DigitalOcean App Platform

This is laughable - billing is logically separated from droplet use, so unlike other providers DO charges for the potential to use a capability, rather than actual use, regardless of whether it is consumed. I got stung badly by this - charged for X droplets capability when zero droplets capability was being used for several months. Explained the misunderstanding to DO, got no sympathy & no refund. Won't touch them again, don't trust them further than I could throw them.

This is what makes "the cloud" profitable.

If your droplet isn't using all of it's resources (CPU, RAM, DISK), they are able to oversell their capacity.

To be clear, I had no deployed resources, but was still charged as if I had. As it turns out, it's impossible to cancel the "standing charge" without recourse to support.

There's a difference between load balancing of shared resources and (what I believe must be) deliberately deceptive practices. A customer-centric company would send an email to notify you of this kind of over-charging.

It's premeditated and dispicable.

You bought access to X servers knowingly (because you can't do that by accident), let them sit here knowingly, then got billed the exact number that was listed, but somehow that's DigitalOcean's fault ?

I didn't say it wasn't a shitty outcome, but this is what people advocate for when there's a push "for the cloud" or "how aws is doing great things"

What you call "premeditated and despicable" is actually a huge value proposition for others. Whereas AWS/GCP have pricing structures based on usage and you never know until the end of the month how much you owe, DO instead has defined "you will pay $50/mo for this regardless of if you do or do not use it" and from what I've seen, many people really value and appreciate that, and specifically choose DO over AWS/GCP because of that.

The pricing model for App Platform seems antithesis to that, though, which is interesting. DO is becoming more like AWS/GCP with every feature release, which I don't necessarily find to be a good thing.

The problem I have is not with the model, but with the fact it is so difficult to cancel the standing charge. If it could be done from the web UI, and/or there was an interlinked pop-up when zero droplets are deployed, fine.

> let them sit here knowingly

Nothing was deployed. Zip, zero, zilch resources were used month-on-month. My fault, yes, but naively I assumed if this was the case, billing would automatically drop to zero.

Whilst I bought access to X servers but had no way to remove the charge associated with that without contacting customer services when I decided X=0, permanently.

I mean, really? I have no problem with PAYG or PAYG to a capped amount, but PAYG for a fixed amount regardless of whether or not the resources are actually deployed is disingenuous at best.

> Nothing was deployed. Zip, zero, zilch resources were used month-on-month.

This is like leasing a car, leaving it parked, and then complaining you have to pay the lease.

So, you simply did not read the pricing page, that explicitly says that it's going to bill you that, and that you do whatever you want with it. And /or have never used a VPS service before . You are quite literally renting space and CPU time on their servers, that they are keeping (mostly) free and reserved for you.

You don't complain that you were charged $200 for renting a parking space and never using it, no reason for this to be different for servers.

Except in this case, other cars are being parked in the space when it is "empty", and you can only find the car park attendant on every third Monday in the month to rescind the agreement

Wait, I'm confused. What standing charge? What exactly did you get charged for? I've been using DO for a few years and I have no idea what you are referring to. When I delete my unused resources, I don't get charged.

He probably forgot to turn off the instances and kept getting charged.

Ah, right, shutdown but not deleted. DO are upfront about that charge though and its not like its any different on any other cloud provider.