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0 pointstptacek3y ago0 comments

They're telling you why: having a free tier means allocating a lot of resources to fraud and abuse, which are rampant in hosting, especially now that you can convert hosting dollars almost directly to cash. It's a big problem, and I have every reason to believe they're being forthright about why they've made this decision.

0 comments

joshstrange3y ago

That may all be true but I don't see any other way to frame this other than them throwing in the towel for the whole platform and/or conceding to other platforms that are better at spotting fraud/abuse.

Require a credit card, require a deposit, allow free dynos for otherwise paying customers. Killing the whole program is a sign they don't care about growth, they don't care to be where a developer first launches a hobby that results in paying later, and they are fully embracing their Salesforce persona (not a good thing in my book).

shiftpgdn3y ago

I don't think you understand how much fraud and abuse is in the hosting world.

joshstrange3y ago

I've never said there wasn't any. Just that if you value a free tier (which you should if you want to attract developers) you find a way to deal with the fraud (or eat the cost). The fact that Salesforce either couldn't figure out (or didn't care to) the fraud and didn't want to pay for it spells bad news for the future of Heroku.

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Dma54rhs3y ago

They do require credit card for free dynos. Maybe it wasn't so in the beginning I can't remember.

bombcar3y ago

You can still offer a "free tier for existing customers" and call it "development" or something. This lets people who are already known/paying to spin up test instances, without having to go through purchasing, which leads eventually to more paid usage.

tptacekOP3y ago

I guess it depends on where you think the platform is going, and which segment of the market you think the revenue is going to come from. I'm just saying: it's a significant cost. It's maybe the most important thing to know about the hosting business.

tzs3y ago

OT: your HN profile says:

I'm curious. If you were to continue that sequence would the continuation be:

A. 2044, 2065, 2099, 2154, 2242

B. 2044, 2065, 2099, 2154, 2243

C. Something else?

tptacekOP3y ago

My HN test is an IQ test that I, myself, cannot pass.

pvg3y ago

The future ones (2023, 2031, ...) are primes in lunar arithmetic in base 4 written in base 4, of course.

https://oeis.org/A171122

pyb3y ago