Node.js On Standard App Engine - Requires Enabling Billing?

[PhistucK]

One of the major selling points, for me, anyway, of App Engine is that you can create a project by choosing an ID and just roll.

You get a free quota to start your project, no credit card or anything needed.

Of the 5 standard App Engine languages, however, only Node.js requires enabling billing, which keeps me away from it for small projects.

The Node.js on standard announcement blog post did not mention this, I was very unpleasantly surprised by this when I tried to finally deploy my project.

Is this restriction planned to be lifted soon?

[Steren Giannini]

Hi,

Indeed, for the moment, Node.js on App Engine Standard requires a billing account. This is because it directly uses Cloud Container Builder.

But note that it has the same free tier as other Standard runtimes: Having a billing account does not mean you will have to pay for your project.

We are working to see if we can lift this requirement, but no guarantee yet.

Steren

Product Manager

App Engine

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[PhistucK]

Thank you for the update!

I switched to using Heroku for now (thankfully, my application had almost no dependencies on App Engine or almost anything else, that it was a less than half an hour job to switch providers. The only thing I really had to do was to "re-implement" GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS and I plan to move away from that as well soon), but I will be very glad to switch to App Engine once it stops requiring a credit card.

I had a great experience with my other projects using Python (well, in most of them. One completely broke when you removed the channel API and never provided a replacement... Still waiting for that WebSocket support. Fortunately, I was not using that project much in the last few years, so no great harm done).

☆PhistucK

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[Steren Giannini]

I am curious, why cannot you create a billing account? Is it because you are not able to provide a credit card? or is it because you are worried to be charged?

Note that you can set daily spending limits or use the max_instance setting to make sure you are not using more instances than the free tier.

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[PhistucK]

I am simply not comfortable revealing my credit card to Google at this time (for charging me. Chrome Autofill is fine). I have a Google account for more than a decade, I help in its forums, but I managed not to provide my credit card to it and I plan to keep it that way until I have a good reason. Using the free tier of App Engine is not a good reason.

☆PhistucK

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[Julien Landuré]

Hi there,

Im' reloading this thread because I used to teach AppEngine to students and they are not allowed to enter their credit cards.
I've done the "training" for 5 years and never got a problem with the "java" ecosystem. I would like to allow some of them to use Node.js

I also help many "non profit organization" to create website or small apps.

Is it planned to be fully "free" like the standard java AppEngine?

Thanks!

[Nicolas (Google Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi Julien,

As your question is more of a billing one I would suggest you reach the responsible support team. You can contact them here.  You would have better assistance from them as Google Groups is intended for general discussion.

Thank you!

[PhistucK]

I see this is actually going in the opposite direction. Instead of lifting the billing restriction for Node.js, you plan to add a billing restriction to the free tier in general.

Not only that, but I get an e-mail to "remind me" about something I have not heard of before (the requirement to add a billing account).

So now I have about half a month to find an alternative and point everything (assuming I even remember) that pointed to my projects to the alternative.
How was I to know before this "reminder" exactly? I also follow the Google Cloud Platform blog, though you post too much irrelevant stuff there, so I just skim through it and I do not remember seeing anything about this there.

This is very disappointing and very much not what I expected from Google.
(My 3 projects are using Python 2.7)

☆PhistucK

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[Elliott (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hello,

Please note that Google Groups are reserved for general Google Cloud Platform and product discussions and not for reporting issues, which is why I suggest contacting Google Billing Support to address your question.

[PhistucK]

This is a general discussion about Google App Engine requiring a billing account from November 30th, it is not something specific to me (unless you think it is specific to me, in which case, why?).

☆PhistucK

On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 11:49 PM 'Elliott (Cloud Platform Support)' via Google App Engine <google-a...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hello,

Please note that Google Groups are reserved for general Google Cloud Platform and product discussions and not for reporting issues, which is why I suggest contacting Google Billing Support to address your question.

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