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> 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

> 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.

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.