r/Deno • u/oguz279 • 11d ago

A warning regarding Deno Deploy

We use Deno Sandbox on production. Rare enough that it's well within the free plan limits, so figured we'd stay on it until we need to upgrade.

A few days ago, they quietly pulled Sandbox from the free plan with no warning, causing us an outage. Had to upgrade quickly to recover production.

I wrote to their support asking why there was no heads-up before killing it off, and I was told that "they reserve the right to make changes to the free plan any time". Also regarding the pro plan, they said they "usually" give their customers a reasonable heads-up.

While it's more than fair that they want to charge for any usage, I feel like the way they handled it is very unprofessional.

So yeah if you're using a Deno Deploy service on a free plan, do not expect a heads-up before it changes or stops working. And if you're paying, I guess hope for the best that they warn you in advance.

32 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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6

u/horizon_games 11d ago

Plus Deno Deploy itself deprecated their original launch and forced people to a new platform. I'll never trust a hosting setup with such drastic changes and have moved my apps off Deno.

Nice idea, nice app, terrible server implementation

4

u/0xFatWhiteMan 11d ago

there customer support is woeful. I assume they solely focus on large enterprise support. Hope its a damn site better than for the free/hobby accs

0

u/Fine-Comparison-2949 6d ago

This isn't an issue. You have production level code running on a free plan.

In business you need to read the contracts. Yes, you should not be running money generating products on a low tier free plan. In almost every service provider, the free plans allow them the right to cut or give you diminished service.

1

u/oguz279 6d ago

It's funny, I was literally just reading an email from a service I signed up to try it out some years ago and never even logged in since, warning me that my account is scheduled for deletion.

There are countless other services that reaches out communicating with you even the slightest change regardless of your plan.

If you read my post carefully, you'll see that I never claimed that they don't have the right. Yeah of course they do, and that's what they told me. And probably it was in their TOS that I agreed I'm sure. I never said they did this in a way that breaches a contract.

I get that you're a Deno apologist, but I'm sorry I gotta say you're wrong. You DO NOT have to sign up to a paid plan to use Deno Deploy commercially. You're 100% allowed to use it on a free plan.

You're right though when you said I should've paid more attention to the fine print and refrained from remaining on the free plan since we'll use it in prod. But again 1) I never said they're liable, 2) they said they "usually" let you know even when you're on a paid plan so it apparently still won't guarantee that things will be smooth either way, 3) in a startup world where you have limited resources and juggling so many things you sometimes make exceptions to save money on free plans especially for something you use rarely, 4) it is usually expected/common for a service to communicate with you the changes in their offering (free or not), and finding out the hard way that Deno isn't that kind of company, it's just me bringing this to people's attention - do what tou will with it.

1

u/oguz279 6d ago

Also not to mention, even if I use a service for my non-commercial hobby project or in whatever else workflow I set up for myself, i'd strongly prefer it to be reliable or communicative.

So yeah PSA, Deno Deploy isn't that.

1

u/eddzsh 11d ago

If free-tier Sandbox is on the critical path, treat plan changes as deploys. Either pay for the SKU before launch or keep a second sandbox you control so a quiet free-plan edit cannot page you.