Retailer

1) But they supported this before on GAE. GAE had 'spending limits'.

2) Also if they are able to figure out when you've hit your daily free quota and cut you off almost immediately, how are they not able to figure this out?

Personally, I don't think this is a good enough reason. Worst case, if I experience an unplanned shut down, I will increase my spending limit. Removing the feature entirely because of this just doesn't make sense.

When I also think of the fact that Google tied it to requiring a credit card for almost every single transaction even if it is free gives the impression that it is for financial purposes (aka a way to get more out of developers or those who might be free-loading on the free tier of App Engine)

Google has alert thresholds (you set it up under your Budget). But practically speaking, an alert is not enough - what if you are unavailable to get the alert, it comes in the middle of the night, etc?

A better solution would have been 'limits' which they used to have (at least for Google App Engine) but which has been deprecated.

We had to spend sometime to research and see if there was a work around because just like the author of the article, we were quite worried about suddenly consuming a huge amount of resources, getting a spike in our bill and our accounts being cut off/suspended because we hadn't paid the bill. We've documented our solution here

https://retailingplatform.com/blog/how-to-control-costs-on-a...

If you're on App Engine, we did an article about that

https://retailingplatform.com/blog/how-to-control-costs-on-a...

We use SendGrid. I first used them on a project I hosted on GAE which needed transaction emails and GAE recommended them (there was a free tier for GAE Apps).

We are planning on switching sometime next year as we are no longer that happy with them - documentation is getting more complicated, costs have increased, support is no longer as great as before.

To get an idea off the ground, I use Google App Engine (GAE) with Python, Google's Datastore, Flask, Bootstrap. It works, doesn't cost much and removes a lot of complexity.

GAE's offering of free (and auto-renewing) certificates also makes things cheaper.

1) Pick a problem, look at existing solutions and think if it's possible to slim any of them down (to the basics) and charge a lower fee for it. An analogy would be that people only use a small set of features in MS Word but new versions are released and then you have to pay a heftier amount for that newer version.

2) Since you're in tech/software, are there any problems that multiple friends/family members have asked you to solve for them? Can you write software for that?

3) Keep an eye out for news outside of the US/Europe. Are there common problems that people in those other locations are having? Can you automate or solve any of them.

All of the above (and more) is what led to our building - RetailingPlatform - https://retailingplatform.com

RetailingPlatform - https://retailingplatform.com

An alternative to Shopify for

1) People who don't need all the features of Shopify and are more budget conscious

2) People from developing economies with a unique set of needs not addressed by the bigger platforms (e.g. African countries where access to credit cards is lower and where addresses are different/non-standardized)

>>> don't ask users for information that you don't need. <<<

Agree. This is especially important today where information is being traded without user's knowledge.

Asking for information you don't need automatically makes privacy conscious folks suspicious of your site/service.

It also gives the impression that you (the business/service) haven't 'thought' through your process (maybe you just did a copy and paste from a template somewhere)

>>> What’s the worst thing a spammer can do if they sign up? <<<

Depends on your size and resources. Imagine you're basically scrappy with a very small and tight budget and still trying to validate your idea, and you're using one of those providers that gives you a free quota (like Google App Engine), you don't want 'spammers' to drain your free allotment of resources. I know someone who has a small niche blog in the health sector whose blog was repeatedly targeted by spammers/bots. He repeatedly saw increases in his bills till he had someone audit his blog and try to block the bots

In B2B, it could be that the person who wants to try out the service is an employee of a company. He/She needs to first test the service before trying to convince their manager (or the company) to subscribe. Such people might not have a corporate credit card to put in, could be company policy that such subscriptions are handled by a different department. They might also not wish to use their personal credit card for corporate services.