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I Followed the Official AWS Amplify Guide and Was Charged $1,100

(elliott-king.github.io)
461 points thunderbong | 6 comments | 14 Nov 24 06:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.729s | source | bottom
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modernerd ◴[14 Nov 24 08:08 UTC] No.42134059[source]▶
"Billing alerts" are a joke, give us hard spend limits. Then offer a way to set those limits during onboarding.

Building a business on blank cheques and accidental spends is shady. It's also a large barrier to adoption. The more times devs see reports like, "I tried [random 20-minute tutorial] and woke up to a bill for my life's savings and luckily support waived the fee this one time but next time they're coming for my house", the less they'll want to explore your offerings.

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weinzierl ◴[14 Nov 24 08:52 UTC] No.42134291[source]▶
It's not just AWS. I think there are only two types of cloud providers: The ones like AWS and DigitalOcean that shift the risk to the customer and the ones that offer shady "unlimited" and "unmetered" plans.

Neither is what I want. I wish there was a provider with clear and documented limits to allow proper capacity planning while at the same time shifting all the availability risk to the customer but taking on the financial risk. I'd be willing to pay a higher fixed price for that, as long as it is not excessive.

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1. codedokode ◴[14 Nov 24 09:37 UTC] No.42134513[source]▶
It seems that automatic billing is something that cloud providers invented. For example, home Internet providers or mobile providers usually use prepaid plans, where they simply stop the service once you ran out of money (but you can connect your card account if you trust them). So you cannot get charged arbitrary amount for home Internet, and for mobile unless you travel.
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2. jclulow ◴[14 Nov 24 10:14 UTC] No.42134721[source]▶
Is that true? All of my Internet and mobile telephone service is post-paid with automatic billing. I know one can get prepaid plans from some providers, but how are you arriving at "usually"?
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3. codedokode ◴[14 Nov 24 10:35 UTC] No.42134861[source]▶
It means in your country people trust companies more than in mine. We use pre-paid system and optionally you can connect a card account for automatic billing (but the company cannot charge a card if there is no money left).
4. pjc50 ◴[14 Nov 24 11:34 UTC] No.42135203[source]▶
Landline phone companies were always usage-based billing where you could run up huge bills by, say, making an international phone call for an hour.
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5. gs17 ◴[14 Nov 24 18:18 UTC] No.42139306[source]▶
> So you cannot get charged arbitrary amount for home Internet

Comcast (mostly) disagrees, you have a 1.2 TB data cap and "After that, blocks of 50 GB will automatically be added to your account for an additional fee of $10 each plus tax." They do have a limit of $100 on these charges per month at least.

6. UltraSane ◴[14 Nov 24 18:57 UTC] No.42139806[source]▶
Yep. In 1995 my parents bought me my first PC after years of begging. We lived in a very rural area with no local dial-up provider. I eventually was able to connect and was having a blast on message boards until my parents got a $350 phone bill, which is $750 in 2024 dollars. Turns out I had been using a long-distance number.