Comment by nico
1 year ago
> usually when they go over it for a good reason, like going viral, they aren't anticipating it, and just when their traffic is most valuable the site is down
Of course. And that’s why any limit against a dynamic variable should also have alerts linked to it
Send an alert to the user when traffic starts spiking, especially if a simple projection shows it’s going to go over their limit
Then the user is aware, hopefully with enough time to lift the limit if needed
That's a level of responsiveness that doesn't exist for the vast majority of organizations.
If your customer is aware enough to notice they are being hit with a DOS or legit traffic while it is happening, then great! They can respond, and if needed, engage proserve to get support for scaling or defense depending on needs.
If your customer is not alert enough, then their site is offline, and they won't hear about it until their customers are screaming at them, which will result in a P1 ticket to look at a vendor who won't turn them off during an unexpected peak.
It's a catch 22, and if you have to choose between: a) a PR hit because you have to go on a forum and post about waiving the fee, or b) a PR hit because someone posted a blog post about how you killed their site during a moment of critical growth
any reasonable business will choose A every time because A is far more supportive of customer growth and has drastically better optics. Anyone who thinks A is worse is probably too inexperienced to have an opinion.
> Anyone who thinks A is worse is probably too inexperienced to have an opinion.
I'd say the same about those who only think in absolutes.
That's a false dilemma. You can give your customers a choice in these matters with an optional hard limit, which I realize seems like a rather extreme idea these days.
Someone running a personal project will likely opt to have a low hard limit, say $10, while businesses will more likely opt in for alerts without, or with very high hard limits.