Worst Case Scenarios: 001
Hi fellow hackers,
So I thought I'd share a series of thought-provoking situations aimed at making us think outside the box about worst-case scenarios and how best to handle them. So here goes nothing.
Case 1:
How would you handle an app [running on a serverless architecture] that went insanely viral, only to wake up with an $x- thousand dollar bill, a shipload of free trials, but no sales? 😟😟
Shameless Plug: Just in case you check out our project's homepage at Enshelf, yes, we know the landing page is currently s*it right now and advice are humbly welcome. Please do well to create an account. Break it all your want, and we'll be best friends forever. 💖
June.
Cloud billing limits and alerts should be implemented when deploying your app, and that should eliminate the potential for runaway billing.
If the project has not yet cashed in on cloud platforms startup credits, looking to retroactively apply those or obtain them before the next billing cycle could be another solution. Along with this would be contacting support and explaining the situation and seeing what options are available to you, depending on the provider they may have some leeway in lowering your bill.
Fantastic. However, do you think it would be a wise decision to turn off your app or do something similar to impede traffic if you get a billing alert that you have surpassed your threshold?
I mean, for fear of racking up a huge bill, I could do that but who knows if the next hundreds or thousand of visitors might just pay for the service.
I think it would be very project and traffic source dependent.
In most situations, I would think that the exposure and growth would have more value than the application hosting costs, as you would probably have a chance to convert later, use the user metrics to secure future funding or score some SEO points.