Upcoming changes in our pricing policy

Since the introduction of our commercial offer, we’ve learnt many things about our users and customers. But the most important thing we’ve learnt, is that people who’d like to become paying customers cannot do it with our current pricing policy because our free tier is simply too generous. As a result, we’re introducing today a new free trial period and we’re ending our free tier. But don’t worry we will also introduce new mechanisms that let people get free hosting on Scalingo (under certain circumstances).

End of the free tier, new free trial

As said above, our free tier was simply too generous. Indeed, our platform is powerful enough to let a medium size website run on a single container while staying in free tier. As a consequence, we’re ending the free tier immediately and start a new 30 days free trial period. From June 1st, new users will immediately enter this 30 days free trial period.

What’s included in the free trial?

This new free trial period works a little bit differently than the previous free trier. During the free trial, you can create one app and you can use up to 5 containers for this app (512MB containers). Those 5 containers let you experiment with horizontal scaling or multi-type of containers app.

Creating more than one app or scaling above this 5 containers limit will ask you if you want to break out of the free tier. By doing so you will be asked to enter your payment informations.

In the same manner, when you hit the 30 days limit, you will be asked to enter your payment informations. Otherwise your app will be deactivated (every containers type will be down to 0) and 30 days later, your app will be erased. Note that when we erase app, we will also deprovision every addons attached to this app. For Scalingo datastore addons, that means data destruction 30 days later after you hit the 30 days limit of the free trial.

What does that mean for existing users on Scalingo?

From June the 1st, every non-paying customer will enter automatically the 30 days free trial. Whereas new users that can only have one application, all your current applications will be maintained for this period. 

On June 30th, if your account does not contain a payment card, you will see your applications deactivated following the procedure mentionned above.

Paying customer will see there free tier automatic voucher end and will start to pay for there existing applications the 1st of July.

Conclusion

It’s a hard decision we have to take. But it’s sane for Scalingo’s future and we think our customers will value this future.