Google App engine NO LONGER FOR SMALL DEVELOPERS
Romesh Soni
I have been using GAE since about 1.5 years and I have some MICRO
clients. Usually we charge $70 / YEAR from them. That's all we get.
If google want, I can share 50% of it with Google. But when I see the
new pricing model, I see that I will no longer be able to use GAE and
again I will have to switch to CHEAP SHARED HOSTING. The applications
have no cron job, no data store writes (unless the user goes to
contact us page and submits an inquiry). There are not more than 5
visits per day in those sites. Even after this, I see that the Data
store Write and Read is making up to the limit and Google will stop my
site after the billing is enabled.
So at the least if I exceed the quota by this:
Datastore Writes Chargeable per DAY: $0.07
Datastore Writes Chargeable per day: $0.07
MANDATORY PER APPLICATION CHARGE: $9 PER MONTH
So my annual billing becomes: 12*0.07 + 12*0.07 + 9*12 = $109.68
So I am in a loss of $ 40.
If Google removes the mandatory $9 per app per month charge, then I
will be on track..
Back to my application - As of now, there are no data store reads and
writes. I have turned off all cron jobs, and the application is almost
working as static application. But still according to the billing
history page, data store read and writes are making up to their upper
free bound.
I always loved and admired Google products. But if I will have to
quit GAE, then I will think 1000 of times before clicking on any "I
accept the terms and Condition.." Stuff.
This new pricing model has disappointed me and I believe Google
completely ignored the band of such small developers like me.
Love Java, Love Google.
Thanks
Technical Lobby
Greg
My site is even worse - I don't charge anything for it, and the domain
name costs $40 a year so I am in loss of $40.
If Google charges me nothing and pays me $40 a year, then I will be on
track...
Sorry to make a joke about this, but the hard truth is that commercial
companies have to cover their costs if they want to stay in business.
This applies to Google (who have had to introduce realistic billing or
close the service), and IT APPLIES TO YOU TOO. If you are only making
$70 a year from a single app, then you have much bigger problems than
Google's new charges. What about your time for developing and managing
your app? What about all the other overheads?
My advice is to either increase your prices to a realistic level, or
close the service. I'm guessing you'll actually be able to run your
site under Google's free quota, but this won't help - you will still
be losing money hand over fist in real terms.
I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but maybe this is a good time to look
seriously at your business model. Good luck.
Jeff Schnitzer
you're not running a business. That's two lates (one in NYC).
However, I think there is a deeper issue here which is that 50k
datastore operations per day really isn't much. It's actually
somewhat hard to run a hobby project on appengine within the free
tier. The subject of this thread should really be "Google App Engine
no longer for intermediate, casual hobbysts". Shrug. When the
billing switches over, I need to decide if it's worth spending $9/mo
to continue running my old Mobcast app for the few hundred existing
users or just to pull the plug (hell, I don't even have an iPhone
anymore).
Jeff
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Jeff Schnitzer
> I generally share this opinion - seriously, if $9/mo is a problem,
> you're not running a business. That's two lates (one in NYC).
That would be "lattes".
Jeff
Romesh Soni
Hey Greg/Jeff,
I know it sounds like a joke that a person is earning such a small amount and is running a business. But that is the truth for us here. The market is very small and clients are not willing to pay. Moreover, all php developers here are charging the same amount and even I know that is not doing a business. If I need to work for local clients,I need to have this rates, otherwise I will not be able to survive here. I am just trying to make a few clients here. I know how commercial apps are charged and in International market what are all kinds of charges companies put in front of customers. That is a big market there you guys are playing. And if you think that I should focus on international clients then you see that what option I have - sites like freelancer, vworker?? I guess you guys know what rates are their so I do not need to discuss that.
Thanks
Romesh
--
Robert Kluin
What about combining your apps into one, perhaps using namespaces to
segregate data? Perhaps you might be able to take advantage of some
economies of scale, and make your many small apps act as a bigger app.
Also, maybe you can come up with some different business model from
the PHP developers. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to become a
market leader in that area.
App Engine is a global app and hence subject to arbitrage
conditions. Given their target markets, their price point will likely
be setup for the going rates in the higher priced markets.
Robert
Jeff Schnitzer
where $9 is more than the average person makes in a day... hell, there
are parts of the world where $9 is more than the average person makes
in a month. It's easy to forget that these places are actually on the
internet today and businesses serving these markets might actually be
reading this mailing list.
GAE used to be priced for the low-end. Now it's priced for the
high-end. It's still cheap by US-startup standards, but I can see how
that could be catastrophic if your customers are in Haiti, sub-Saharan
Africa, or certain parts of India.
Unfortunately I don't know the answer. Pricing internationally has
always been hard because different countries have different price
sensitivities. Back when I was serving porn we worked with a company
called Local Billing which set up prices based on an index of what "a
pizza and a beer" costs in the local currency. But that really only
works for products with zero marginal cost of sales.
I don't know if Google can or will help you, but all of the people
I've met on the GAE team have been great folks. My advice is to reach
out to one of them, explain your business, and ask if there is
anything they can do for you. Maybe the answer is 'nothing', but it
doesn't hurt to ask.
As a fallback, Robert's suggestion about using namespaces is a good one.
Jeff
Romesh Soni
If I switch to any GAE pricing model, it will not suit me. However, I have some shared hosting providers which are very cheap. I can switch some sites of mine which are on GAE. Clients here don't know about HRD, Cloud, distributed db. Any mysql db + small disk and RAM space is sufficient for me.
Thanks
Romesh
Technical Lobby
vasja pupki
tee and coffe should have the price 3-5 $.
For sure __everybody_ have business and share income with Google.
And (OFFKOZ!) ONLY LOOSERS don't speak English, drink no Cola and
have no iPhone :)))
On 10 Sep., 06:53, Jeff Schnitzer <j...@infohazard.org> wrote:
Stéphane Cohen
My apps was costing 400 USD a month up to now and with the new pricing
it is going to cost 1300 USD a month for the same resources !!
That is completely nonsense and not very delicate for a provider to
multiply by 3 the price of an application.
Result : We are redesigning our app to work on Amazon which is way
cheaper, even with S3 that has tasks, database and equivallents ot
Google services.
Too bad, GAE was nice.
Gerald Tan
If you read around this forum, there have been many others that were shocked by the increase in the estimated bill, but have managed to bring it down to reasonable levels by optimizing their code (especially Datastore usage) and adjusting the Max Idle Instance.
Stephen
>
> Unfortunately I don't know the answer.
It's simple: stop enforcing a minimum spend of $9/month. Let the guy
pre-pay $10 into his account so he can cover his $0.07 costs without
being ripped-off 4x for services not delivered.