and it's really difficult to keep fraudulent credit cards working over time. And when we run charges, we get really interesting Stripe data about the trustworthiness of a charge that we can use to restrict the platform. Fly has the business model, xata.io apparently has the budget to self-finance this. Why not just combine it? Really to understand that this is in addition to other offering. Of cause you can not expect to get an enterprise-grade Postgres instance for 2$ a month. But what Xeta claims to offer for 2$ a month should absolutely be possible, and enough for a small database that runs rudimentary analytics for a small-scale blog, etc.
  - bigiain 2y ago
    > I explicitly wrote "[same] limits as what these free databases offer". So there is no additional entitlement by taking payment. I honestly believe that's what _you_ would expect for your $2/month. And if everybody in the world was like you, it'd make sense for them to do it. But... You've met _people_, right? Enough of them are way too insane and over entitled, and ruin it for everybody else. And I think you misunderstand the credit card fraud risk here. It's not "abusive users" trying to buy your service at $5 or $2. It's _because_ the monthly price is so low that you become a fraud target for proper who were never interested un becoming a user. Criminals intentionally find and use low value purchase options with real time card processing, so they can "test" card details they have are valid right before making a big purchase if the small one succeeds. I've been on both ends of that, I've seen purchase of a dollar or two on one of my cards right before an attempt to buy a thousand bucks worth of electronics (which my Visa issuer blocked). I've also been involved in a website that mostly dealt in 50+ dollar purchases that without thinking/knowing added a $1.95 novelty sticker pack - and a few weeks later had several hundred purchases using stolen credit cards overnight. It happens.