7 ms·

We are going to start charging for dedicated IPv4 in January 1st

53 points by hazzamanic 3y ago

hazzamanic 3y ago
Out of the blue I received a bill from fly.io for ipv4 addresses. No warning about this, no email communication or anything. Forgot I even had anything on fly.io, was just some test stuff I created years ago. So if you ever tried them out but don't use them, go delete your account just in case they start billing you without warning. Oh and, don't put your credit card into a hosting service then forget about the "free" app you had on there...
- MrZander 3y ago
  Wow, how is that even legal?
- miyuru 3y ago
  same here. no email notification.
squigz 3y ago
"Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important... Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
zefhous 3y ago
I just came to HN to see if there was something about this here. I just got my first charge out of nowhere. I’ve had an account there for a couple years and tried it out a long time back but wasn’t actively using it. I like fly as a service, and I have no problem with them charging, but coming out of nowhere with no prior notice is definitely frustrating and unexpected.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  > coming out of nowhere with no prior notice is definitely frustrating and unexpected. Sounds like fraud or theft to me?
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    The same fraud or theft that gives Amazon a 1.5 tn market cap?
- delfinom 3y ago
  The notice was posted by Fly on October 18th.
  - zefhous 3y ago
    Posting a notice isn’t exactly the same as communicating with accounts that will be affected by the change. I hadn’t seen anything about it so it was a surprise to me. Would have appreciated a simple heads up - “hey, we’re going to start billing for this”
    - tptacek 3y ago
      You're right to be surprised, we share your expectations.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 3y ago
  We agree. Presumably by now you got the email we sent out to everyone about reversing the charges. This was a bug.
  - zefhous 3y ago
    Thank you for making this right! I didn’t think there was any malice in it and it’s nice to know it was a simple mistake. I’ve also already unassigned my unneeded address and I’m still interested in using fly for some things in the future.
Timber-6539 3y ago
I had a similar experience last year with them. Went to check the billing/invoices section on my account, there was nothing there about the charge. Usage section to see if I had passed a limit, the section wasn't even working properly and mentioned it was in beta. Found a few people complaining on their forums about an unexpected charge but with no official resolve. Since I wasn't hosting anything serious with them, I purged the account and have never thought about them till now.
pid-1 3y ago
AWS is also starting to charge for public IPv4 addresses this year. Did something happen with IPv4 markets? I used to think at least cloud providers were hoarding a ton of addresses.
- adobrawy 3y ago
  Two main reasons: * The cost of an IPv4 address in the market is constantly increasing * We have recessions, so giants are looking for savings and profits by using their market position. In addition, some providers are making IPv6 available more and more (there is no reason to consider IPv4 granted then), and others built on someone else's infrastructure are starting to be charged, so they pass this cost on to consumers.
pigbearpig 3y ago
That was posted 10 weeks ago. It also mentions that they list the charge for ipv4, but never actually billed for it. The subject seems editorialized.
- jitl 3y ago
  It seems they listing the pricing on their pricing page some time around April? The earliest snapshot I found with the pricing / shared IPv4 address stuff is this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20230404222621/https://fly.io/docs/about/pricing/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230404222621/https://fly.io/do...
nvqktcq 3y ago
Same here, have a throw-away app for learning on fly-io. Got charge $75 for this month WITHOUT any email notification. Can't even contact support because you can't have email support for 'Hobby' tier
ditsuke 3y ago
[dead]
jokethrowaway 3y ago
No email sent out and charged on first of January for a mere 2$. If there's a way to upset your customer base, that's one. I had already switched off them my paid apps because of poor reliability and just had one internal app. Shame because I love the workflow and the fact it's using firecracker. This is the last fly.io sees of me.
- Anticlockwise 3y ago
  What are you switching to?
  - tmoehle 3y ago
    IPv6 is the real answer
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    I moved to digital ocean and hetzner I get some downtime from digital ocean too but I like to have a backup plan in case hetzner has issues (which didn't happen yet)
abdusco 3y ago
If you're affected, you can replace dedicated IPv4 addresses with a shared one, or remove them: fly ips release $ip fly ips allocate-v4 --shared fly ips allocate-v6
rurban 3y ago
I also fell into this new trap: flyctl ips list flyctl ips release 168.220.XXX.XXX flyctl ips allocate-v4 --shared Error: Your account has overdue invoices. Please update your payment information: https://fly.io/dashboard/myname/billing https://fly.io/dashboard/myname/billing Ok, so now they got my credit card info, because I had to pay 2$. flyctl ips allocate-v4 --shared Error: cannot use a shared ipv4 with wildcard hostnames, please remove those before allocating a shared IP: .XXX flyctl certs list flyctl certs remove *.XXX flyctl ips allocate-v4 --shared Now it works. Just have to fix my DNS records now. ipv6 or CNAME to the app.fly.dev domain preferred. I don't like fly too much, because this is the first free hoster, which I have to constantly check for downtimes and restart the app then. Need a 10m cronjob now. cd ~/MyAppPath if timeout 5 flyctl logs -a myapp | grep -e "Health check on port 8080 has failed|connection error:" then flyctl apps restart myapp fi
tptacek 3y ago
All: this was a bug. We're reversing the charges. Everyone affected got an email. The tl;dr: * The advance notice of the billing change (we announced in October, but only on our community site) slipped, but the billing change didn't. That's not OK! We agree: you get notified before we bill new things to you. * Ordinarily, we waive invoices less than $5. Our billing code had a bug that let these charges slip through. D'oh.

