Metered Billing (beta)

Yay! I sometimes need to test some things for a few hours on a separate Linode. I get it credited back at the end of the month but it was still not ideal.

Loving this option, good job :D

Will this become the default for all accounts once out of beta, or will it be an option alongside monthly billing?

@citricsquid:

Will this become the default for all accounts once out of beta, or will it be an option alongside monthly billing?
It will become the default for new customers. Existing customers won't be forced to change (but they'll be able to on their own).

-Chris

This is great news! Will NodeBalancer billing work the same way?

Everything is metered. Linodes, backups, NodeBalancers, Longview Pro, Managed, etc.

-Chris

Is the measurement done based on linode's uptime?

@jayadevan:

Is the measurement done based on linode's uptime?
Not sure if joking. No, it's calculated based on its existence.

-Chris

Hi,

Since this is listed as a beta, I was curious if there are any particular risks for switching, such as not being billed when you're supposed to be, incorrect pricing, etc. Basically, are there any reasons in particular one might not consider switching over at the moment over the standard monthly rates?

Blake

Does this mean that if somebody wants to do a quick test, and they spin up a linode for (slightly less than) one hour, they'd only pay an extra $0.03?

Hi,

That's what I gather, and if you already had an existing 1024, you'd pay $20.03 at the end of the month instead of $20.00.

Blake

@Guspaz:

Does this mean that if somebody wants to do a quick test, and they spin up a linode for (slightly less than) one hour, they'd only pay an extra $0.03?
Yup.

-Chris

Will 24 months (15% discount) still be available?

@dffdce:

Will 24 months (15% discount) still be available?
It will not.

-Chris

Bummer. So for me "Metered Billing" is simply a 15% price increase in disguise.

It will certainly offer a strong incentive to existing customers not to convert their accounts, anyway.

@Guspaz:

It will certainly offer a strong incentive to existing customers not to convert their accounts, anyway.

+1, seconded, ditto.

D'oh! I missed this post. Seems as though all is well in "Linode land" for now.

@caker:

@citricsquid:

Will this become the default for all accounts once out of beta, or will it be an option alongside monthly billing?
It will become the default for new customers. Existing customers won't be forced to change (but they'll be able to on their own).

-Chris

@Guspaz:

It will certainly offer a strong incentive to existing customers not to convert their accounts, anyway.

Indeed I'm due for a 2 yearly renewal soon, I won't be switching to metered billing. Shame I could use the metered billing facility for testing things.

@obs:

@Guspaz:

It will certainly offer a strong incentive to existing customers not to convert their accounts, anyway.

Indeed I'm due for a 2 yearly renewal soon, I won't be switching to metered billing. Shame I could use the metered billing facility for testing things.

So pre-pay on one account for the discount and setup a second account for testing things.

Metered billing is great for testing things.

@caker:

Everything is metered. Linodes, backups, NodeBalancers, Longview Pro, Managed, etc.
@caker:

…it's calculated based on its existence.

So, to be clear, based on these two quotes (from different posts):

You'd get billed the hourly rate as long as a linode exists (consuming space on disk) regardless of if it's booted or not, correct?

My 2 cents:

I love linode, and have zero intention of leaving. But I've got 8 months of prepaid left and see no reason to switch to metered at all. I do feel it's a price increase with the removal of the pre-paid discounts, but I'd honestly just pay it if the price did increase: I'm that pleased with linode.

Now, I do occasionally need to spin up a machine but don't feel like paying the full price just to have it sit around off, so I use local VMs, which is inconvenient…if I could build that machine and leave it off but built at a discounted price (maybe just a powered off/storage only max per month less than the full "on" price?) I'd be thrilled.

…Xoff

Linode customer since July 11, 2008

(Best hosting decision I ever made!)

@xoff00:

You'd get billed the hourly rate as long as a linode exists (consuming space on disk) regardless of if it's booted or not, correct?
Correct.

