Hey got an email recently that I am going to be moved from the Starter Plan to the Free Plan. Because of many dark pattern changes that been happening with other business, I am suspicious of changes like this.
I am an independent service provider that doesn’t get a lot of traffic, so I am wondering if this is the best choice for me. I’m not really understanding the changes that might happen if my account gets switched to the free plan so I am wondering what changes should I expect from a cost perspective. Why switch me in the first place?
@scottrlarson The free plan is relatively new and similar to the previously existing Starter plan, except that instead of overages when limits are exceeded the site is suspended for the rest of the calendar month.
We have recently introduced a new plan, very similar to the Starter plan, called the Free plan. @nathanmartin already shared the summary of it and links for the announcement.
I will add: The choice is up to you. You can choose to stay on the Starter plan as you have before and if you have overages, we’ll issue invoices as we’ve been doing for many years. You can choose to be on the Free plan, which means that you will never get invoices but we will suspend the site temporarily to prevent us from incurring unlimited costs in serving them. The Free plan has the same features.
The only mandatory change we’re making is that to be on the Starter plan, you must have a payment method on file for us to issue these invoices. If you don’t add one, we will move the account to the Free plan. You can add a payment method now to stay on the Starter plan, or you can, at any point in the future, add a payment method and convert your account from Free to Starter.
I’m not really understanding the changes that might happen if my account gets switched to the free plan so I am wondering what changes should I expect from a cost perspective.
None. The Free plan, unlike the Starter plan, is entirely free and will never cost you anything. You will also keep having access to the same features as before.
We sent out this notice as some users may be surprised that their site, which previously had (paid) unlimited traffic, would then get suspended when it goes over the limit. We only send this notice to customers who don’t have a credit card on file (these users would, in the old system, get “past due” invoices for their first overage without various complications around the process).
Got it thanks for the info. It makes sense. Im ok with moving to the free plan because I dont incur any costs yet, and if my site gets suspended. Ill deal with it then.
I appreciate this service so thank you for the clarification.
I have been on a free dev account for 4 years now and was never required to have a credit card on file for overages. What’s the difference with this new free account?
Thanks for the info. Just wanted to make sure I didn’t have to edit anything in my plan or get ready for something to be removed.
One other major question regarding the free plan - I have mx records here at netlify pointing to my mail host. If I go over my limit would my email stop working also?
Hey there! Great question. Yes, if you exceed your limit(s) on the free plan, because your sites are paused your MX records hosting your email would not be working. For that case, we recommend staying on the Starter plan if any aspects of your hosting are crucial! The Free plan is intended for experiments, hobbies, and nothing terribly too important to miss!
One more question. If I want to prevent my email from stopping to work is the following procedure correct -
Remove my mx records from Netlify
Go to my registrar and add those mx records for my mail host.
The question in my mind is that I have specified Netlify’s nameservers at my registrar. I don’t know if that prevents me from adding mx records at my registrar. I may have to remove Netlify’s nameservers from my registrar and start from scratch setting this all up?? True/False?
I deleted all the Netlify dns records for the site in question then added the records at my registrar so now I’m waiting for propagation, but there is something strange happening. My Netlify subdomain is not working at all, mysite.netlify.app. I thought this should work all the time, regardless of a custom domain? Am I missing something?
