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 doesnât 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 doesnât convert I think itâs making a mistake. 1% is low? Iâve worked with companies that had a 0.05% conversion rate and they were hugely profitable. Itâs 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 thatâs the market that is too shallow, not the freemium model that doesnât work. Every book on Meteor has some free content available, I donât think that all the publishers are wrong.
Google started to show me Meteor ads when I already moved to Meteor, when Google noticed me querying for Meteor stuff. I donât remember seeing their ads before. So I doubt it works well at all.
I agree that companies need to change course sometimes, but hey they should never forget their bold claims right before the switch Developerâs amnesia?
Anyway I guess itâs the right decision. Somehow poorly executed and communicated, once more.
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 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 donât 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 donât earn money, and now there will be no such thing.
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.
Thatâs 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:
Come on. Be grateful that we had access to free development hosting for as long as we did. This is not âdisgusting newsâ at all. It was inevitable that this was going to happen at some point. Would you prefer MDGâs funds going to improve the framework instead of wasting it on free hosting. Iâm 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 âoh cool, free hosting, lets try that outâ and then the project gets orphaned.
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 âfree for allâ service which seemed to be the model of *.meteor.com
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.
Iâll throw in my two cents, even though my thoughts largely mirror Peterâs & the general consensus
My situations that of the lead developer / CTO of a small company that is close to securing itâs 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 canât 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 ânew hotnessâ)
This poor communication is a real concern. How am I to know if large, breaking changes arenât going to be thrust upon us at short notice? Itâs 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. Whatâs 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 Meteorâs niceties like DDP); purely because I canât trust MDGâs stewardship. They often make the right callâŚeventually; 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.
Weâre both circling around the same concern, but articulating it differently.
The âcanary in the coal mineâ analogy is apt, and I think one of many signs that the tech/VC world is in for a rough few years. Meteor isnât the only place this is becoming apparent.
Weâve yet to launch, and were going to use Galaxy; purely because Iâd rather we concentrated on product, not dev-ops, but again Iâm now cautious and will be examining our options very closely.
Iâm reading a lot of âMDG doesnât owe us anythingâ. Thatâs bull. First, they wouldnât be where they are without us. Not me personally, my contribution was a drop in the ocean, but us. âTheyâre a business.â Yes, theyâre another business who builds themselves on the back of a community then bites the hand that fed it.
Second, they do owe us basic respect. Donât take away with two weeks notice something youâve been providing for years, especially with no migration path. Donât break promises you have been making for years, especially overnight.
This is an extra bad time to step on the communityâs toes, since all the effort at âaligning Meteor with the JS ecosystemâ means itâs a pretty good time to migrate to something else. Which is what Iâll be doing now. It was already an uphill battle to convince people to use it for projects, and now the advantages are disappearing one by one, so why bother. Meteor up to 1.1 was a great breeding ground for the future of web development, and now itâs done its job.
To paraphrase the announcement: Thanks for creating Meteor and best of luck on your future projects.
@AndreasGalster sorry, but I disagree. And actually, I think there were some more occasions where it was stated that the free tire is not going away. And I donât care about hosting apps.
I care about demoing meteor technology & packages!
bye touch2s.meteor.com
This is clearly a fast shoot into the foot and I would appreciate if MDG would keep their word on this ânever goes awayâ @gschmidt. We all already do promote Meteor as a company. For free. Least to expect no one should go through the hassle to host & pay for demoing packages and meteor tools.
Meteorpad already died without any engagement to keep it alive. Which was hosted by one developer.
PS: I thought it got much better in engaging the community first after the blaze debacle, but apparently âannouncingâ the shutdown of 10.000 or so community showcases can still be done in a weak, thought out announcement without any resolution path.
Developerâs amnesia?