carmenhchung

This exact same thing happened to me with a client project I was working on - my client was paying $50/month for dynos, but we received no notifications about needing to pay for the database to avoid it being nuked!

On the upside, when I reached out to Heroku, they did offer to recover the database for me - but by this point in time, I'd already moved on with setting up a new one from scratch (with some changes from the original), so this wasn't particularly helpful.

Hey everyone! A couple of pretty decent Heroku alternatives have already been mentioned, but in case anyone is looking for another platform that offers super easy backend service deployment and scaling, Fl0 (https://fl0.com/) is going to release to the public in a couple of months.

You can sign up to be on the waitlist for access here: https://fl0.com/contact?utm_campaign=hn

(Disclaimer: I work at Fl0.)

I forgot to mention, here's a TLDR visual story if you aren't a fan of long-form: https://stories.nws.ai/1288496439/how-clubhouse-went-viral/

So two things: first, they are opening the app up to anyone (and on Android) in the near future (timing TBC of course). It'll be interesting to see if the hype they've built will last all the way through to then. Second, I fully agree with you that opening the app up is actually problematic for them. It's almost like the opposite of the network effect, where I think having more people on the platform is going to potentially make the quality deteriorate. Right now, it feels authentic but somewhat curated (i.e. we have moderators who invite high-profile and very interesting panelists on to speak) - I'm not sure that will be maintained when it becomes a free-for-all.

Want to know how Clubhouse uses product psychology to draw in users and generate hype? Check out this post.