

Heroku Postgres Basic Plan - mattsoldo
https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2012/7/12/row_limits_for_dev_plan_and_introducing_the_basic_plan_/

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stevencorona
I always thought that limiting by the "size" of the database in megabytes was
unintuitive with the 5MB/25MB plans (how many bytes are in a row?)- pricing
per-row is much more developer friendly.

I wonder how they'll handle someone doing something awful like storing images
or blobs in the database, though.

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timaelliott
I disagree. By restricting the number of rows I think you're just going to end
up with folks creating sloppy schemas specifically to avoid going over the
limit.

    
    
      post.categories (varchar) = "1,51,78,84,100"
    

and other wonderful non-normalized approaches.

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pvh
Hm. If you must do that, remember Postgres is guilt-free-SQL, so don't use a
varchar, use the array type.

<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/arrays.html>

~~~
willlll
or hstore
[https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2012/3/14/introducing_...](https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2012/3/14/introducing_keyvalue_data_storage_in_heroku_postgres/)

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timaelliott
I like that you guys pointed out more efficient ways to do stupid things :)

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pvh
Well, if the time it takes you to contort your application to work around our
row limits is worth less to you than $9/mo, you're probably in need of both
technical and financial advice.

~~~
timaelliott
I don't disagree nor do I use heroku, it's moot for myself.

I was just commenting how row-limitations were a very NoSQL way of enforcing
data limits and inappropriate for an RDBMS.

~~~
pvh
Oh, you don't need to use Heroku to take advantage of Heroku Postgres -- it's
available as a standalone service.

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jimmytucson
This is almost certainly not the right place for this kind of question but
perhaps someone might be willing to point me in the right direction.

I am currently paying $9.50/mo for a Webfaction plan with 100GB disk, 600GB
bandwidth, 256MB RAM + unlimited MySQL and PostgreSQL databases + various
other services (webmail, SSH access, etc). What would the use case be for
switching to, say, a Heroku plan with 1 Web Dyno and a 10M row PostgreSQL
database? If I'm reading correctly, 1 Web Dyno will cost me $0/mo + $9/mo for
the basic plan = $9/mo, which is comparable to the Webfaction plan, price-
wise.

~~~
emperorcezar
The use case would be if you want to use the Heroku toolchain. Which is really
nice. VPS is always going to be cheaper. Even in that case, Heroku is on the
mid to upper level of costs for a PaaS.

~~~
Snappy
Don't forget the continuous protection backups...

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adriand
This sounds great, but I'm wondering how long we can expect the "brief" beta
period to be. I've got a client who does not need the $200/month Ronin
database, but would be perfectly suited for Crane or this new new basic plan.
However, I'm reluctant to choose plans that warn of decreased stability. My
client's website launches in one month. Is it safe to choose one of these
plans?

~~~
illumen
No. There is a risk.

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mark_l_watson
That is a sweet spot: lots of people need a full service, but smaller
PostgreSQL database.

Off topic, but what I would really like to see: I have several long term tiny
web apps hosted for free at Heroku. I understand that their costs for hosting
these is minimal because unpaid for web apps get swapped out, and thus there
is a several second loading request time when they are 'woken up.'

I would love an inexpensive "1 dyno" paid for plan positioned between the 1
dyno free plan and the two dyno paid plan for $35. The 1 dyno paid plan, at
about $15/month (or maybe it shoult be 1/2 of $35?) would I bet be popular. I
would like all of my apps to be always on, even the little toy/side projects.

~~~
joelcox
I love how Pagoda Box (a PaaS for PHP) solved this; you can "caffeinate" you
application for $8 per month to keep if from sleeping, instead of adding
another instance (comparable to Heroku's Dyno).

<http://help.pagodabox.com/customer/portal/articles/438692>

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vineet
Hmmm... now they need to bridge explaining the current plans with the new
ones. Perhaps in the dashboard they will report both the size of the DB and
the number of rows occupied.

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friggeri
That's a very attractive price point. I'm really considering switching
Tehula[1]'s backend. The previous "basic" plan was too pricey for our needs
right now. But this new option makes using Heroku Postgres really attractive.

[1] <http://tehula.com>

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mark_l_watson
Q: if you add a $10/month basic plan to a free 1-dyno web app, does that web
app become paid for, and thus always be active?

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pvh
I don't believe so, no.

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nivertech
Does this plan support PostGIS?

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vineet
I used to think that PostGIS is not avaialable on Heroku, but this seems to
indicate otherwise: <https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/is-postgis-
available>

The article does suggest a simple way of finding out if the plan supports
PostGIS.

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mariuz
For 57.6$ per month if we calculate month=30 days on ec2 i can get a small
ubuntu linux instance with 1.7G of ram with a lot more than 10.000 rows

<http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/>

After that installing a firebird database can be easy if i choose ubuntu
instance

Next you can add nginx/django just for fun For backup there are many python
scripts to backup to s3/ebs snapshots

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jshen
let me rephrase, "I can spend a fair amount of time doing things myself, or I
can pay a bit more and not have to do those things".

Depending on who you are, and what you're doing, you may value your time more
than a small amount of money. Or, you may value that amount of money more than
your time. Neither is right or wrong.

