Repl.it's announcement of significant changes to its Starter Plan on a Friday evening, effective the following Monday, left many of its users, particularly teachers and students, scrambling. The late-evening email provided educators with virtually no time to adjust lesson plans or inform students and parents before the changes took effect. Considering the platform's extensive use in educational settings, this move appears highly inconsiderate and poorly timed, and it feels particularly unethical. The timing of the announcement, immediately before a new week, suggests a deliberate attempt to limit user feedback and expedite the implementation of unpopular changes.<p>Email:
From: Replit <contact@mail.replit.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 23, 2024 at 9:47 PM
Subject: Replit Starter Plan Changes<p>Hello,<p>We’re reaching out to tell you about changes to your Starter plan.<p>What is changing?<p><pre><code> Number of Repls: The Starter plan is now limited to 3 Repls. Upgrade to Core for unlimited* Repls.
Collaboration limits: 1 collaborator per Starter account, 3 for Core, and your entire org for Teams.
Storage retention: Repls will be subject to deletion after 1 year of inactivity on the Starter plan.
Deployments:
Starter plan users can Deploy a single static site without a credit card on file (1 GiB outbound data transfer limit). This change will roll out in the next few weeks.
Autoscale, Reserved VM, and Scheduled Deployments now need to be tied to a Core account. If you have active Deployments of these types, you’ll receive a separate email with more details.
Development
Development time: The Starter plan is limited to 600 development minutes per month. Upgrade to Core for no development time limits.
Development outbound data transfer: changing Starter plan limit to 1 GiB.
Development storage: changing the Starter plan limit to 2 GiBs.
</code></pre>
Unless mentioned above, these changes will fully take effect on August 26th.<p>We understand that this may impact how you use Replit. We've carefully considered these adjustments to ensure we can continue providing a sustainable platform for all our users.<p>For a full overview of the changes, see replit.com/pricing. If you have any questions about the changes, please reach out to support@replit.com<p>The Replit Team
If you are using a service for free, please be aware you are a user not a customer.<p>If switching to a paid plan is not on your horizon then you are not even a maybe customer. You are a consumer.<p>If you are a free user then be prepared to lose access to the system at any time. If it's not adding any value to you then that's no big deal. If it is adding value to you then pass some of that value to the creator.
I used replit for the examples and a few problems for the APCS class I helped teach a couple years back. As far as I know the school is still using them, but not for long I guess.<p>Get your economic architecture right and this kind of thing need not happen.