Thanks for your business :)

-Chris

@xoff00:

Now, I do occasionally need to spin up a machine but don't feel like paying the full price just to have it sit around off, so I use local VMs, which is inconvenient…if I could build that machine and leave it off but built at a discounted price (maybe just a powered off/storage only max per month less than the full "on" price?) I'd be thrilled.
Yeah, some sort of separate network storage or backup images would be useful for that.

In the meantime, you might be able to write a StackScript to bootstrap your system, or set it up, resize the image down to a couple GB, and save it on one of your permanent nodes.

Edit: caker, you would be okay with users maintaining two accounts, so one can have old-fashioned-annual-discount billing and one can have metered billing?

Edit (T+18 minutes): I didn't mean to rub the ever-requested feature, storage, in Linode's face in the middle of the announcement of a different oft-requested new feature. I was just trying to help xoff00.

@mnordhoff:

caker, you would be okay with users maintaining two accounts, so one can have old-fashioned-annual-discount billing and one can have metered billing?
Of course. That's totally fine with us.

-Chris

It would be good if both types of linodes could co-exist in one account. Perhaps new linodes would be metered by default, while you could convert linodes (once created) into long-term billing. You know, set a flag on that linode that changes how its billed.

Great, now I'm trying to think of a reason to spin up a linode 40960 for an hour or two at $1.20/hr.

They could use the metered billing with a pre charge option with a discount grade.

Something like:

• $200 : 5%

• $500 : 10%

• $1000 : 15%

@dffdce:

Bummer. So for me "Metered Billing" is simply a 15% price increase in disguise.

Actually, it's a 17.6% increase.

Just sayin'.

Let's say you pay $100. You get a 15% decrease. 15% of $100 is $15, so you're paying $100-$15=$85.

But $15 is 17.6% of $85, so going from $85 to $100 is a 17.6% increase.

@BerenErchamion:

Actually, it's a 17.6% increase.

Only if you convert the account you have your pre-paid stuff on, which you don't have to. You can create a second account with hourly billing. Caker said that was fine.

No doubt something similar to pre-payment discounts will turn up before new customers are put onto hourly plans.

It saves me money because I have less accounting to do and because I only pay for an hours usage if I need an extra Linode for an hour - not a days.

That being said, discounts are always nice ;)

That being said, don't you just like that you can spin up a 40G linode for four hours and only pay $4.80 instead of the full $800 up front? :)

@XReaper:

That being said, don't you just like that you can spin up a 40G linode for four hours and only pay $4.80 instead of the full $800 up front? :)

As long as what yo do doesn't impede my performance I don't give a rat's ass.

Is there a trivial comparison table somewhere to show the different prices against each other?

@graq:

Is there a trivial comparison table somewhere to show the different prices against each other?
Well, caker gave the table for three of the cheapest plans in the first post.

Quick copy and paste from the "Add a Linode" page on a metered account:

Plan          Storage  Transfer  Hourly    Monthly
Linode 1024   48GB     2TB       $0.03/hr  $20/mo
Linode 2048   96GB     4TB       $0.06/hr  $40/mo
Linode 4096   192GB    8TB       $0.12/hr  $80/mo
Linode 8192   384GB    16TB      $0.24/hr  $160/mo
Linode 16384  768GB    20TB      $0.48/hr  $320/mo
Linode 24576  1152GB   20TB      $0.72/hr  $480/mo
Linode 32768  1536GB   20TB      $0.96/hr  $640/mo
Linode 40960  1920GB   20TB      $1.20/hr  $800/mo

> Well, caker gave the table for three of the cheapest plans in the first post.

So, for someone who 'spins up nodes' here and there (and for ease of comparison, never 'spins up' a node for less than a day at a time), then the (in the long term) pricing hasn't changed at all. As things are now, I fire up a $20 node for a day and close it, I'll end up with an account credit of: $20 - 1 days cost.

For someone who just buys or uses nodes on a 'long term basis', it removes the availability of discounts.

