I should have known throwing in the SV comparison here would cause this tangent. Oh well. The point is really that this was a Show HN post about a little hack

I should have known throwing in the SV comparison here would cause this tangent. Oh well. The point is really that this was a Show HN post about a little hack someone put together in probably a single weekend. And with a totally unproven product idea, unexplained use cases let alone what ROI might look like, he has already put in place not just a 1 price plan, but a full swathe from startup to corporate customer. It just seems massively over the top at this very very early stage. A simple disclaimer indicating that he is monitoring API usage, for now, along with a donation button and a "let's talk if you want to use this in an enterprise environment" etc, would have been sufficient. I wish the guy well, honestly. But there is something to be said of taking things a bit more slowly and progressively. Verify the product idea is at all viable first. Before showing your full hand with badly conceived product plans. Those plans could very well be doing more harm than good. Until you've gathered feedback from customers you don't know if those $ values are a million miles of the expected mark. And the fact there is no free plan for even limited testing is ridiculous really.