The checkout page is amazing. I really enjoy using heroku for some of my projects.
I can deal with the dyno pricing (I estimate its 1.5-3x linode or slicehost), but the db pricing is crazy expensive. Disk is (close to) free, and trying to use it to price discriminate moves me to Linode for a large subset of my projects. I'd greatly prefer something more tied to real costs, like query execution time, compute cycles, etc.
That's interesting feedback, thanks. Sounds like two different issues:
1. Database pricing. We aren't trying to sell storage space, that's not the value you're getting with a Heroku db plan. We would argue that the value is the instant, provisionless nature of the platform - radically faster deployment and scaling, and an environment that just works. So if those features of the platform aren't valuable to you (i.e. you want to provision, configure, and maintain the db yourself), and you're just looking for the best cost/MB, we're definitely not the right answer for you.
Let's say you set that comparison aside for a moment, and you took one of your apps that's providing value to you and selected a Heroku pricing configuration that fits the app's needs. Given the value of your app plus the value you get from our platform, is the total price worth it?
2. Pricing on query execution time, compute cycles, etc. Why is this appealing to you? Is it because those numbers make more sense to you, or because you think if we priced on those units it would make the platform less expensive for you?
Thanks again for your feedback - interesting stuff.
I can deal with the dyno pricing (I estimate its 1.5-3x linode or slicehost), but the db pricing is crazy expensive. Disk is (close to) free, and trying to use it to price discriminate moves me to Linode for a large subset of my projects. I'd greatly prefer something more tied to real costs, like query execution time, compute cycles, etc.