For those that like to 'spin the nodes' on a frequent basis, it saves them a bit of money (up front and long term).

Is that about right?

@graq:

> Well, caker gave the table for three of the cheapest plans in the first post.

So, for someone who 'spins up nodes' here and there (and for ease of comparison, never 'spins up' a node for less than a day at a time), then the (in the long term) pricing hasn't changed at all. As things are now, I fire up a $20 node for a day and close it, I'll end up with an account credit of: $20 - 1 days cost.

For someone who just buys or uses nodes on a 'long term basis', it removes the availability of discounts.

For those that like to 'spin the nodes' on a frequent basis, it saves them a bit of money (up front and long term).

Is that about right?
Correct.

If you're spinning up for more than one day, you'd still be saving. 1.5 days gets billed as 2 days under the old system.

@jebblue:

@XReaper:

That being said, don't you just like that you can spin up a 40G linode for four hours and only pay $4.80 instead of the full $800 up front? :)

As long as what yo do doesn't impede my performance I don't give a rat's ass.

Wouldn't hourly billing encourage people to hog the CPU and I/O, though?

For example, I have some batch jobs that I occasionally run on EC2, and the scripts are designed to use 100% of every CPU core so that it takes the minimum number of hours to complete. This saves me a few dollars a month.

It's OK to do this on EC2 because, unless you're on t1.micro, the CPU is dedicated to the instance. But I suppose it's NOT OK to do the same on Linode, since the CPU is shared and others will experience slightly degraded performance. After all, the fact that linodes have highly burstable CPU is precisely what makes them perform so much better than "cloud" servers with a fixed amount of dedicated CPU.

@hybinet:

@jebblue:

@XReaper:

That being said, don't you just like that you can spin up a 40G linode for four hours and only pay $4.80 instead of the full $800 up front? :)

As long as what yo do doesn't impede my performance I don't give a rat's ass.

Wouldn't hourly billing encourage people to hog the CPU and I/O, though?

For example, I have some batch jobs that I occasionally run on EC2, and the scripts are designed to use 100% of every CPU core so that it takes the minimum number of hours to complete. This saves me a few dollars a month.

It's OK to do this on EC2 because, unless you're on t1.micro, the CPU is dedicated to the instance. But I suppose it's NOT OK to do the same on Linode, since the CPU is shared and others will experience slightly degraded performance. After all, the fact that linodes have highly burstable CPU is precisely what makes them perform so much better than "cloud" servers with a fixed amount of dedicated CPU.

Caker verified that the linode costs the same regardless of if it's powered up or not, so there is no benefit to doing that. With AWS, you pay for storage separately, so firing up a machine for a monthly process makes sense.

What I want is a "storage only" fee so I can have a machine for occasional testing, upgrades (which invariably I get interrupted in the middle of), etc…

For renewing can I still use annual pay upfront still with the 10% discount?

Still have 6 months left though. No intention to switch to hourly bill.

@hamba:

For renewing can I still use annual pay upfront still with the 10% discount?

Still have 6 months left though. No intention to switch to hourly bill.
No one will be forced to move to metered billing. So, you're fine.

-Chris

FYI, if you switch to this new style of billing, you cannot add extras (RAM, disk space, transfer, etc) a la carte to your Linode. You have to upgrade your Linode and do a host migration.

I really wish they would have explicitly mentioned this in the announcement!!

@sednet:

@BerenErchamion:

Actually, it's a 17.6% increase.

Only if you convert the account you have your pre-paid stuff on, which you don't have to. You can create a second account with hourly billing. Caker said that was fine.

While cool, two accounts is more complicated than one in that you can't clone an existing machine into a test environment, test out a new setup and if it works, flip the IPs over and call it a live deployment. However, the existing system works out well enough for this type of use, unless you regularly screw around with 4096s or similar.

@sednet:

No doubt something similar to pre-payment discounts will turn up before new customers are put onto hourly plans.

