Dear all,

Heroku announced that they will stop free services such as free Heroku Dynos, free Heroku Postgres, and free Heroku Data for Redis from November 28th, 2022.

I would like to know how the subscription service of oTree is affected by the change in Heroku service.
Will both the open-source and regular sites provided by oTree be deleted unless I upgrade the plan?

Any pieces of information would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Kengo SUZUKI

Hi, it sounds like Heroku will shut down free dynos and delete free databases starting on that date. So I recommend to upgrade to paid dynos through oTree Hub before then. Note that if you are a student you can get free credits through the Heroku student program: https://blog.heroku.com/github-student-developer-program

In oTree Hub, go to your app's "configure" tab and you can select hobby-basic dynos (not hobby-dev) and Hobby postgres (not Free).

Redis and worker dyno are no longer required in oTree versions from the past 2 years.

By the way it sounds like Heroku has added "Eco" dynos which are cheaper than the hobby dynos. If so I will add those as an option in oTree Hub.

Thank you very much Chris,

I recognized that the subscription service of oTree will not be changed as far as I upgrade the dynos and postgres.

Yes oTree Hub just charges a flat monthly fee, independent of what Heroku charges you for dynos etc.

These eco and mini plans sound interesting. I wonder how expensive they will be. We'll see I guess.

there is more info here: https://blog.heroku.com/new-low-cost-plans

"we’re thrilled to announce our new Eco Dynos plan, which will cost $5 for 1,000 compute hours a month, shared across all of your eco dynos."

Looks like the mini postgres is $5/month.

It sounds to me like you can have multiple sites running using the eco dynos, and you just pay $5 in total.

That sounds very reasonable to me but i am no poor student anymore ;-)

Yes combined with the free credits program I think it is pretty reasonable. Heroku was apparently getting overrun by people abusing the free accounts to mine crypto, illegal filesharing, etc.