“Primum non nocere” (“first, do no harm”) is the first rule in the Hippocratic Oath, and transposed to IT it means that whatever change you make, you should not make it worse for existing users. This applies especially to programming languages and dev tools; Replit was good at it.
But recently I got an email with a bad-promising title: “Changes to hosting on Replit”. There, you announced that deployments are so cool that they deserve their own space on the homepage, and… drum rumble everything on the previous repl.co hosting needs to be migrated to it. Static deployment costs 20 cents/month, which is a ridiculously small amount, so… why don’t you make it free directly? You see, not every 16-year-old has a credit card, and even if I had one… I won’t give my data to some company for 20c.
So far, it’s not that dramatic. Replit is getting more users, so naturally, they need more money to maintain the platform. But now comes the fun part: Deployments don’t use repl.co, they use repl.dev. Now, I’ve been making my website on Replit, and I’ve shared the link countless times and put it in many social bios. Some programs I’ve made even ping that address. And now Replit is telling me that they’re killing them all? I mean, why?!? What’s wrong with .co? Also, it’s unclear if repl.co will redirect to repl.dev, but as that fancy blog post says that repl.co will only work in the editor, I don’t think so.
To make the short story long, I now need to look for a new free hosting service, which is sad, because the one of Replit was good. Really, guys, I’m sorry, but this was a big mistake.
replit.dev will only work when somebody is in the workspace. Replit staff said that repl.co might redirect to replit.app (deployments URL) but we have not heard any update on that
Static deployments will be free within your egress limits and you will not have to use a credit card for static hosting (and you will be abled to set a $0 spending limit).
I feel like the implication here is that Replit could essentially steal your money, while theoretically possible, what do you think would happen when a relatively large company started stealing from its customers (which are in the millions)? There would be an immediate response, the end result likely being that the company would have to give back the money. From Replit’s point-of-view, why would they abuse the trust of the customers that they rely on? This would only lose customers.
The point of charging a small fraction is so that Replit can continue to run their service, there’s no scheme or conspiracy to drain everyone’s bank accounts (not that you implied there was). The reasoning is pretty straightforward; their are millions of accounts on Replit, now of those users, many of them likely have at least one Repl that uses some kind of hosting. Multiplied by millions of users, think about how much that hosting costs (not even considering popular Repls; according to Replit’s blog, singular Repls have managed to unknowingly drain up to even thousands of dollars in a single month). All Replit needs to do is charge a small amount for every hosted Repl and they can cover their costs. It’s simple and it’s reasonable.
This is not true, as not-ethan mentioned, deployments use replit.app, replit.dev will only be for accessing your hosted Repl while in the Replit workspace (while editing your code).
I think I read in one of the blogs somewhere (could be wrong, could be making this up 
) that the team thought it sounded unprofessional and they thought .app would be better, ultimately this change comes down to their preference and what they think is best.
I’d also like to point out that their is no rule that one must follow the Hippocratic Oath; while this law is good in theory and makes sense, Replit has no obligation to follow it. Additionally, ‘do no harm’ in this context is pretty subjective, so you really can’t use it in this context regardless.
I don’t mean this, I have known Replit for long enough to be sure that they won’t steal anything. It’s for privacy reasons and, as I’ve mentioned, I don’t have one anyway, so I can’t use the feature.
Also, the email says “repl.co will transition to replit.dev and will only be accessible while someone is actively in the editor”. Grammatically speaking, the second part of the phrase is referencing repl.co, at least that’s my interpretation.
This confirms my bad thoughts: Existing sites won’t be redirected, so I need to change every link manually 
The only other alternative would be that they could sell/give your information to other people, which is equally as unlikely from my point-of-view.
Yes, but repl.co will not exist (to my knowledge). repl.co is transitioning (moving) to replit.dev. When you apply the context, I think the second part of the phrase refers to the service that repl.co provides (which is moving to replit.dev) and not the domain repl.co itself.
I’ve just double checked and as far as I can tell it’s worded the same everywhere, so they just haven’t used the most clear choice of words
…no? Companies don’t just give back money when their customers are unsatisfied. They typed their card, agreed to everything, so the company doesn’t really have an obligation to give back any money.
That was the problem with Static Deployments. If you go above your egress, you’re automatically charged.
If a company stole money, the after legal action was taken (as it undoubtedly would) they would most likely be required to pay back what they stole. But also on top of that, once users notice unauthorised transactions, they could go to their bank and raise a dispute/object to them, some banks would just cancel the transaction.
Yeah, but that’s not stealing, you’re charged for what is used and you can set spending limits, (I don’t remember what the minimum was previously, I think maybe $10) the minimum being $0 so Replit will not charge you for burning through your egress.
I thought Replit was trying to turn their losses into profits, but looks like they’ve been domain shopping? repl.it, replit.com, repl.co, replit.app, and repl.dev make up 5 domains, way more than the number of domains a company needs. Google only needs 2 domains (excluding the typosquatting ones), so why do you people need 5? For a lot of money per month?
Yes but they also have .google. Thats the same as owning .com or .org.
Overall its probably only a few hundred a year. And considering the number of users I see with pro from my time modding mainsite its easily covered
But Google would never change all email addresses to @mail.google and deprecate all @gmail.com addresses. I mean, that’s the real problematic. You’re all getting out of theme.
No, but:
- That’s email addresses
- Replit is a lot smaller than Google
- They’re depreciating repl.co, because it wouldn’t work any more regardless (IE: Deployments & replit.app)
Don’t you even read the first post?!!
- My public website was on repl.co
- I don’t have a credit card
And I get that, (heck, I’ve got a few Repls that I’d love to stay up for free, and cannot) but knowing Replit, they won’t go back on this.
I see your point, it seems hardly worth the effort. The only reasons that I can think of are
a) it keeps out the riff-raff,
b) if it’s 20c, and they have 500,000 (??) users, that’s $100,000 per month, or $1.2m per year,
c) it’s 20c now 
Depends, Autoscale can go way higher than 20c (a few dollars and such), and static deployments will be free. Some people also don’t use websites so this change wont affect them at all. So I guess it could balance out at that amount since some people are paying more, some people paying nothing.