[esdott]

Woah woah woah. The sentiment here is pretty wild for me. Creating a platform that offers a free tier is a BUSINESS decision. Replit knew what they were doing bringing all of those free ‘customers’ online. They didn’t do it out of the goodness of their heart and they have to deal with the very real/costly aftermath of a bait/switch. Perhaps we should be used to this rug pull by now but that’s still what it is. I’ve never used replit but have been in the position to decide on creating a freemium model and I knew quite well what the consequences would have been. The idea that were saying it’s the users fault for falling for a tactic that’s origin is “yo man, try this … first hits free” is crazy to me. Now get off my lawn.

[moqmar]

Yeah, they've also switched their complete concept around before, going from a simple web code editor to a deployment-based hobby hoster, already breaking the use cases (and simplicity) for many users.

I totally agree and would say that openly criticising such decisions is important, so that companies are a bit more careful with introducing usecase-breaking changes - including changing their business model in a way that makes it not viable anymore for many users. Such things really make a company seem unreliable, but unfortunately it seems to have become common with the "ship early, break often" mentality especially in the start-up world.