PlanetScale performs layoff and prioritizes profitability

PlanetScale has been two products in one. It was born at Youtube as MySQL sharding solution for massive scale. In the last few years though it was adding features usable for developers on the small scale too, who do not need sharding but looking for database with better developer experience than MySQL.<p>I wonder if this change signals it is &quot;Database for Large amount of Data&quot; is what drives most of business. Companies who have 10TB+ database size, where Sharding is of real value will not think twice about paying $40 to do initial testing on paid account.

Its interesting the contrast between HN and X [0] as far as the sentiment goes on this change. On HN seems mainly in favor of this change while on X everyone is mainly against it.<p>Personally, I&#x27;m glad I haven&#x27;t built something on PS Hobby that I have to migrate but I do think its fair to charge for your product.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;PlanetScale&#x2F;status&#x2F;1765438197981708684" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;PlanetScale&#x2F;status&#x2F;1765438197981708684</a>

This seems like a smart move. I know some will be frustrated with losing a free tier. But ultimately businesses need to make money and charging for it is part of that.

They&#x27;re doing the right thing. It&#x27;s a killer business but this isn&#x27;t 2020 ZIRP. If a company isn&#x27;t profitable, it&#x27;s not going to inspire trust, and this will hinder its growth and cost it deals. In addition to the tough VC market. At 39$&#x2F;m, PlanetScale is a no brainer. Anyone with any clue will use this platform to build, and with these changes there&#x27;s no doubt as to whether they will be there in 2y or not.

For those looking for alternatives check out <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neon.tech&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neon.tech&#x2F;</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;turso.tech&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;turso.tech&#x2F;</a> and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.cloudflare.com&#x2F;d1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.cloudflare.com&#x2F;d1&#x2F;</a>.

Well written, Sam - I admire the clear communication and transparent reasoning laid out in the post. I&#x27;m sure this decision took endless reflection and consideration; I&#x27;m happy for you that the announcement seems well received so far.<p>#planetscale_forever

&quot;Removing sales and marketing&quot; - That seems like an interesting decision unless those positions only existed to grow the free hobby tier.

I&#x27;m curious if this was after a failed funding attempt. I think we&#x27;re going to see a lot more VC backed companies prioritizing profitability.<p>I think startups should use seed rounds to become profitable. It&#x27;s the only way to secure your future. You can be profitable and grow fast. See Notion and Linear.

Tough decisions for a tough context. Planetscale remains the best tool in my toolbox when I&#x27;m launching online systems. Hang in there guys. You&#x27;re doing valuable work. Enabling developers to help the world is a great way to rise a tide for everyone.

If you are interested we wrote about our experiences with PlanetScale here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gridpanel.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;why-planetscale-broke-our-trust" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gridpanel.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;why-planetscale-broke-our-trust</a>

I honestly believe removing the Hobby plan to be a huge mistake on the long-term, while optimizing for short-term profitability.<p>Without any inside knowledge, I can only speculate, and who knows, maybe PlanetScale wouldn’t have been able to continue as a business, if they kept serving the Hobby plan<p>What I am quite certain of though, is that PlanetScale is far from ubiquitous enough to have people take a bet on a service they’ve never tried, without a way to try it risk-free first<p>It’s a competitive space, and killing your funnel of “Engineers learning technologies as a side-project, and bringing they tech into their day job” seems to me at least to be very shortsighted

Most of the &quot;free&quot; things out there could only be sustained by the near-free money that companies could get in the recent low interest rate environment. Many companies ultimately had unrealistic business models, creating massive distortions in the marketplace and hurting companies and people who were trying to create actual, long term value.

Firing sales and marketing and getting rid of the free tier. How are they planning to find new customers?

I support this. There&#x27;s no way to run a business while giving away your product

I don’t think I understand the logic behind laying off sales while emphasizing profitability as the reason. Without sales teams how will the product make money? Is the idea that the company has enough existing enterprise customers? Or customers are flocking to the product organically?<p>Overall I think this announcement leads to more questions.

Similar strategy to Broadcom with VMware. Free products apparently don’t convert well enough to justify.

Tough choices. o7 to the laid off.<p>Going full enterprise by shutting down hobby plans while laying off primarily sales and marketing.

I think this is very common playbook those days - Overdeliver to your customers whenever with Free Tier, Everything Open Source, Extremely Low Prices to get market share... when do a switch and focus on profitability.<p>With killing free tier I wonder if it just was not generating a good conversion to paid users or is it killing a golden goose to get one time customer injection from folks choosing to move to paid tier