That would be nice, although I don't currently use the prepayment discounts, so it doesn't matter to me personally. I'm sure Linode has looked at the number of users who do and can figure out what sort of customer impact will be involved, it might be that there just aren't enough people taking advantage of such things for it to matter at all.

About the possible pre-payment discounts:

Perhaps something similar to AWS's reserved instances - where you can prepay a partial amount for 12/24 months and then receive discounted monthly / per minute prices, reducing the overall cost over the term by x% if that VPS is always on?

@jaybe:

About the possible pre-payment discounts:

Perhaps something similar to AWS's reserved instances - where you can prepay a partial amount for 12/24 months and then receive discounted monthly / per minute prices, reducing the overall cost over the term by x% if that VPS is always on?

I think that would be more complicated than necessary. Maybe a model like this:

Deposit (pay into account credits) | Credit (get extra)

$0-249 | 0 %

$250-999 | 10 %

$1000+ | 15 %

So if you paid $500 in advance, you'd receive an additionally $50 in account credit. Then you if you got something refunded to your card, you'd lose the credits you had gained from this + the $5 fee. That is more simple IMO.

The numbers probably need to be adjusted.

@lakridserne:

@jaybe:

About the possible pre-payment discounts:

Perhaps something similar to AWS's reserved instances - where you can prepay a partial amount for 12/24 months and then receive discounted monthly / per minute prices, reducing the overall cost over the term by x% if that VPS is always on?

I think that would be more complicated than necessary. Maybe a model like this:

Deposit (pay into account credits) | Credit (get extra)

$0-249 | 0 %

$250-999 | 10 %

$1000+ | 15 %

So if you paid $500 in advance, you'd receive an additionally $50 in account credit. Then you if you got something refunded to your card, you'd lose the credits you had gained from this + the $5 fee. That is more simple IMO.

The numbers probably need to be adjusted.

I like the idea, however, this can make bookkeeping more complicated, and it also makes it impossible (or severely impractical) for a $20/month to hit that 15% discount. But if Linode is willing to turn it into a volume discount rather than a prepayment discount, it works out.

@thedave:

@lakridserne:

@jaybe:

About the possible pre-payment discounts:

Perhaps something similar to AWS's reserved instances - where you can prepay a partial amount for 12/24 months and then receive discounted monthly / per minute prices, reducing the overall cost over the term by x% if that VPS is always on?

I think that would be more complicated than necessary. Maybe a model like this:

Deposit (pay into account credits) | Credit (get extra)

$0-249 | 0 %

$250-999 | 10 %

$1000+ | 15 %

So if you paid $500 in advance, you'd receive an additionally $50 in account credit. Then you if you got something refunded to your card, you'd lose the credits you had gained from this + the $5 fee. That is more simple IMO.

The numbers probably need to be adjusted.

I like the idea, however, this can make bookkeeping more complicated, and it also makes it impossible (or severely impractical) for a $20/month to hit that 15% discount. But if Linode is willing to turn it into a volume discount rather than a prepayment discount, it works out.

That is valid points. They could eventually issue invoices upon payment to the account and then just a statement whenever you paid for something.

Else, in the accounting software we use in our company, we can make it as an extra account, where we can say we've transferred x dollars. When we then get an invoice, we can just take it from there.

The other thing with the monthly could be worked out by adjusting the volume pricing - though again this is up to Linode. It also makes it harder that there is several payment levels, so for example, a $20/mo. would mean you'd get 15 % discount with an up front investment of $480 (or $408), while the 2 GB would be $960 ($816 after discount).

The 12 and 24 month discounts are about increasing predictability of resource usage; if you pre-pay a 2GB linode for 24 months, Linode can be reasonably certain that those resources will be consumed.

Discounts based on the size of the payment offer no such benefits to Linode. If you put $1000 in your account, that says nothing about how you'll use it, or how you'll change it around.

I'm a little confused about this. So if my linode is taking storage space, I am paying the rate per hour. So for a normal guy, does this new billing policy even make any difference? When I say normal, I mean I just have a few websites on the box.

