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PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases

(planetscale.com)
231 points ryanvogel | 1 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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reducesuffering ◴[30 Oct 25 21:02 UTC] No.45765316[source]▶
I like PlanetScale, but they already have precedent very recently for having a free-tier and then cancelling it for a minimum of $40/month plan, which made many people switch. What's to stop them from doing the same here?

Be wary of building a cheap hobby project on it expecting pricing to stay consistent. If $40+ isn't feasible for you, you may be trying to switch off to a hosted PostgreSQL option, with all the pain MySQL->Postgres entails, soon.

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carlm42 ◴[30 Oct 25 21:14 UTC] No.45765454[source]▶
(Planetscale employee) This is very different though: it's not a free tier, it's an actual single node DB as a paid product. It's definitely not a good fit for every usecase, but if you have a hobby project it's a great way to start with plenty of room to scale if/when you get actual usage
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CryptoBanker ◴[30 Oct 25 21:45 UTC] No.45765759[source]▶
It's very similar in that it's not a huge source of revenue for Planetscale, so easy to pull the rug without disrupting revenue too much
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samlambert ◴[30 Oct 25 21:57 UTC] No.45765878[source]▶
this makes no sense to me
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1. hennell ◴[30 Oct 25 22:34 UTC] No.45766189[source]▶
In what way? Companies drop/move on from small customers all the time as positions and analysis changes. $5 a month might make sense now, but with thin profits, a lower than predicted "upgrade rate" and maybe a higher than anticipated support cost etc and this becomes a less profitable option without price increases, which loses customers causing more increases because of none scalable costs etc.

Throw in a change of leadership or business focus and it's an easy short term boost to drop the many smaller customers and focus on the big fish who make the real money.

It's a common pattern, echoed over many industries, and while you might not see it being likely here right now, if the concept literally doesn't make sense to you, you need to look up some basic business ideas because it's a pretty valid concern.