53 points by hazzamanic 3y ago

Out of the blue I received a bill from fly.io for ipv4 addresses. No warning about this, no email communication or anything. Forgot I even had anything on fly.io, was just some test stuff I created years ago. So if you ever tried them out but don't use them, go delete your account just in case they start billing you without warning. Oh and, don't put your credit card into a hosting service then forget about the "free" app you had on there...

MrZander 3y ago
Wow, how is that even legal?
miyuru 3y ago
same here. no email notification.

squigz 3y ago

"Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important... Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

zefhous 3y ago

I just came to HN to see if there was something about this here. I just got my first charge out of nowhere. I’ve had an account there for a couple years and tried it out a long time back but wasn’t actively using it. I like fly as a service, and I have no problem with them charging, but coming out of nowhere with no prior notice is definitely frustrating and unexpected.

rightbyte 3y ago
> coming out of nowhere with no prior notice is definitely frustrating and unexpected. Sounds like fraud or theft to me?
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  The same fraud or theft that gives Amazon a 1.5 tn market cap?
delfinom 3y ago
The notice was posted by Fly on October 18th.
- zefhous 3y ago
  Posting a notice isn’t exactly the same as communicating with accounts that will be affected by the change. I hadn’t seen anything about it so it was a surprise to me. Would have appreciated a simple heads up - “hey, we’re going to start billing for this”
  - tptacek 3y ago
    You're right to be surprised, we share your expectations.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 3y ago
We agree. Presumably by now you got the email we sent out to everyone about reversing the charges. This was a bug.
- zefhous 3y ago
  Thank you for making this right! I didn’t think there was any malice in it and it’s nice to know it was a simple mistake. I’ve also already unassigned my unneeded address and I’m still interested in using fly for some things in the future.

Timber-6539 3y ago

I had a similar experience last year with them. Went to check the billing/invoices section on my account, there was nothing there about the charge. Usage section to see if I had passed a limit, the section wasn't even working properly and mentioned it was in beta. Found a few people complaining on their forums about an unexpected charge but with no official resolve. Since I wasn't hosting anything serious with them, I purged the account and have never thought about them till now.

pid-1 3y ago

AWS is also starting to charge for public IPv4 addresses this year. Did something happen with IPv4 markets? I used to think at least cloud providers were hoarding a ton of addresses.

adobrawy 3y ago
Two main reasons: * The cost of an IPv4 address in the market is constantly increasing * We have recessions, so giants are looking for savings and profits by using their market position. In addition, some providers are making IPv6 available more and more (there is no reason to consider IPv4 granted then), and others built on someone else's infrastructure are starting to be charged, so they pass this cost on to consumers.

pigbearpig 3y ago

That was posted 10 weeks ago. It also mentions that they list the charge for ipv4, but never actually billed for it. The subject seems editorialized.

jitl 3y ago
It seems they listing the pricing on their pricing page some time around April? The earliest snapshot I found with the pricing / shared IPv4 address stuff is this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20230404222621/https://fly.io/docs/about/pricing/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230404222621/https://fly.io/do...

nvqktcq 3y ago

Same here, have a throw-away app for learning on fly-io. Got charge $75 for this month WITHOUT any email notification. Can't even contact support because you can't have email support for 'Hobby' tier

ditsuke 3y ago

[dead]

jokethrowaway 3y ago

No email sent out and charged on first of January for a mere 2$. If there's a way to upset your customer base, that's one. I had already switched off them my paid apps because of poor reliability and just had one internal app. Shame because I love the workflow and the fact it's using firecracker. This is the last fly.io sees of me.

Anticlockwise 3y ago
What are you switching to?
- tmoehle 3y ago
  IPv6 is the real answer
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  I moved to digital ocean and hetzner I get some downtime from digital ocean too but I like to have a backup plan in case hetzner has issues (which didn't happen yet)

abdusco 3y ago

If you're affected, you can replace dedicated IPv4 addresses with a shared one, or remove them: fly ips release $ip fly ips allocate-v4 --shared fly ips allocate-v6

rurban 3y ago

I also fell into this new trap: flyctl ips list flyctl ips release 168.220.XXX.XXX flyctl ips allocate-v4 --shared Error: Your account has overdue invoices. Please update your payment information: https://fly.io/dashboard/myname/billing https://fly.io/dashboard/myname/billing Ok, so now they got my credit card info, because I had to pay 2$. flyctl ips allocate-v4 --shared Error: cannot use a shared ipv4 with wildcard hostnames, please remove those before allocating a shared IP: .XXX flyctl certs list flyctl certs remove *.XXX flyctl ips allocate-v4 --shared Now it works. Just have to fix my DNS records now. ipv6 or CNAME to the app.fly.dev domain preferred. I don't like fly too much, because this is the first free hoster, which I have to constantly check for downtimes and restart the app then. Need a 10m cronjob now. cd ~/MyAppPath if timeout 5 flyctl logs -a myapp | grep -e "Health check on port 8080 has failed|connection error:" then flyctl apps restart myapp fi

tptacek 3y ago

All: this was a bug. We're reversing the charges. Everyone affected got an email. The tl;dr: * The advance notice of the billing change (we announced in October, but only on our community site) slipped, but the billing change didn't. That's not OK! We agree: you get notified before we bill new things to you. * Ordinarily, we waive invoices less than $5. Our billing code had a bug that let these charges slip through. D'oh.