> Any cloud platform should have a spend-stop a...
# generalg
Gwen Shapira
02/27/2024, 5:03 PMAny cloud platform should have a spend-stop amount built in.
i.e. if I know I average $10 a day, I should be able to put in a "If it hits $50, email me and take it offline".
Of course the opposite problem is then people setting that limit too low but since the user defines the limit that's on them not you.
This is one of the reasons I still in 2024 rent physical boxes and run the modern stuff on top of them directly, yes it costs me more per month but the price is hard capped
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Caleb Grillo
02/27/2024, 5:22 PMI think this makes sense in some cases, but it’s also a massive footgun. It’s so easy to mess it up in catastrophic ways. The argument of “well, it’s on the user” doesn’t really work in practice, because it doesn’t actually matter whose fault it is when the site is on fire. The priority should be making sure the site can’t catch on fire in the first place.
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Mitch
02/27/2024, 5:37 PMI find it funny that we're discussing this again. In the mid-90s/early 2000s if you bought a VPS, or colocated a server this was standarized. You had 3 options: Limited to N-mb /month and after that they shut you off, after N-mb they slow you down to something like 10MB-HD, or unlimited you pay the bill. In the first two situations you always got a call from your hosting provider "hey what would you like us to do here?". there was a bunch of these in the days when the /. or digg effect was a thing
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Mitch
02/27/2024, 5:38 PMalso interesting how much these threads surface about the actual complexity of building a SaaS. The best SaaS often have these sorts of features done REALLY well.
Mitch
02/27/2024, 5:39 PMthe boring stuff matters.
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Gwen Shapira
02/27/2024, 5:45 PMI just don't think it is realistic to "make sure the site can't catch fire in the first place".
So the way fires are handled matter.
If you take my site down for spend limit, I get alerted, curse a bit, top off the fund a bit, fix whatever needs fixing, top off a bit more, and be back in business with limited harm done within hours.
Massive bill usually shows up when its too late to do anything for that month and possibly also for the next month. It is in the past and you are now helpless.
@Caleb Grillo do you guys provide bill monitoring? so I can get alerted if my usage increases and before I'm surprised by a massive bill? This seems like a bare minimum for a service without caps...
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Caleb Grillo
02/27/2024, 5:48 PMYeah we do - and we’re going to offer proactive monitoring at some point in the future, even if you don’t set up a threshold at which you want to be notified. (No timeline on that)
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Gwen Shapira
02/27/2024, 5:48 PMYou rock. You won't believe how many vendors don't have that...
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Mitch
02/27/2024, 5:48 PMhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39510147 also relates
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Gwen Shapira
02/27/2024, 5:49 PMoh, nice one!
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Caleb Grillo
02/27/2024, 5:49 PMHahahaha oh @Gwen Shapira , I know.
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Bill Tarr
02/27/2024, 7:59 PMDoesn't solve for every use case, but if you purchase though AWS Marketplace, you can set up billing alarms on the product. There are still gotchas - how often the provider sends your data for example, but it is at least one way to accomplish this across cloud purchases...