The thing I dislike about the new pricing model is that I need to pay in order to have scaling capability. Would it be possible to have your free app automatically go to paid status for a month if you break your free quota?
I don't like the new pricing model at all. I invested so much time to tune my app to consume as less cpu as possible and will face a immoral price increase.
I have a dev app that uses currently about 40cpu hours a day, has ~16 active instances on average and serves ~7.5 requests/second. Right now I am paying ~120$ a month.
With the new pricing model I would have to pay for the instances alone ~921.6$ a month. For api usage about 200$ and the base fee of 9$ thats summerized 1130.6$ or in other words a price change of 942%. Thats immoral and illegal for a good reason in most european countries.
I beg you to offer an option to choose between cpu based pricing and instance based pricing and I am sure I am not the only person having this problem.
I'm disappointed as well. The thing I liked most about GAE was "the pay per usage" price model. I took for granted to be "forced" into the AppEngine platform. But with the new pricing model it makes more sense for me to look into e.g. CloudFoundry. I probably pay similar price but have more flexibility in terms of the platform.
I understand for businesses this pricing is not a problem, but I think many developers on GAE have chosen GAE for the "not pay per instance mode".
eek! also very worried about this. :( i hope it wasn't the plan all along to make the service super affordable and attractive to lure people in then jack the price once there were enough customers locked in. i hope the billing preview calms our fears and it turns out not to be too big a change to the current billing amounts.
Part of the original appeal of appengine was that you pay for what you use. Now we suddenly will have to pay for what we don't use: $9/month no matter what...
I understand Google wants to make money, but it's still going to be a major detraction.
GAE is starting to look a lot like amazon, and that is terrible. One of the things that I liked the most about the platform was the CPU/hour pricing model. You paid for what you used.
This is very disturbing. I think that Google has been losing a lot of money with AppEngine and this is the only way they could keep it going. The thing is now I don't have much incentive not to go Azure which is more flexible and not that much more expensive.
If the changes are applied the way they are stated above, we'd likely pay an order of magnitude more for the service. At that point, we could host all of our services way more effectively on EC2, and we will very likely switch.
Against the many drawbacks of AppEngine, the pricing model was one of it's biggest features. The new pricing model eliminates that feature.
we chose to go w/ the HRS solution, paying for service is not the issue. our app relies heavily on datastore operations, our number of targeted users would exceed the 50k quota by far. simply unaffordable, API calls used to be unlimited. with this move, you/Google seem to turn away from startups and go enterprise. that's pretty sad to see, as without a correction of the limitations I don't see a common base to continue working with GAE.
Wow. That's not much of a thank you to all the people who have been beta testing appengine for the past few years. Very unfortunate news. We had just managed to get a new version of our app built out that allows us to charge users for usage. I'm not sure if we'll be able to get enough income to cover these costs in time. We spent something like 3 years growing an audience on appengine and we're going to be billed off of the platform. I'll be looking at any Google offering with a very healthy sense of skepticism from now on. Really surprised by this.
I always thought and said in forums that AppEngine is years ahead of Azure. My argument was that AppEngine was simple, where you DON'T have to think about instances. Silly me :-(
We use Appengine and EC2 together for our Appstack. Today at Appengine our biggest App consumes about 1,5 CPU Hours a day (this is in free Quota). We are into paid Quotas every about 7th day, but only with some cents. In the past year we developed heavily on appengine and worked hard to optimise our code for the funny inconveniences that appengine comes with. All this for having the advantage of CPU-Hour payment. The same app uses three to four instances in average. We have got a lot of very small requests so serve. I haven't yet calculated the new quota system for us. But CPU Hour vs. instance hour pricing is a dealbreaker by itself. I don't mind the 9$ - although it obviously is in conflict with what Google always said Appengine is about. And reasonable pricing changes are okay. My impression is, that IAAS gets cheaper and cheaper ... and now Appengine (which we used to love) takes the 2000% hammer.
I really hope, that someone from Google says something like "Hey we were only joking. Don't be evil! Of cause this was only ment to show you what Microsoft would do"
In the meantime we are starting to migrate our last Apps to Amazon. I didn't see this coming and I dont like what I see.
I thought Google was intent on bringing up an army of appengine developers who would be the programmers of future large-scale projects that will bring in the big money.
I guess not. Maybe they already have plenty and can afford getting rid of some. And try to collect that money from the rest.
I gladly pay for good service as long as the fee increases gradually and in line with the load. In the new pricing structure that isn't true anymore.
