A timed trial just feels weird. I like that Heroku, Netlify, Contentful, and Firebase have a free tier, so I can use it for small demos and to learn the platform. If I have to pay for every single tutorial or playground project I won‘t want to use the platform or even want to learn it.
It also kind of disincentivizes teachers on online platforms (like Udemy) to teach it. Because you often need to go through a few examples in order to learn something. i.e. if I do a node.js course, the course author isn’t just going to make me build 1 practice app, I’m probably gonna build a few and then host them on Heroku free dyno, the same way if I take a React course, I’m gonna build a few practice apps and host them on Netlify.
Even all the major cloud platforms have free tiers for this reason - to get devs hooked on their platform so there is no other option they'd rather use.
Not saying the free tier should be outrageous... maybe 100MB and 10k requests per month or something small like that.
I’m a product/frontend guy who’s trying to build a side project, and backend stuff has always been a PITA for me to figure out.
Right now I’m torn between investing time to learn AWS Amplify, or investing time to learn 8base.
8base has already captured my imagination, and I can’t wait to go further with learning it. Unfortunately I feel uncomfortable creating a few projects to practice and then later being shut out of them or be forced to pay $8/mth.
Another way to put it is that Hasura is mostly about enabling GraphQL on Postgres; 8base is the backend for powerful, enterprise-grade (when necessary) software. GraphQL is an essential design detail for us but not the business or product itself.
Regarding your comment about freemium; I've seen many backend products falter, pivot, and shut down from having unsustainable business models. We are offering a robust plan for $8 / month to start. If developers agree with us that their DX is better, then $8 shouldn't be an issue as their time is more costly. But we appreciate what you are saying and are watching this closely.
At the very least, offer a highly-limited and almost-crippled free tier, like Heroku or Glide does. Maybe you can only register a few users. Maybe the # of function calls are limited to a few a day. Or maybe dormant apps go to sleep.
Edit: I might use it if it had a freemium model not just trial. I often play w/ new technologies, forget about em, come back try em again and stick w/ the ones that stick in my mindshare, but a trial doesn't allow me that freedom -- at least for hobby projects.