This is my definition of abusing based on how I view the free hosting’s use case. There weren’t any official limits or before but I think there is need for some.
It’s $76 for three years (pre-paid) of service on an AWS t2.nano. If a hobbyist can’t afford $2.11/mo to use mupx to deploy small apps to AWS… 
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How about if Meteor gives free hosting, at least to atmosphere packages, but adds a “Powered by Galaxy” logo across them all. Like Netlify does on it’s free tier?
Then every free meteor.com app is an advertisement for Galaxy!
like this, bottom right
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Four days ago, @debergalis wrote about a “big improvement !” for the free tier that had reliability problems.
At the time, i didn’t guess that by “big improvement !” he was thinking shutting it down… 
It’s very strange how intelligent people at MDG have been trying very hard for the last year to offend their historical users. It seems every new month brings a new problem.
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I guess this is a managerial decision, with the CFO worried about not meeting profitability yet. thus pressuring to cut costs centers.
But 2 weekes of warning, just like with blaze, is a sign that the management doesn’t have a clear vision, and makes hasty decisions to respond to the investors concerns.
The thing is that you are hurting your credibility. AT LEAST give a 6 month warning. I would not be surprised if MDG will turn back on their decision.
On the other hand who think that free doesn’t convert I think it’s making a mistake. 1% is low? I’ve worked with companies that had a 0.05% conversion rate and they were hugely profitable. It’s your duty to raise that conversion rate, but consider that in the business it never gets higher than 5%, so you are already doing an excellent job.
Maybe you are saying that not enough people buy books, but that’s the market that is too shallow, not the freemium model that doesn’t work. Every book on Meteor has some free content available, I don’t think that all the publishers are wrong.
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Google started to show me Meteor ads when I already moved to Meteor, when Google noticed me querying for Meteor stuff. I don’t remember seeing their ads before. So I doubt it works well at all.
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I agree that companies need to change course sometimes, but hey they should never forget their bold claims right before the switch Developer’s amnesia?
Anyway I guess it’s the right decision. Somehow poorly executed and communicated, once more.
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Bye bye
http://fastosphere.meteor.com
http://rank.meteor.com
http://bndr.meteor.com
http://paris.meteor.com
You still have 2 weeks to play with them. Have fun.
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And do you really expect to have the same amount of people contributing, creating examples and spreading meteor without a free and easy way to showcase their examples or packages?
I’m sad this is happening…
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This is a very good idea, maybe we should write down all cool open source stuff hosted by free tier
My websites:
- logo.meteor.com
- zf5.meteor.com
- s-alert-demo.meteor.com
-
s-alert.meteor.com
…and others - less known: - s-grid.meteor.com
- s-id-demo.meteor.com
- s-id.meteor.com
- s-image-box-demo.meteor.com
- s-image-box.meteor.com
I think without free hosting these websites will be gone because unfortunately I have no time and money for this, I have some other (not open source) apps to move from free tier too. So I think many Meteor devs will do the same. They will stop support for such demo and docs apps.
I don’t mind to pay for Galaxy, but not in the case of such projects Anyway I hope that Galaxy will be a thing someday (not only for Meteor apps), because I love it… the only thing is that I need a hosting for hobby apps which don’t earn money, and now there will be no such thing.
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Its always amazed me that Meteor (MDG) offered a free hosting service at all, its pretty much unprecedented but it certainly did help them build the passionate community they have today.
I will miss the free hosting however I have to empathise with MDG and respect that this was inevitable, having run several SaaS companies myself I know only too well what a burden a free plan can place on your ability to move forward, Free plan users are often the most demanding and vocal, which almost always takes resources away from your primary goals and as Meteor continues to grow those burdens would only grow exponentially.
Once you take something for granted (like meteor deploy == free) it feels like your personally being wronged when its taken away, but this gift was always (if your realistic about the viability of it) going to be taken away at some point.
