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The price they're charging is their price minus the Amazon price. You are paying for a set of tools that sit on top of Amazon. You choose to either invest in

by ctide 13y ago

The price they're charging is their price minus the Amazon price. You are paying for a set of tools that sit on top of Amazon. You choose to either invest in those tools yourself (and save the the difference between Heroku and Amazon) or you don't. Every time Amazon reduces prices, this means the cost of those tools increases. Since Heroku has launched, the price of those tools has steadily increased by virtue of not staying in line with Amazon's price reductions.

eli 13y ago
I get what you're saying... but the price they're charging is the price they're charging. The whole point is that I don't have to care how they make it work, just that it does work. Would the price for Heroku magically become "better" if they decided to switch from Amazon to a more expensive or less efficient backend? That can't be right. Heroku has many alternatives -- hosting directly on Amazon among them -- but (IMHO) there are not many direct competitors. Doing it any other way involves different tradeoffs of time, money, skill, and maybe lock-in risk. I sometimes buy a burger at a restaurant even though I know I can make one at home. That doesn't automatically mean it was a bad call even if raw beef is on sale at the supermarket.
- ctide 13y ago
  Doing it any other way involves different tradeoffs of time, money, skill, and maybe lock-in risk. This is what you're paying for. The cost of that is the difference between hosting yourself on Amazon and what Heroku charges. That's the cost to your business of using Heroku. This cost has steadily increased. This isn't rocket science, and it certainly isn't burgers at a restaurant. I get that for some people that cost is a worthwhile expenditure, but as that divide widens, the number of people it makes sense for will decrease. To try and equate this to your burger analogy, if raw beef kept dropping in price, but restaurants all charged the same, more people would cook at home, no? Now, imagine you're feeding 100 people a day. At some point the cost savings of cooking the beef far outweighs the luxury of sending 100 people to a restaurant.

by ctide 13y ago

eli 13y ago

I get what you're saying... but the price they're charging is the price they're charging. The whole point is that I don't have to care how they make it work, just that it does work. Would the price for Heroku magically become "better" if they decided to switch from Amazon to a more expensive or less efficient backend? That can't be right. Heroku has many alternatives -- hosting directly on Amazon among them -- but (IMHO) there are not many direct competitors. Doing it any other way involves different tradeoffs of time, money, skill, and maybe lock-in risk. I sometimes buy a burger at a restaurant even though I know I can make one at home. That doesn't automatically mean it was a bad call even if raw beef is on sale at the supermarket.

ctide 13y ago
Doing it any other way involves different tradeoffs of time, money, skill, and maybe lock-in risk. This is what you're paying for. The cost of that is the difference between hosting yourself on Amazon and what Heroku charges. That's the cost to your business of using Heroku. This cost has steadily increased. This isn't rocket science, and it certainly isn't burgers at a restaurant. I get that for some people that cost is a worthwhile expenditure, but as that divide widens, the number of people it makes sense for will decrease. To try and equate this to your burger analogy, if raw beef kept dropping in price, but restaurants all charged the same, more people would cook at home, no? Now, imagine you're feeding 100 people a day. At some point the cost savings of cooking the beef far outweighs the luxury of sending 100 people to a restaurant.