5 ms·

This is easily one of the worst pricing pages I have ever seen. Your pricing scheme is extraordinarily complex and the page does the poorest possible job at ex

by moe 14y ago

This is easily one of the worst pricing pages I have ever seen. Your pricing scheme is extraordinarily complex and the page does the poorest possible job at explaining anything. Heck, it doesn't even mention that RAM is your discriminator - it simply implies it as if that was natural. Moreover none of the terms are explained (what is "Vertical Scaling", what is "Proportional to application memory")... There is not even a calculator/slider to get a rough idea of actual cost without engaging in Excel-gymnastics. You should seriously get outside help for this.

EwanToo 14y ago
I wouldn't say it's the worst, but it's pretty poor. The page doesn't mention whether it's per day, month, or year for example, but they seem to be taking feedback from a couple of the other comments. Not sure why you've been downvoted for this, seems a bit harsh.
shykes 14y ago
Hi moe, thanks for the feedback, I suppose it's the elastic nature of the pricing that you find complex? I can't disagree with you, it is less straightforward than flat monthly plans. However it is what litteraly thousands of developers have been asking us for over the last year. Our previous pricing was focused on simplicity... but ended up sweeping the reality of our product under tbe rug. I think you're right that we don't explain enough on the pricing page. Our concern was text overload., but there's probably a balance to be found. What about the content - any opinion on our actual pricing?
- moe 14y ago
  Imho you need sliders, like Heroku. But that's just my gut reaction. What you really need is a webdesigner who can lay down an approachable visualization for such a complex pricing scheme (which will probably involve sliders, and also big honking tooltips). As for your actual pricing - I don't know. It wasn't obvious from the page what a small/medium/large deployment would cost and I didn't bother to fire up excel to figure out a number that you should absolutely spoon-feed me.
  - shykes 14y ago
    Did you notice we offer real-life usage scenarios at the bottom of the page?
    - lalmalang 14y ago
      I saw them but those are but single datapoints (and apps seems to vary wildly in requirements). would be handy to have a slider so you could answer the 'what-ifs'. also, was an early beta signup, really liked dotcloud, but have to agree this pricing is pretty complicated :(
    - moe 14y ago
      Yes, but as lalmalang said, these are not very useful and not discoverable at all. I don't want to click through 5+ random scenarios to perhaps find one that comes close to what I have in mind. Well, at the risk of repeating myself. You seem to be generating revenue already, so I would seriously look into hiring a designer for this (or make a contest or such). My gut feeling is that you're so deep into all this (which is generally good!) that you have a hard time reviewing it through the eyes of a first-time visitor.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- richardw 14y ago
  Not the elastic nature, more that it takes longer than it should to understand what the drivers are. If everything is related to memory and memory only goes up in 32MB chunks, have a slider/radio/dropdown/whatever that moves memory and related resources simultaneously, with a per-hour and monthly charge that's auto-updated. I think it's important to note that the page is about pricing, but 99% of the info isn't a price. Above the fold there's only one price, which you have to use in calculating the actual value yourself. Way, way down are the examples, but they might or might not represent what a customer's workload will look like, so they still don't really have what they came to the page for. Getting the customer their own price, super-fast, (assuming it's a good one) is the path to showing why you guys are so fantastic.
  - shykes 14y ago
    All good feedback. However the one giant caveat is that most developers don't know how much memory their application needs.
    - cardmagic 14y ago
      Most people don't know how much disk space an email takes, it didn't stop Gmail from just giving 2gb free disk space.
      - shykes 14y ago
        Yes - exactly like dotCloud's sandbox :)
        cardmagic 14y ago
        Except Gmail isn't just free for drafting emails, it is free when you send them to real people too.
        KenCochrane 14y ago
        dotCloud doesn't have ads, to pay for the service like gmail. :)
jwallz 14y ago
i agree. i can't figure out this pricing. a simple slider like Heroku or Pagodabox would be much easier. I can't get the examples to come out right. Looking at the 3rd one for $172.80, if i get out my calculator and crunch, it looks like it should be $112.32 to me. (256 x 1) + (448 x 1) + (128 x 1) = 832 total MB RAM at $0.006 per 32MB ram per hour you get $4.32 per month per each block of 32 MB 832 / 32 = 26 blocks of 32 MB RAM 26 x 4.32 = $112.32 what am i doing wrong here?
- KenCochrane 14y ago
  You're right the math is wrong on that one, but it isn't the only thing wrong. SSL is 160MB not 128MB. We will double check the numbers and fix it. Thanks for pointing that out.

