The problem here was that the user didn't consent to scaling. They thought they were paying one rate, and got an email telling them they were paying another.

Completely agree. I think it's worse actually. It's not even about scaling. It's about having more staff users on the account.

> I was expected to stay on top of them or risk an automatic “upgrade” from $36 to $99 for having an extra staff user on my website? I had forgotten about this, but why not just block me from adding them?

So looks like Ghost allows you to add more members freely, does not warn or tell you anything when you do it, but then only tells you that you'll be upgraded automatically via email later? (It's partly a rhetorical question, but I genuinely don't know how it works).

Yes, that definitely seems to be what they do, and I understand why that frustrated the user. I think the CEO should have taken the frustration as feedback, even though the user wasn't very tactful on Twitter.

The user wasn't very tactful on Twitter but the CEO ramped that up to maximum levels with calling the user an "ahole"..

Yeah, he really did, that wasn't awesome.

  the user didn't consent to scaling

They didn't have to agree to TOS when onboarding?

Hahaha

I think that's a fair argument for things like external requests made to the site. For the number of admin users you have, there's no reason not to prompt you at the moment you add those admin users that you're going over plan though.

I just commented below to a sibling comment, but as far as I understand it, it's not about scaling here actually. It's about staff members.

But even if we talk about scaling here, As you noted different people will have different expectations. Some will prefer to get charged more and handle the extra traffic. Others will be the polar opposite and will prefer to cap unless they give explicit consent to upgrade.

I don't think you can avoid asking about it.

Isn't the question: 'do you want to enable some form of autoscaling?' the only one necessary here? How many other questions need to be asked? Sure - you can ask more if they select yes but otherwise that's the end of it, no?

It's a simple yes or no question if you want to handle it in onboarding. And loads of successful companies have tiered plans with hard limits.