Meteor.com free hosting ends March 25, 2016

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81

Hm, I have some source code we made some time ago. I could open source it. But I do not have time to maintain it.

3 Likes
82

What if every package on Atmosphere would be entitled to a some Galaxy credit which would allow you to run one instance there. So effectivelly one instance per package.

8 Likes
83

I huge disappointment:

  1. Just two week notice… on official website was “meteor deploy (…) It’s never going away.” How about Galaxy, should we trust it’s enough to build business on top of it?

  2. A lot of meteor.com websites are used to demo packages/tutorials/help with education. Shutting this down will hurt the community a lot. Not sure if it’s worth investing in meetups, conferences at the same time…

  3. I saw a lot of AdSense ads about Meteor. Not sure if any developer pick framework based on ads, but likely it costs non-trivial amount of money (out of VC investment). Does it really have higher Return on Investment than *.meteor.com?

  4. In general though a lot of work on Meteor goes to features that aims to pleased developers (Native NPM, New JavaScript), very few to make it possible to use it commercially. I believe the biggest missed opportunity is that there is not an easy way to start using Meteor in existing product/application. Angular/React/… can be added incrementally why Meteor is full-stack. Though it should be a pattern to add widgets (like chat) to existing applications.

Tl;dr: Build things that matter, don’t just live in startup bubble.

4 Likes
84

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.

85

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… :unamused:

2 Likes
86

@marktrang @debergalis

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

9 Likes
87

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… :wink:
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.

15 Likes
88

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.

8 Likes
89

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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90

I agree that companies need to change course sometimes, but hey they should never forget their bold claims right before the switch :wink: Developer’s amnesia?

Anyway I guess it’s the right decision. Somehow poorly executed and communicated, once more.

1 Like
91

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.

7 Likes
92

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…

6 Likes
93

This is a very good idea, maybe we should write down all cool open source stuff hosted by free tier :wink:

My websites:

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 :wink: 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.

6 Likes
94

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

5 Likes
95

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:

1 Like
96

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.

4 Likes
97

Would WhatsApp have ever become worth 19B USD if it had stopped providing its service for free some time before Facebook’s acquisition?

98

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 :smirk:

…just a thought

99

@jammer there already is such an app, called Meteorpad. And there are reasons for which nobody uses it.

100

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?