@miprogrammer:

I'm a little confused about this. So if my linode is taking storage space, I am paying the rate per hour. So for a normal guy, does this new billing policy even make any difference? When I say normal, I mean I just have a few websites on the box.
Unless you regularly provision new Linodes and decommision them, it probably doesn't make any difference at all, you'll end up paying the monthly rate no matter what.

Where it really makes a difference is if you want to fire up large instances and deactivate them within the month, previously you'd have to fund the whole thing even if you only kept it active a few hours/days, after which time you'd have a large credit on your account. Now, you'll literally only pay (out of pocket) for the hours it's actually running.

But really, if you have a fixed number of Linodes and aren't adding/removing Linodes, it matters not.

The other place it might matter is if you plan on cancelling all services, in which case you're probably better off switching to hourly billing a month in advance. Also a corner case.

@thedave:

But really, if you have a fixed number of Linodes and aren't adding/removing Linodes, it matters not.

Thanks for the reply, helped to clear things up!

Looking at the new front page, are yearly options (with discount) no longer available? Are all new linodes metered?

or am I blind? :-)

https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/09/intr … y-billing/">https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/09/introducing-hourly-billing/

We're still working out the details for longer-term discounts, but it is something we're planning on doing.

Thanks,

-Chris

An earlier post said a la carte additions like extra IP's and RAM aren't supported on the hourly plans. Is that true?

Extra IPs are supported, miprogrammer. (They're now offered on the Remote Access page, I think.) The Extras tab itself and the other extras such as RAM are all gone.

Put me down as someone who misses the annual plans. While the discounted rate was nice, the main draw for me was actually the simplicity (1 invoice instead of 12). It gets a bit tedious having to invoice every one of my clients every single month.

@jstoik:

Put me down as someone who misses the annual plans. While the discounted rate was nice, the main draw for me was actually the simplicity (1 invoice instead of 12). It gets a bit tedious having to invoice every one of my clients every single month.
Why not invoice your clients once per year? There does not need to be a 1:1 relationship in how you invoice vs how you pay your bills.

@thedave:

@jstoik:

Put me down as someone who misses the annual plans. While the discounted rate was nice, the main draw for me was actually the simplicity (1 invoice instead of 12). It gets a bit tedious having to invoice every one of my clients every single month.
Why not invoice your clients once per year? There does not need to be a 1:1 relationship in how you invoice vs how you pay your bills.

Yeah, I'm probably going to split the difference and invoice quarterly. The main downside to breaking the 1:1 is it puts income and outcome into different tax periods. But it can't be helped, I guess.

I'm not sure if it makes a difference from a tax perspective (different countries, plus there are different methods of recognizing revenue), but you could consider doing a large deposit with Linode and letting their invoices run out over the year. There may also be accounting methods open to you where you only realize the revenue as you deliver the service, although setting such things up may cost more in accountant manhours than it could save you.

@caker:

https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/09/intr … y-billing/">https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/09/introducing-hourly-billing/

We're still working out the details for longer-term discounts, but it is something we're planning on doing.

Thanks,

-Chris

I take it this has completely fallen off the radar?

I only mention it now because I have a couple of Linodes about to finish their 2 year pre-paid period!

Will they automatically renew for a further 2 years? Or will they revert back to regular billing?

@hampel:

@caker:

https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/09/intr … y-billing/">https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/09/introducing-hourly-billing/

We're still working out the details for longer-term discounts, but it is something we're planning on doing.

Thanks,

-Chris

Will they automatically renew for a further 2 years?

All existing long-term billing packages are honored, i.e. you can continue to have that Linode billed biennially.

When I go to the metered billing tab it says it will credit me $164.29 for unused time. Is that what it sounds like? How do I know what the price change will represent for me? The credit sounds too good to be true, or I'm missing something?

Before metered billing, you paid at the start of each month. After metered billing, you'll pay at the end, but beyond that, nothing changes unless you create and delete Linode regularly.