That said… 2 weeks notice is a hard pill to swallow and I think that MDG shuold show the loyal community it craves (and needs) a little more respect and extend this window to 6 or 10 weeks, perhaps stop any new meteor deploy sites in the two week timeframe, but granting existing sites a longer window to get their affairs in order.
My own plan is to host my example/showcase sites on Linode or Digital Ocean and AWS for production apps that have more moving parts.
–
Floyd Price
Meteor Casts @ https://floydprice.com
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That’s a good idea, but if you really want to save these websites from the fate of *.meteor.com, please paste the links in adequate topic, so MDG can have the list in one place without the sea of other post in this place:
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Come on. Be grateful that we had access to free development hosting for as long as we did. This is not “disgusting news” at all. It was inevitable that this was going to happen at some point. Would you prefer MDG’s funds going to improve the framework instead of wasting it on free hosting. I’m speculating here, but I can imagine a HUGE number of the projects hosted on meteor.com are unfinished prototypes that are just using up storage space and CPU cycles when they are in use. I can think of a few projects that I developed when learning meteor and got to the “oh cool, free hosting, lets try that out” and then the project gets orphaned.
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Would WhatsApp have ever become worth 19B USD if it had stopped providing its service for free some time before Facebook’s acquisition?
Perhaps an alternative/solution/next step to free hosting would be to setup a jsfiddle or codepen style app.
It would benefit package managers more than just free hosting as it would allow devs an opportunity to hack their packages and test it out for themselves in a much more effective way!
The focus for a user would be for testing, learning and experimentation and not as a “free for all” service which seemed to be the model of *.meteor.com 
…just a thought
@jammer there already is such an app, called Meteorpad. And there are reasons for which nobody uses it.
I’ve tried Meteorpad but it has never worked for me (at least in the UK). I get a constant “ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT”.
Why does nobody use it?
I am teaching a college course using Meteor for Mobile apps and our final project was going to use the free meteor hosting for our apps at the end of April. Is there any way this could be pushed back? Two weeks notice is very short.
I’m pretty sure meteorpad isn’t available anymore. I’ve read something about it on the forum and the github seems to confirm : Meteorpad
I’ll throw in my two cents, even though my thoughts largely mirror Peter’s & the general consensus
My situations that of the lead developer / CTO of a small company that is close to securing it’s second round of investment. Part of that investment has been secured by rebuilding the old site, ground up; and Meteor was my choice for a number of reasons (fast dev time, brilliant infrastructure for a small team, the looming promise of Galaxy) - it was the technology for tech startups right?
- Our development has been erratic over the last 6 months, courtesy of a myriad of announced changes, which were often U-Turns of previous decisions. To my mind, 1.3 has brought too many breaking changes if you want to embrace the benefits it brings. I understand they may be necessary, but calling it a 1.x upgrade feels insincere.
- The loss of the free tier is of no real consequence to us directly, but the way (and timeframe on which) it has been communicated is poor. As everyone points out, we can’t complain about a freebie being taken away, but the manner in which MDG operates shows a real lack of respect for serious developers (those that value the important things like reliability, clarity, consistency; rather than just “new hotness”)
- This poor communication is a real concern. How am I to know if large, breaking changes aren’t going to be thrust upon us at short notice? It’s not an enviable environment to build a stable business in, and one that I am very wary of now.
I understand that MDG owe me nothing. I am using a brilliant (some of the time) technology for free, and that until now had a free testing environment too. What’s more there was a very passionate community maintaining brilliant packages; all backed by a company with lots of investment.
However, I now regret Meteor as my stack of choice. If it were an option, I would jump ship and start our rebuild over (and gladly give up lots of Meteor’s niceties like DDP); purely because I can’t trust MDG’s stewardship. They often make the right call…eventually; after a lot of indecision and heartache. Quite bummed out to be honest, as I had hoped that they would run their business with more diligence and respect.
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