I have to pay for instances, I can't see why not rent virtual computer(s) from a cloud provider and get the full flexibility. (And that will actually be portable!)
After a year of developing and optimizing for the AE all of a sudden everything is turned up side down!
I don't mind paying for good service but this feels like a restaurant would charge for the time you sat down and not for what you ordered, which used to be the case with AE. All optimization down the drain..
It's hard to grasp how much the increase will add up to in my case but I don't have a good feeling about this. Other alternatives now look much more interesting.
Google, should we have seen this coming? Billing has been around for a long time. You didn't even leave us as much as a hint. When will it change again? Into what?
Please don't get greedy. It will kill my business and in the end maybe yours too.
I was looking forward to the Google I/O 2011 for some awesome App Engine announcements.
The 'Backends' part fooled me for a second. Then I continued reading and thought to myself "Something's not right... I must have misunderstood what I just read." Then I read again and again. Alas. Now I feel anxious and unsure of my app's future in App Engine.
AppEngine team, I know you are brilliant programmers, and many don't care much for the business side of things. But, can we get at least some of your thoughts about PRICING and the change.
For me, as someone who have been evangelizing AppEngine in person and in forums, it's like a slap in the face. I do realize that you must make money from this endeavor, but can we hear you say in this. A post dedicated to just this issue would be appreciated.
I looks like this goes very much against you motto (don't be evil). Even if you miscalculated pricing when you started AppEngine (maybe you set your pricing too low then), we want your say.
The thing I dislike about the new pricing model is that I need to pay in order to have scaling capability. Would it be possible to have your free app automatically go to paid status for a month if you break your free quota?
ReplyDeleteThese changes are pretty dramatic?? Will always on still be available? It will now require me to commit to 3 * 24 * 30 instance hours a month?
ReplyDeleteI don't like the new pricing model at all. I invested so much time to tune my app to consume as less cpu as possible and will face a immoral price increase.
ReplyDeleteI have a dev app that uses currently about 40cpu hours a day, has ~16 active instances on average and serves ~7.5 requests/second. Right now I am paying ~120$ a month.
With the new pricing model I would have to pay for the instances alone ~921.6$ a month. For api usage about 200$ and the base fee of 9$ thats summerized 1130.6$ or in other words a price change of 942%. Thats immoral and illegal for a good reason in most european countries.
I beg you to offer an option to choose between cpu based pricing and instance based pricing and I am sure I am not the only person having this problem.
I think I didn't understand correctly and all these applies to both regular GAE and GAE4B!, if so, the billing change is not fair...
ReplyDeleteDatastore API 50k operations
ReplyDeleteWT........
Does that mean if every request used at least 1 datastore GET, than we can server a max of 50k requests a day ???
I'm disappointed as well. The thing I liked most about GAE was "the pay per usage" price model. I took for granted to be "forced" into the AppEngine platform.
ReplyDeleteBut with the new pricing model it makes more sense for me to look into e.g. CloudFoundry. I probably pay similar price but have more flexibility in terms of the platform.
I understand for businesses this pricing is not a problem, but I think many developers on GAE have chosen GAE for the "not pay per instance mode".
Let's see how Google reacts to this feedback.
eek! also very worried about this. :( i hope it wasn't the plan all along to make the service super affordable and attractive to lure people in then jack the price once there were enough customers locked in. i hope the billing preview calms our fears and it turns out not to be too big a change to the current billing amounts.
ReplyDeletePart of the original appeal of appengine was that you pay for what you use. Now we suddenly will have to pay for what we don't use: $9/month no matter what...
ReplyDeleteI understand Google wants to make money, but it's still going to be a major detraction.
GAE is starting to look a lot like amazon, and that is terrible. One of the things that I liked the most about the platform was the CPU/hour pricing model. You paid for what you used.
ReplyDeleteThis is very disturbing. I think that Google has been losing a lot of money with AppEngine and this is the only way they could keep it going. The thing is now I don't have much incentive not to go Azure which is more flexible and not that much more expensive.
ReplyDeleteThis wasn't clear at all if this was for GAE or GAE4B. If it's GAE, time to start looking elsewhere because this is ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the average increase is going to be across the user community? 1000% 2000%?
Talk about a bait and switch. Evil, Google, Evil.
Time to start finding another provider.
Anyone need free hosting and not commercial/non profit, email me @ androidcoolguy at hotmail dot com.
ReplyDelete@ roloma:
ReplyDelete"Thats [sic] immoral and illegal for a good reason in most european countries."
Your sense of morality, legality, and entitlement is astonishing.
