Comment by the_duke
4 years ago
I'd argue that many users that end up with surprise bills are either inexperienced or are deploying something small without giving it much thought.
In those cases, the users will either not know or not think about such expense limits.
The solution is to set relatively strict limits by default and even occasionally warn users about unused/underutilized resources.
But as you said: such features are bad for the bottom line .
And I can appreciate the enormous difficulty of competing with the big 3.
I think such features create really negative surprises too. People expect their app or service to keep working at almost any scale. Disabling an app that hits a threshold sounds terrible, because most peoples' apps _benefit_ from more (legit) activity and they are delighted to pay the extra fees if things just continue to work.
For people who are inexperienced or don't give it much thought, just waiving their overage fees creates a really nice experience. We've had multiple instances of people asking why their bill is so high and being relieved/excited when we explained it and made it go away. People love when we're responsive to problems.