by moe 14y ago

EwanToo 14y ago

I wouldn't say it's the worst, but it's pretty poor. The page doesn't mention whether it's per day, month, or year for example, but they seem to be taking feedback from a couple of the other comments. Not sure why you've been downvoted for this, seems a bit harsh.

shykes 14y ago

Hi moe, thanks for the feedback, I suppose it's the elastic nature of the pricing that you find complex? I can't disagree with you, it is less straightforward than flat monthly plans. However it is what litteraly thousands of developers have been asking us for over the last year. Our previous pricing was focused on simplicity... but ended up sweeping the reality of our product under tbe rug. I think you're right that we don't explain enough on the pricing page. Our concern was text overload., but there's probably a balance to be found. What about the content - any opinion on our actual pricing?

moe 14y ago
Imho you need sliders, like Heroku. But that's just my gut reaction. What you really need is a webdesigner who can lay down an approachable visualization for such a complex pricing scheme (which will probably involve sliders, and also big honking tooltips). As for your actual pricing - I don't know. It wasn't obvious from the page what a small/medium/large deployment would cost and I didn't bother to fire up excel to figure out a number that you should absolutely spoon-feed me.
- shykes 14y ago
  Did you notice we offer real-life usage scenarios at the bottom of the page?
  - lalmalang 14y ago
    I saw them but those are but single datapoints (and apps seems to vary wildly in requirements). would be handy to have a slider so you could answer the 'what-ifs'. also, was an early beta signup, really liked dotcloud, but have to agree this pricing is pretty complicated :(
  - moe 14y ago
    Yes, but as lalmalang said, these are not very useful and not discoverable at all. I don't want to click through 5+ random scenarios to perhaps find one that comes close to what I have in mind. Well, at the risk of repeating myself. You seem to be generating revenue already, so I would seriously look into hiring a designer for this (or make a contest or such). My gut feeling is that you're so deep into all this (which is generally good!) that you have a hard time reviewing it through the eyes of a first-time visitor.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
richardw 14y ago
Not the elastic nature, more that it takes longer than it should to understand what the drivers are. If everything is related to memory and memory only goes up in 32MB chunks, have a slider/radio/dropdown/whatever that moves memory and related resources simultaneously, with a per-hour and monthly charge that's auto-updated. I think it's important to note that the page is about pricing, but 99% of the info isn't a price. Above the fold there's only one price, which you have to use in calculating the actual value yourself. Way, way down are the examples, but they might or might not represent what a customer's workload will look like, so they still don't really have what they came to the page for. Getting the customer their own price, super-fast, (assuming it's a good one) is the path to showing why you guys are so fantastic.
- shykes 14y ago
  All good feedback. However the one giant caveat is that most developers don't know how much memory their application needs.
  - cardmagic 14y ago
    Most people don't know how much disk space an email takes, it didn't stop Gmail from just giving 2gb free disk space.
    - shykes 14y ago
      Yes - exactly like dotCloud's sandbox :)
      - cardmagic 14y ago
        Except Gmail isn't just free for drafting emails, it is free when you send them to real people too.
        KenCochrane 14y ago
        dotCloud doesn't have ads, to pay for the service like gmail. :)

jwallz 14y ago

i agree. i can't figure out this pricing. a simple slider like Heroku or Pagodabox would be much easier. I can't get the examples to come out right. Looking at the 3rd one for $172.80, if i get out my calculator and crunch, it looks like it should be $112.32 to me. (256 x 1) + (448 x 1) + (128 x 1) = 832 total MB RAM at $0.006 per 32MB ram per hour you get $4.32 per month per each block of 32 MB 832 / 32 = 26 blocks of 32 MB RAM 26 x 4.32 = $112.32 what am i doing wrong here?

KenCochrane 14y ago
You're right the math is wrong on that one, but it isn't the only thing wrong. SSL is 160MB not 128MB. We will double check the numbers and fix it. Thanks for pointing that out.