If the changes are applied the way they are stated above, we'd likely pay an order of magnitude more for the service. At that point, we could host all of our services way more effectively on EC2, and we will very likely switch.
ReplyDeleteAgainst the many drawbacks of AppEngine, the pricing model was one of it's biggest features. The new pricing model eliminates that feature.
we chose to go w/ the HRS solution, paying for service is not the issue. our app relies heavily on datastore operations, our number of targeted users would exceed the 50k quota by far. simply unaffordable, API calls used to be unlimited. with this move, you/Google seem to turn away from startups and go enterprise. that's pretty sad to see, as without a correction of the limitations I don't see a common base to continue working with GAE.
ReplyDeleteWow. That's not much of a thank you to all the people who have been beta testing appengine for the past few years. Very unfortunate news. We had just managed to get a new version of our app built out that allows us to charge users for usage. I'm not sure if we'll be able to get enough income to cover these costs in time. We spent something like 3 years growing an audience on appengine and we're going to be billed off of the platform. I'll be looking at any Google offering with a very healthy sense of skepticism from now on. Really surprised by this.
ReplyDeleteHow can you accurately estimate the change in billing an existing app can expect? Is there a formula that we know is reliable?
ReplyDeleteI always thought and said in forums that AppEngine is years ahead of Azure. My argument was that AppEngine was simple, where you DON'T have to think about instances. Silly me :-(
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is a big WTF
We use Appengine and EC2 together for our Appstack. Today at Appengine our biggest App consumes about 1,5 CPU Hours a day (this is in free Quota). We are into paid Quotas every about 7th day, but only with some cents.
ReplyDeleteIn the past year we developed heavily on appengine and worked hard to optimise our code for the funny inconveniences that appengine comes with. All this for having the advantage of CPU-Hour payment.
The same app uses three to four instances in average. We have got a lot of very small requests so serve.
I haven't yet calculated the new quota system for us. But CPU Hour vs. instance hour pricing is a dealbreaker by itself.
I don't mind the 9$ - although it obviously is in conflict with what Google always said Appengine is about. And reasonable pricing changes are okay.
My impression is, that IAAS gets cheaper and cheaper ... and now Appengine (which we used to love) takes the 2000% hammer.
I really hope, that someone from Google says something like "Hey we were only joking. Don't be evil! Of cause this was only ment to show you what Microsoft would do"
In the meantime we are starting to migrate our last Apps to Amazon. I didn't see this coming and I dont like what I see.
Nikolai
thats too much for a individual developer......now the question pop up again, Why should I choose GAE.
ReplyDeleteI thought Google was intent on bringing up an army of appengine developers who would be the programmers of future large-scale projects that will bring in the big money.
ReplyDeleteI guess not. Maybe they already have plenty and can afford getting rid of some. And try to collect that money from the rest.
I gladly pay for good service as long as the fee increases gradually and in line with the load. In the new pricing structure that isn't true anymore.
I have to pay for instances, I can't see why not rent virtual computer(s) from a cloud provider and get the full flexibility. (And that will actually be portable!)
After a year of developing and optimizing for the AE all of a sudden everything is turned up side down!
ReplyDeleteI don't mind paying for good service but this feels like a restaurant would charge for the time you sat down and not for what you ordered, which used to be the case with AE. All optimization down the drain..
It's hard to grasp how much the increase will add up to in my case but I don't have a good feeling about this. Other alternatives now look much more interesting.
Google, should we have seen this coming? Billing has been around for a long time. You didn't even leave us as much as a hint. When will it change again? Into what?
Please don't get greedy. It will kill my business and in the end maybe yours too.
I was looking forward to the Google I/O 2011 for some awesome App Engine announcements.
ReplyDeleteThe 'Backends' part fooled me for a second. Then I continued reading and thought to myself "Something's not right... I must have misunderstood what I just read." Then I read again and again. Alas. Now I feel anxious and unsure of my app's future in App Engine.
I wish you all the best App Engine. Goodbye.
AppEngine team, I know you are brilliant programmers, and many don't care much for the business side of things. But, can we get at least some of your thoughts about PRICING and the change.
ReplyDeleteFor me, as someone who have been evangelizing AppEngine in person and in forums, it's like a slap in the face. I do realize that you must make money from this endeavor, but can we hear you say in this. A post dedicated to just this issue would be appreciated.
I looks like this goes very much against you motto (don't be evil). Even if you miscalculated pricing when you started AppEngine (maybe you set your pricing too low then), we want your say.