I just read this blog from HomeAutomation startup:
https://medium.com/@contact_16315/firebase-costs-increased-by-7-000-81dc0a27271d
They experienced a sudden increase in charges from 25$ a month to 1’750.-
[quote]They changed how they report their bandwidth usage, increasing our bill by 7,000% without any change to our actual usage. After years of using the service.
No warning or message was sent out that this was being done??we only got notified once they were planning to shut down our app completely.
Their profiling tools do not show the increased usage. You can only see it by looking at your massively increased bill.[/quote]
So their advice:
And further on:
[quote]Build your architecture in a way that will avoid becoming trapped into a specific service. Build your application in a way that swapping one service for another is as simple as possible.
Always keep in mind that the services you use can change at any moment and put you in a situation where you dont have options if you arent careful.
Whenever possible, rely on your own infrastructure. The SaaS model seems attractive to both Startups and Service Providers . but in the end, its the Startup that gets bitten by it and the providers that make the real money.
Always heavily consider open source alternatives (something which didnt exist for Firebase at the time but now alternatives like Horizon and Backendless exist, for example.[/quote]