

Nodejitsu's new pricing - hdeshev
https://blog.nodejitsu.com/changes-in-nodejitsu-public-cloud

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yRetsyM
It's cheaper to have 3 micro's than one small?

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indexhero
Nodejitsu is running on fumes... they have done some good for the the OSS and
node.js community through their open source efforts, but that isn't enough to
keep them afloat, hence this.

They have continued since last year when they went into public beta to provide
a mediocre service (Downtimes, way more than publicly blogged about, issues
left unaddressed, spotty support service, etc.).

Don't get me wrong, their support is stellar. Often I could get help with an
issue and have it resolved in minutes (if it was something nodejitsu could
control-if it was a 3rd party like a database or their logging system with
loggly, good luck getting anywhere with that). Unfortunately, they don't have
support round the clock and its not scalable either. During there most recent
outage They had several support agents on their IRC channel frantically trying
to calm tens to hundreds of users down. Many of which were businesses.

I will venture to even say this is Nodejitsu's last chance before they sink or
float. Speaking to a few employees there I have gathered information that
their largest user base are individual plan users, and that they make
$3000-$7000 a month from all total sales.

I thought how could this be? They have 25,000 developers deploying to
nodejitsu. I was told that many of the users in the system were left over from
beta and test accounts, half of which were just "invalid users"? I asked how
many were active, when asked if there were 2000-3000 active developers
currently on their system, "that sounds about right".

So to put things into perspective there is around 2-3k developers bringing in
an optimistic $7k, the math doesn't fit well of course. So putting aside the
fact they've had many employees since 2009, we see that Nodejitsu is gambling
that their user base will stick with them and essentially pony up and pay 3-5x
more then they currently were. At a very extremely optimistic rate we could
extrapolate that nodejitsu could potentially make $35k from this action. This
could ensure 4-6 employees get paid well, maybe more if they outsource to
contractors.

Realistically, a drastic change like this in a business model this late into
the game generally sees 30% retention rate. Given that other PaaS like Heroku,
Azure, AWS, etc are now supporting web sockets through nginx and other means,
and addressing many of the issues that made them sub-par to nodejitsu, the
novelty of nodejitsu filling a niche is wearing thin. Extrapolating this at
best case only results in $10.5k per month, this can only support a few
employees, if that. Where are they getting this kinda money to employ 15
people let alone 20-25 employed last summer? Well from their funding of course
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/nodejitsu> . $750k in funding is a nice
chunk of change to get back in 2011. At an extremely optimistic rate that
could support 15 employees for a year each getting average $50k.

An interesting development happened in the last quarter of 2012 when I noticed
nearly half of the employee base was removed from their site. This coincided
with Marak's departure from nodejitsu, officially nodejitsu said leadership
grew to be at odds, but what it really looks like was he was driven out
against his will and so was every other founder except Charlie Robbins. Money
to blame? Maybe. Inexperience(<http://www.linkedin.com/in/charlierobbins>)?
Most likely. Unofficially, "10 or so employees left in the same month to
pursue other careers".

Granted, Nodejitsu's business plan can't just rely solely on individual plan
users can it? Word is on the grapevine nodejitsu has got some feelers out with
walmart, bloomberg, and/or a partnership with Microsoft for there enterprise
clients, but apparently nobody knows anything about them or is keeping mum.
(though I thought Eran Hammer - hapi creator - was smarter than that, though
as I said it is just a rumor) What am I going to do? I've stuck with nodejitsu
for a while now, I believe what they originally set out for was a good idea,
to be the best node.js platform and give back to the OS community, and that
they've certainly tried hard. But it seems they've really fallen short and now
they are asking me to pay 5x what I used to pay. I already moved my business
projects off of nodejitsu several months ago due to their numerous outages/
3rd-party/partner outages. I had hoped that things would change so I've kept
my pet projects and dev work on nodejitsu helping keep the idea alive, but the
outages and downtimes have not gotten better. Being forced into this "business
plan" mentality goes against everything I've experienced with my apps on
nodejitsu, nodejitsu is no longer a solo developer friendly platform, unless
you got tons cash to spare. I'm not sure if I should feel insulted, I know
most likely that me, along with other hackers, entrepreneurs, and students
helped make nodejitsu what it is today, and they are turning their back on us
by forcing us to comply with the new prices in 15 days or else.

What makes it even more ridiculous is that as I outlined above, this change
even on best case scenario will not even support their current staff (unless
these employees are paid extremely sub-par). This whole blog post is just a
last ditch effort to get nodejitsu on a pricing model that might actually
support a few employees. It focuses blame on insufficient
research(assumptions) then shifts the blame to businesses running on
individual plans as if they were harmful to nodejitsu. I'm not running my
business on nodejitsu individual plans, why should I be punished too? Its
clear that my contribution and the 2-3k other developers just like me aren't
making for a sustainable business, but its helping, but come on, increasing my
bill 5x? Nodejitsu is just trying to drive me away along with every other
hacker, tinkerer, student. And its working. I will be moving to heroku for
most of the dev projects I have, I may take some time to check out
<http://saewitz.com/node-dot-js-websocket-hosting-roundup/> if i have some
time.

So what should YOU do? Are you looking to host a business on nodejitsu? Don't.
Nodejitsu is very immature as a company and its processes, unless you want to
waste time and money. (Node.js in of itself is immature, compounding this is
that nodejitsu is built entirely on node.js, do you really want to risk
it?)Are you a hacker, dev, student, entrepreneurial? Skip nodejitsu unless you
got the time and money to spend. Pick heroku or AWS free plan, or any of the
other more forgiving and might I add reliable PaaS solutions.

I personally think the node.js community should seriously consider boycotting
nodejitsu over this. It is clear nodejitsu is looking out for itself and not
the majority of who we are, morphing into a B2B business. Why do you think so
few node.js community leaders except those that work at or have a partnership
at nodejitsu don't rave about nodejitsu's platform? My answer is because
nodejitsu's business model is based on getting suckers to pay them, all they
are doing now is clarifying they want rich suckers.

