NodeChef for Meteor APM

announce
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Update: I had an issue with NodeChef for Meteor APM. After a back and forth over email they refunded my money.

If you use NodeChef for Meteor APM, be aware that they charge at the beginning of the month. If run 1 instance you’ll pay a flat $10 monthly fee and it won’t be too complicated.

You can also self host Meteor APM without too much trouble:

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And the great news is that this pushed me to set up Kadira myself which turns out to be incredibly easy to do following this:

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You have 29 app servers? That’s a pretty big app.

I’m not really trying to defend them or anything (I don’t work for them) but if you have the technical ability to set it up yourself, then you are not the target user.

The same issue of pricing comes up time and again w.r.t deploying in yoru own vs using Galaxy - its always a compromise between cost and convenience.

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Well my biggest disappointment with them was that we don’t have 29
instances running at all times. I just had an extra large number stuck up
at the beginning of the month on the day they decided to bill me.

The larger customers are who Galaxy and NodeChef are after by the way. One
larger client is worth 100 smaller ones often. The support packages by
Galaxy cost thousands of dollars and are not targeted at solo developers
for example.

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I see this right on the Depoyment Addons > Meteor APM page in Nodechef

1 host
4 days data retention
Access to metrics and traces
Create any number of apps
Error Tracking
Monitoring Observers
+$10/mo each additional host

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Yes. And I managed to get a bill of $290 at the start of the month.

If it was $10 per instance I’d be very happy. Not happy to be billed till
mid October when it’s 15th September with no way to get the money back.

If you have one instance running constantly it’s easy. Flat $10 per month.

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if you don’t mind, prior to this mishap how has your experience been with Nodechef? how’s the UI, how’s the container statistics, etc? there’s been lots of mention of them here but not many reviews by actual customers

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I can’t speak for their other products. I can speak for their billing
system which is a mess. There are billing sections on the site, but my
bills aren’t showing. $290 was stolen from us. And they won’t remove my
billing details from their system without shutting down my account. Which
is an account that now has $290 worth of credit so not really interested in
shutting it down.

Kadira is kadira. And you really should set it up yourself instead of going
with them.

To be honest seems a little crazy to host with any company IMHO having
tried a few this month. It’s a few hours of work to set up an aws or
digitalocean droplet ready for production with meteor up and there are
hundreds of tutorials online on how to do it.

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So the problem is that if I launch 10 instances to handle a spike for a day, then I still get billed for the entire month for them. That does seem unfair.

And honestly I think the open source Kadira needs to be integrated into Meteor by MDG, instead of being a paid service on Galaxy. There are a ton of open source tools in the JS ecosystem, almost nothing for Meteor.

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Yes. They will charge you daily if you add instances. And if you happen to have 29 instances running when the month starts, they will charge you for the entire month.

I do not see anywhere on their site which this is made clear. And their refusal to make a refund (which is incredibly easy with Stripe that they’re using) is disgusting and why I would felt the need to write this post and warn others of using NodeChef. I’m not even asking for a refund at the end of the month. I’m asking for a refund today at the start of my billing month and they still refuse to make a refund.

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An update on this situation.

They have finally refunded the $290.

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How long was it between first time you reached out and the refund?