We’re growing like crazy. So fast, in fact, that giving so much away is actually threatening to our future.
The things you’re unhappy about cost us money, and what we’ve learned is that the developers (like several people in here) who are most likely to help us cross the chasm from “highly funded startup” to “long term, enduring business” are not necessarily the same folks looking for as cheap of infrastructure as they can possibly get.
Stopped instances cost us money, thus we are charging for them. We’re doing a lot of work to make Machine Creates really fast, however, so you’ll need stopped Machines less often.
We shipped FKS for larger customers who need Kubernetes. It’s not designed for people who want Kubernetes for cheap. There are plenty of places you can get cheap Kubernetes, but no other companies get you Kubernetes on Fly.
Free allowances only work when they select for people who have a good chance of converting to paying users down the road. What we found is that when people sign up with the expectation of “free”, they are unlikely to ever become paid customers (either individually or at their workplace). When people sign up and understand that the service costs money, then we waive invoices we think aren’t worth collecting, we create a much happier match.
I don’t know if that’s what you were hoping for from a state of Fly update. The state of Fly is that we have learned who our target customers are and we’re optimizing the product (including billing) to make them happy and make us an enduring business.