This post is meant in the spirit of encouragement and support. I wanted to say I have really enjoyed using Render so far as a Free-tier user. It has so far worked very well for me and I am very impressed and overall quite happy with it.
However I wanted to just note the one reason I have so far be unwilling to upgrade to a paid account: the lack of an ability to ‘cap’ or control the cost.
As has been mentioned here this feature seems to have been asked for in the past, but has not been provided (is that still true?)
Again, I mean this in a supportive way because I do like this service a lot, but its pretty surprising that this pretty basic feature is missing? Especially considering that, as outlined here, render can monitor our spending/use internally, and already does so, and stops our use if we go over some internal limit - yet this exact same feature and control is not offered to users? That just doesn’t square to me?
If this feature was supported and I had some confidence that I could control my spending, even it meant, as stated in the post above, that the service was cut off at some point - I would gladly join a paid plan and start using the service more widely. TBH, even if it was more expensive, that control and predictability is worth a lot to me. Hopefully this will happen at some point. And if I’m wrong about any of this, please let me know!
Compute (Instance type) pricing is per service, per instance, per month, prorated to the second. This means we charge for the time each paid instance is provisioned at the end of each calendar month, not in advance.
So, if you have a single Web Service using a single “Starter” instance that would be a maximum of $7 USD for that service per month. If you happened to upgrade from free to Starter half way the month, you would be charged half that amount for that month.
Current usage, upcoming (projected) monthly charges, and previous invoices/usage are available to view at any time on your billing page. You can downgrade or suspend Web Services at any time to prevent them from accruing further charges.
The only real overage consideration would be bandwidth. Bandwidth is separate from compute cost, and 100GB is included with an individual account each month. The vast majority of customers don’t use all their bandwidth each month, and as above, current bandwidth usage can also be seen on your billing page. Going over the included 100GB in a calendar month will add another 100GB block at $30 USD. You would be emailed if you get close to your included bandwidth limit, so you could choose to suspend the service for the rest of that calendar month if you wanted to avoid any potential bandwidth charges.
Thank you for the additional information @al_ps , that is very helpful to understand better. I am glad to hear that at the least there is a notice that is sent before additional charges are incurred - that is really good to hear.
I will take a closer look at the billing page. thank you!
@ed-p-may