If I understand correctly, this adds hard cap to the free tier for the peace of mind. You exceed the bandwidth/usage limits and your app gets suspended. I have a Netlify account but have not used it for anything, so this helps to calm my anxiety with cloud usage, especially after reading some horror stories online.
I wished that all these products, based on AWS Lambda, actually allowed to use the full set of programming languages available on AWS Lambda, but apparently if we want AWS Lambda, then we are better off using it directly.
They had a free “starter” plan, which began to charge you their pretty hefty traffic prices if you ever happened to cross the free limit, leading to situations like this:
Which probably wasn’t very good PR for them either (see the classic HN CEO response).
I’m happy about this new, actually free plan, I wanted to move all my projects off Netlify when that happened but now I feel a bit more safe.
Be aware you have to explicitly switch to that in your account settings, otherwise you remain on “starter” which starts to bill you.
I think they are now allowing serverless and edge functions in the free plan. Previously it was only site builds and static hosting. They're also allowing 100 form submissions.
No, we're moving starter teams with no credit card on file to the free plan. Wan't to stay on starter plan and get billed for overages instead? Just add a credit card.
You choose the behavior that fits your usecase:
Free plan: no accidental bills, but your site may be suspended if you go over the limits.
Starter plan: free as long as you stay under the limits, but you'll get billed for overages.
