Greg Tracy posted an interesting analysis of his Google AppEngine expenses. What makes his analysis more fascinating than the others I’ve read is that he discusses it from the point of view of keeping alive a philanthropic app that will suddenly cost a lot more money. One hope he has is that Google will “[p]rovide better pricing structures for philanthropic and open source projects.” I hope so too. Or alternatively I’d be interested in seeing a proliferation of compatible-but-weaker platforms to support the FOSS low-end of the Google or Amazon platforms. I suspect that developers like Greg would accept a cheaper platform that scaled more poorly if porting was easy (and porting back was easy too, if a business model emerges).
Originally shared by Greg Tracy
My thoughts on the App Engine price hikes. It hits me worst on the projects that have the biggest impact in Madison.
http://www.gregtracy.com/app-engines-place-as-a-developer-playground
I have always seen AE as a play environment unless I were willing to pay, and now they’re severely cutting back on the size and capability of that free play environment. I run my own Linode at a fixed, predictable cost per month. That has always seemed better than depending on not getting suddenly high traffic numbers and being charged after the fact.