Due to Replit's recent pricing changes regarding web hosting, I have no other choice but to leave the platform after
nearly 5 years. To host a website at Replit now, you must "deploy" it. However, deployments are blocked behind a $20/mo
subscription. As a 16 year old, this is an outrageous price for me that I simply can not afford, totaling $240 a year (or
a $120/y subscription). As a result, I will not be continuing using Replit to host websites or projects.
All of this data is coming from Replit's pricing site located here.
In addition to paying $20/mo, you must also pay for the project's traffic. Autoscale starts at $0.000024/second. Reserved VM starts at $7/mo, and Static sites are free! (With a 10GiB outbound data transfer (and a 100 static site limit with Replit Core)).
I find it absurd that, not only do you have to pay a subscription to host sites at all, you also have to pay for its usage. Of course, I don't particularly find it absurd for that reason, but because prior to that, hosting was 100% free!
Suddenly, you will have to pay upwards of $20 to get your sites up on the internet.
This next few information comes from Replit's ask forums located here.
.repl.co domains are being deprecated! This means you either have to deploy or your site won't be public at al. There appears to now be two domains, .repl.dev and .repl.app.
.repl.dev will be used for the development side of things, and will only be visible when someone is in the editor. .repl.app is the deployed version. This confirms that you either have to pay for a subscription with Replit, or miss out on deployments.
Again, as a 16 year old, $20/mo is an unreasonable price to pay, so, I will not. After 5 years of being on the platform, I am leaving Replit.
Now, where will I be hosting my sites, such as this one? I am happy to
say I am now renting out a $4/mo virtual private server through BuyVM/Frantech solutions! I was originally thinking of using Heroku, but after sign up problems, I decided to go with the cheaper (and more difficult) option of
using a VPS.
After 5 years of being on Replit, I am leaving the platform. Of course, I understand the pricing changes (free hosting can not last forever!), but the prices are outrageous!
When I first started using Replit, I had no idea what Python, or a developer environment was. Now, I am comfortable with setting up a Linux machine to be a web server for my sites.
I hope Replit has helped others as much as it has for me. Thank you for everything, Replit.