The huge jump from $0/mo to $100/mo makes this a non-starter for me, and I suspect I'm not the only one. I think these pricing points are a mistake; as someone very interested in this market it'll be interested to see if I'm right or not.
I'll try to explain:
I'm a reasonably skilled ops guy, so for big stuff I'm still going to want the control that running my own stack gets me. I suspect most larger customers will be the same: the advantage of a hosted platform over one I design and build isn't proven yet.
But I also have a bunch of tiny one-offs that need homes, so a PaaS offering is super-attractive. I can pretty easily deploy a couple-three of those things on a EC2 or Rackspace instance, so once you factor in my time I'm probably looking at $5-10/mo per app being an attractive price point. So it's damned hard to argument with free!
But — and here's the big thing that'll keep me off Dotcloud — if those small apps get a bit bigger, then what? Well, on my hand-rolled VPS my cost'll double or maybe triple, so I'm looking at say $30/mo. On Dotcloud? I'd jump right to $100/mo.
I suspect this "jump" — and the unknown and likely huge jump that follows when I go from "pro" to "enterprise" — will keep most casual, smallish hobbyest or lifestyle businesses away.
So if large projects stay away, and small projects stay away... what's left?
My guess is over time we'll discover that utility-based billing is going to be the model that makes the most sense for PaaS and that artificial tiers will go the way of the dodo.
[Edit: the following "PS" was a bit hasty; I misread the pricing detail page. Leaving it here because otherwise the discussion below doesn't make sense, but I'M WRONG and THE FOLLOWING DOESN'T APPLY TO DOTCLOUD.]
PS: Oh yeah, one other thing:
Given all we know about web security, having SSL as a value-add makes you look irresponsible at best, and manipulative, opportunistic, unethical, and idiotic at worst. SSL isn't optional, people, and I won't give my patronage to anyone who doesn't get that.
I'm not sure what "piggyback" SSL means, or "unlimited" for that matter — but no matter; it's clear enough that you're not using SSL as a way of getting people to upgrade.
Thanks for clarifying; the pricing page made it seem like you'd need to upgrade to get SSL, hence my rant. I'll edit the parent a bit to make it less hostile. Sorry about the misunderstanding!
You're absolutely right that it's unclear on the pricing page - we still have some polishing to do.
By "piggyback" I mean SSL on your application's default URLs which are of the form FOOBAR.dotcloud.com.
Unlimited means that, no matter how many domains you host on dotCloud, the price remains the same. This is especially generous since, behind the scenes, each new SSL-enabled domain requires a dedicated IP, which costs us an extra $20-$30/month on EC2.
Props for supporting SSL without additional charges. I wish I could say the same about Squarespace. For some reason, they consider having SSL for account logon as a premium feature.
Since you mentioned SSL for free on *.dotcloud.com, maybe it would be a good idea to force SSL for everyone on your main site: http://i.imgur.com/f1X7n.png steal a cookie get an API key...
On AppHarbor, you also get piggyback SSL by default, as well as you can add custom certificates for free. To be fair - we don't charge anyone yet, but saying nobody else does it is a stretch.
Comments
The huge jump from $0/mo to $100/mo makes this a non-starter for me, and I suspect I'm not the only one. I think these pricing points are a mistake; as someone very interested in this market it'll be interested to see if I'm right or not.
I'll try to explain:
I'm a reasonably skilled ops guy, so for big stuff I'm still going to want the control that running my own stack gets me. I suspect most larger customers will be the same: the advantage of a hosted platform over one I design and build isn't proven yet.
But I also have a bunch of tiny one-offs that need homes, so a PaaS offering is super-attractive. I can pretty easily deploy a couple-three of those things on a EC2 or Rackspace instance, so once you factor in my time I'm probably looking at $5-10/mo per app being an attractive price point. So it's damned hard to argument with free!
But — and here's the big thing that'll keep me off Dotcloud — if those small apps get a bit bigger, then what? Well, on my hand-rolled VPS my cost'll double or maybe triple, so I'm looking at say $30/mo. On Dotcloud? I'd jump right to $100/mo.
I suspect this "jump" — and the unknown and likely huge jump that follows when I go from "pro" to "enterprise" — will keep most casual, smallish hobbyest or lifestyle businesses away.
So if large projects stay away, and small projects stay away... what's left?
My guess is over time we'll discover that utility-based billing is going to be the model that makes the most sense for PaaS and that artificial tiers will go the way of the dodo.
[Edit: the following "PS" was a bit hasty; I misread the pricing detail page. Leaving it here because otherwise the discussion below doesn't make sense, but I'M WRONG and THE FOLLOWING DOESN'T APPLY TO DOTCLOUD.]
PS: Oh yeah, one other thing:
Given all we know about web security, having SSL as a value-add makes you look irresponsible at best, and manipulative, opportunistic, unethical, and idiotic at worst. SSL isn't optional, people, and I won't give my patronage to anyone who doesn't get that.
Jacob, before responding to your pricing comments let me start with SSL: we are in fact the most SSL-friendly PaaS out there:
1) Every URL on the platform gets piggyback ssl by default - no add-on necessary. That includes the free tier.
2) A pro account gets you unlimited SSL on your domain, regardless of how many apps you run. Nobody else does that.
We'll make that clearer in the pricing page.
I'm not sure what "piggyback" SSL means, or "unlimited" for that matter — but no matter; it's clear enough that you're not using SSL as a way of getting people to upgrade.
Thanks for clarifying; the pricing page made it seem like you'd need to upgrade to get SSL, hence my rant. I'll edit the parent a bit to make it less hostile. Sorry about the misunderstanding!
You're absolutely right that it's unclear on the pricing page - we still have some polishing to do.
By "piggyback" I mean SSL on your application's default URLs which are of the form FOOBAR.dotcloud.com.
Unlimited means that, no matter how many domains you host on dotCloud, the price remains the same. This is especially generous since, behind the scenes, each new SSL-enabled domain requires a dedicated IP, which costs us an extra $20-$30/month on EC2.
Where does that 20-30$/month come from? Elastic IPs are free when attached to instances..
Load balancer.
Props for supporting SSL without additional charges. I wish I could say the same about Squarespace. For some reason, they consider having SSL for account logon as a premium feature.
Since you mentioned SSL for free on *.dotcloud.com, maybe it would be a good idea to force SSL for everyone on your main site: http://i.imgur.com/f1X7n.png steal a cookie get an API key...
On AppHarbor, you also get piggyback SSL by default, as well as you can add custom certificates for free. To be fair - we don't charge anyone yet, but saying nobody else does it is a stretch.
That's great news. The more of us do this, the better for everyone.
They should have a "hackday" tier.