Oh, I didn’t know mLab doesn’t have a free tier in Singapore. That’s unfortunate. It’s definitely not a good idea to have your database server far away from your application server.
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Yeah only free tier is in the US.
So Galaxy could have servers in Sydney - but that wouldn’t help us at all. 
Just got the new email about the price increase… paying even more per container?
For support that most people don’t even use?
Come on MDG (namely Geoff) that’s not fair to the people who don’t use support.
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I think it’s fair. They’re also increasing the price by 1/6th which isn’t much. No one needs support until their prod app is down.
What price increase? I haven’t gotten an email but I am curious about this.
Full email content below:
Upgraded Galaxy Support & Price Increase on Sept 1
Over the past year, thousands of customers around the world have successfully deployed to Galaxy, the easiest way to reliably deploy Meteor apps with zero devops. We’ve had the privilege to work closely with a variety of companies who use Galaxy to prototype, launch, and scale production apps for millions of users.
Customer feedback has directly resulted in popular features like built-in SEO prerendering, automated SSL via Let’s Encrypt, a comprehensive deployment guide, reserved pricing, and Galaxy Europe access. Customers have also asked for faster support response times, leading us to offer paid options beyond the included Basic Support (no guaranteed response time but we typically respond in <2 business days).
Based on your feedback, all Galaxy customers will automatically receive upgraded Priority Support on September 1, 2016. This guarantees a 1 business day response time for all support questions. Previously, customers paid $149/month for this support option but we found this keeps timely support out of reach for customers just getting started with Galaxy.
As a result of this global upgrade to support, metered pricing for Galaxy US will increase from $0.07 to $0.08 per GB hour on September 1, 2016. Galaxy Europe pricing will remain unchanged ($0.08 per GB hour). Reserved Pricing will also increase from $40 to $45 per GB month (billed annually) for US and Europe on September 1. You may lock-in discounted Reserved Pricing at the $40 per GB month rate until September 1.
These changes will allow us to scale world-class Galaxy hosting support for everyone at a price that’s comparable with other PaaS providers.
Thank you for building on Meteor! We appreciate your business and entrusting Galaxy to run your apps!
All Galaxy metered billing is pro-rated to the millisecond. Any customers already on Priority Support will have any pre-paid support fees credited towards future Galaxy usage starting September 1, 2016. Customers will still have the ability to purchase Premium and Enterprise support separately for mission-critical 24x7x365 support. Customers on Reserved Pricing plans will retain their current reserved pricing through the end of their contract term. If you have any further questions regarding pricing, please email galaxysales@meteor.com.
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Thanks for this! Pretty interesting. Most PaaS providers try to decrease price over time. Simple economics though, if they have the demand then they can increase the price.
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I don’t get why people complain about a service’s prices. If you don’t like the prices, find another solution. If there’s nothing you like, assemble a team and build a competing service.
BTW, I think the price hike is just fine, because I was frustrated with the response times of support emails. Extra $5/mo (for 1GB container) to get one-day turnaround support? YES.
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It’s not just for 1GB containers, it’s for 1GB. That means the other solutions will have a fractional price hike as well.
And @ your comment; I think what they offer is fine. I like Meteor. I like Galaxy. But as a customer, I’m also always going to be concerned about money being spent on features I don’t use.
I like having conversations about my concerns with other intelligent people, because maybe they can educate me. Complaining - no. Having dialogue that wasn’t being had before - yes.
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Oh sure, I understand about discussing it. I’ve had a few discussions with MDG about their high availability mode, because I was trying to understand why they were encouraging HA mode which costs $150/mo (bare minimum) to run.
Yes, I meant that it’s +$5/mo for 1GB containers… just used that as a basis of comparison. $2.50/mo for 512MB containers, and so forth.
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Nice, thanks for sharing this! I am in Australia as well and although NodeChef or Galaxy not being available closer to us, which is a shame, I am glad to hear you’re having a good experience with NodeChef.
I have apps with Parse, and my next app will be Meteor… so NodeChef is looking like a good candidate for me.
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Just curious, are you charged for stopped Galaxy apps?
You are not charged for stopped apps on Galaxy. Here are all the details on how billing works.
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I have been using Galaxy for a month for development and demos (with a Compose.io database). Since I only pay for running apps and stop my apps after a few hours of demo/testing, my monthly bill came up to a ridiculous USD5… Including SSL certificates (Free!) and multiple apps sitting there. I almost feel like I am taking advantage of Meteor!!
The ease of use and reliability is great and I know I can scale if/when I launch. The only issue is that if and when our product/user base grows significantly, we may find the cost a little high. that is a a good problem to have and at that point there are options (Digital Ocean with mup, etc…).
I think that for developers and startups, the value/price is excellent. Firebase appears more expensive and other solutions require significant knowledge and time and that is not free.
I would still like to see at Galaxy some indication of volume pricing that would keep large customers on board. Reserved pricing is there but not that great…
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Can you please share what your expectations are for “volume pricing” and how you’re expecting to scale? Feel free to direct msg me. We have a number of happy customers that have scaled from 1,000s to 10,000s of concurrent users that deploy to dozens of multi-GB/ECU Galaxy containers either on a pay-as-you-go or Reserved basis.
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Reserved instances are Galaxy’s “volume” pricing.
That’s not totally accurate; Reserved billing is just a method to save 20-30% off pay-as-you-go rates by pre-paying for a year or more of Galaxy usage (starting at a very low minimum increment of 1GB RAM equiv of container capacity). What I believe @hervejegou is referring to is some sort of volume discount as usage grows. We’d be interested in hearing what expectations you all have in terms of your sustained container capacity over one or multiple years. We’re committed to delivering a world-class Meteor PaaS solution that scales for all production apps not only from a product/technology standpoint but also what it comes to pricing so customers can accurately budget and plan.
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@marktrang I think everyone who actually ramp up will face the same issue: ease of use and deployment vs cost. As you use more and more containers, the extra cost of Galaxy vs the cost of deploying and monitoring yourself ( on Digital Ocean for example) becomes an issue to look at. So probably some sort of higher volume discount (aside from the reserved billing) would be good in giving customers assurance that they can stay competitive with Galaxy if/when they grow.
You may want to poll your biggest customers on that. For the rest of us, even a “We provide Entreprise volume pricing for large deployment, please talk to us” will do. This is what most PAAS do anyway… This is not a huge priority for most startup customers but it may still be a factor in choosing your platform so knowing that this can be addressed is important.
For example I did a quick comparison of Firebase and Meteor and ended up choosing Meteor Galaxy and Compose. Cheaper, open source, no proprietary platform locking and I could move to my own servers if cost became an issue.
Note: any volume pricing that requires one or more year commitment is not very realistic for most startup or growing companies. We do not have visibility that far ahead so it is not a good solution. I know that is how AWS provide reserved pricing but for volume pricing it would be good if it is based on actual use, not long term commitment which require a crystal ball.
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To be fair though, as you have more and more containers Galaxy also becomes more valuable. One of its main features is intelligently managing large numbers of containers, handling rolling restarts, keeping track of multiple deployed versions, etc. So the cost is higher than rolling your own thing, but it’s also designed to work correctly at scale.
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Again (I know this has been said before), an autoscaling feature with a user-set max number of containers (container budget) would be great.