A preview of future Forge pricing

I wanted to calculate an example app, and I’ve given up. Below is an example of app consumption:

Database:

  • avg monthly write 1MB/s = 2600 GB per month
  • avg monthly read 5MB/s = 13 TB per month
  • storage ~100GB

Computing power:

  • mem < 0.5GB
  • CPU avg monthly usage 80 nodes x 25% utilisation = 52M seconds per month

Network

  • throughput avg monthly 1000 rps = 2.5B requests per month
  • response time 95th perc max <150ms

I do not know how to tweak resources to keep response time 95th perc max <150ms. Assuming Atlassian will magically manage it, I calculated:
(wrong)
Does it make any sense?

Edit: self-update:

Logs:

  • 5GB daily = 150GB per month

Costs

  • database write: 2,600GB * $2 = $5,200 per month (Forge SQL unknown)
  • database read: 13,000GB * $0.1 = $1,300 per month (Forge SQL unknown)
  • storage: 95GB * $0.415 = ~$40 per month
  • CPU: 26M s/GB * $0.000024 = $624 per month
  • Logs: 150GB * $0.95 = $142 per month
    Total: $7,306 per month = $87,700 annually
    Is this correct?
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It’s extremely difficult for me to calculate costs correctly because of the differences in metrics used, but if I compare the ones that do match it paints a very worrisome picture:

If I store 100GB of data in Forge KVS, that would cost me 95 * 0.415 = $39.42 per month

For comparison, the Firebase price calculator show that storing 100GB of data in GCP Firestore costs me $17.82 per month. Storing 100GB of data in Dynamo DB with on-demand pricing and an average size of the Forge maximum value is $25.00 per month according to the AWS calculator.

For function invocation, if I consume 1 million GB-seconds in Forge this is 900.000 x 0.000024 = $21,6 per month. For GCP firebase function, the same invocation of 1 million GB-seconds = $1.50 per month

It is good to know that Forge Remote invocations will be free of charge, so from a business perspective we will probably be able to migrate to Forge without incurring to much additional costs (apart from the hours spent unnecessarily migrating from Connect to Forge).

But it seems like there is a premium to be paid for having a “Runs on Atlassian” badge

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Thanks @dusan.spaic for the feedback.

I agree, we have now changed it to reflect the value of the last calculated day.

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Hi

I’d like to double check regarding free of charge users like users in trial period or academics/ students. If I understand correctly as a Developer I need to pay Atlassian for them using my app or they will be free of charge?

Also I’d like to point out that if development environment will be included into pricing, Developers will be encouraged to test less their product to save some expenses.

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Hi @Lilija, thanks for the feedback, I’ll pass it back to the team.

In general, the free threshold is meant to also accommodate the usage by free, trial users and by testing. However, we are hearing that some developers would like controls to prevent excessive resource utilisation by certain users and that is something we are exploring.

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This is extremely important. In addition, Atlassian should come up with a policy with regard to credits for (unforeseen) spikes. It would be great if we can avoid these type of tweets

or these types of TechCrunch articles

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I wanted to do a proper calculation on want the cost of being Forge native would be for me, trying to compare apples to apples, but this is a lot harder that I touch.

I use AWS and its hard to accurately map the Forge pricing to my AWS usage now.

Take Forge Compute:
On AWS you don’t only have the memory GBs but also number of requests and storage in GBs.
Currently for one month, running my lambdas on AWS costs $65 a month for 4.000.000 GBs in memory, 400.000 GBs for storage and 1.400.000 requests.
On Forge this would be $96 for 4.000.000 x 0.000024.

Looking at Forge Logs, Is it true that timed storage will also be counted, or is it just the ingest that is counted:
On AWS I use CloudWatch and pay $11.17 a month for storing 15GB in timed storages and ingest 24GB.
On Forge this would come to $22.92 for ingest and $14.325 for timed storage.

Now for Forge Storage, I cannot comment as I don’t really use the KVS, but instead use SQL. However, there is no pricing details for Forge SQL yet.

So looking only at logs and compute, I’m looking at a bill of $133.245 on Forge where the same costs me $76.17 on AWS. Which comes to a 74% margin for Atlassian to provide the Forge infrastructure.

Just looking at my AWS RDS costs of $2300 a month, and taking the same margin that would make it north of $4000 a month to store my data.

That Atlassian takes a margin to operate, maintain and develop the Forge infrastructure is understandable, but 74% is WAY to much if you ask me.
Why does it need to be this much?

Also, a note on “How does billing work”

Invoices for Forge usage will be issued monthly, in arrears. They will be issued separately from Marketplace remittances, and we will not support “zeroing” out usage invoices from owed remittances. Overdue payments may result in temporary suspension of your app (ie. functionality will stop working) and in cases of extreme delinquency, de-listing the app from the Marketplace.

The remittance is only send if there is at least a minimal amount in your account ($500 if I remember correctly) When will the Forge bill be sent?
Can we get to a situation where the Forge bill comes before the remittance?

2 Likes

Hello @markrekveld,

Thanks for the feedback on the pricing. We do not charge for Logs storage, only ingest, hence the charge of $14.325 would not apply.

On the billing, as the pricing would apply to free and paid apps, our current thinking is that the invoice would be issued at the end of every calendar month regardless of the amount that is being remitted. We will take this feedback on the minimum amount however.

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Hi @reddy1

Thanks for confirming log storage in not included, in the numbers I have that removed $14.325 from the Forge side, and $0.29 from the AWS side of the calculation. Now the Atlassian margin is 57%

Taking this margin, I would guesstimate that my Forge SQL storage will be $3611 a month where this costs $2300 on AWS.

Are there any plans on making the Forge SQL pricing public?
Can you comment on reason why the margin taken by Atlassian is so high?
Or can you list all things vendors are getting from Atlassian?
What are the “hidden” services behind the pricing?
How will the Forge pricing impact the Atlassian sales share for Forge apps?

Thanks, being able to predict the costs is a big topic.

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While it was possible for vendors to offer (almost) free static connect apps, would the same still apply for static forge apps?
Would the Forge resolver incur forge runtime costs?

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Yes, this is very important. We should be able to set limit on usage so that a single user from a 10 user free site could not banktrupt us by hitting the webtrigger or invoke functions with some kind of automation tool. Idealy there should be site level and account level tiers depending on number of users on the site. Spending on a certain limit should require manual approval from the developer account. For example, if my usual monthly bill is $400, spending above $600 should require manual approval from the developer account.

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Yes, please add such controls. That would help us greatly in avoiding unforeseen cost-spikes.

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@reddy1 thanks for sharing the Forge pricing preview.

We’re a bit surprised that the free tier is static, and not dynamic according to the number of users that use the app. It is dynamic for the Forge Platform quotas and limits, why aren’t similar rules applied to Forge pricing as well?

This would mean that it will be next to impossible for bigger apps to stay within the free tier, while Atlassian takes a percentaged share of our revenue (usually 15%). Our expectation was that Atlassian would fund the Forge free tier as part of the revenue share, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Wouldn’t it be easier for Atlassian to predict Forge costs if free tiers in pricing would depend on the number of users of an app? With the current model, it depends a lot on how the Marketplace will evolve. If there’s mostly big apps, Atlassian will recoup most of the Forge costs, since free tiers will be exceeded by them, while if there are mostly smaller apps that stay within the free tiers, Atlassian might have to adjust the Forge pricing model to cover its cost.

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