The Situation We're in, and the 2024 Change

Support Feedback/General Problems
1

Introduction

In early March of this year, I, @EnZon3, @bddy, and @codingMASTER398 composed a document on why Replit shouldn’t add those pesky deployment restrictions, as well as the nerfing of the free and hacker plans. Then, we posted it on Ask (post located here).
The conversation lasted throughout the month and ended with a one-on-one conversation with the Replit team where we could express more of our concerns. Unfortunately, little to nothing changed.

And once again, we’re back in the same situation. This time, a large portion of the community is worried and opposing the next upcoming change.

QUICK DISCLAIMER

Just like the post from March, this isn’t made to condemn or put down Replit; and is only to address some concerns that the community has. This article will be focusing A LOT on the free plan rather than the paid plans.

On the topic of Deployments

Deployments are great – depending on the situation. Most people opt out of deployments since it doesn’t fit their needs or like the non-costly option. With the new change, only being able to use ‘nerfed’ deployments is bad enough; but when you add the static site restriction and egress, it only gets worse.

Over the past week, I did a StrawPoll which asked the question:

If you don’t plan to use Replit after Jan. 1st (the date of the change), what is the reason?

Out of 43 total responses, over 75% said their problem was with the restrictions that would take place. A result that should not be surprising.

Many of Replit’s active users throughout the community are in the minority age (<18) and might not be able to afford a paid plan or dislike the complexity of other services.
Additionally, most of those people make programs which would not be available after the change, forcing them to move out or buy a subscription.
That same group of people also mostly post them to the Replit Community page (also formerly known as Replit Talk) which is a main source of motivation to code, especially for unemployed and self-taught programmers.

StrawPoll results
StrawPoll results1094×430 39.9 KB

They still can switch to other platforms; but once again many of those people can prefer the simplicity of Replit and not know how to make that important switch.

In the same poll, over 10% said pricing was the problem. Which is also pretty fair. The website https://noreplit.com (made by @codingMASTER398 and @techwithanirudh) does a very good job at comparing and listing alternatives to Replit.
Some free options include:

  • Vercel
  • Glitch
  • GitHub Codespaces
  • Cloudflare Pages

and paid options include:

  • AWS EC2
  • DigitalOcean
  • Oracle Cloud

most of which are more cost-friendly and have better performance compared to Replit.
The website also have quotes such as:

“The young aspiring developers that made Replit the company it is today ultimately have been abandoned and kicked to the curb by the platform with rising costs and and restrictions.” - @Zavexeon

or

“So, what? Replit is just not free anymore? Hosting on Replit was already frustrating enough with the slow speeds and the sleepy repls, and now you’re just pulling the plug entirely? Wow.” - @wutadamyt

which just shows a fraction of how much of the community despises this change and the prices.

On the topic of Quality

Lately, there has been a sharp increase in the amount of issues inside Replit including some people actually losing their data during the September 29th outage which at the time of writing, still isn’t fully recovered.

There’s also the topic of many unnecessary changes that affects a user’s workflow or experience.
Like the UI, for example. In the IDE, the Storage meter changed from a bar to a number which decreases consistency and coherency, leading to an unsatisfactory experience for the user.

Conclusion

Many people have turned to brighter, greener pastures after (or even before) the announcement of this change was made. Notable people throughout the community have already changed their choice of platform, and it seems as if that choice is becoming a trend.
Even if Replit changes their mind in a miraculous effort, some people still will not come back. Some are still waiting for that change. And some will never leave the platform.

Let’s end with a quote from a good friend and coder known throughout the Replit community.

“I was a power-user a little while back. Migration would be hell. I have tons of websites to port over, and it won’t be fun. And that’s what was amazing about Replit, you could basically make anything you wanted at any time, at any rate. It’s what kept my motivation super high, Now that motivation has dried up.” - @EnZon3

Sources, or whatchamacallit

Appendices

Appendix A: Replit Ask

Yes, there is a post on Replit Ask about this change (see Changes to Hosting on Replit!) and there has been a large discussion about the controversial change there. However, it is much easier to get the point across and expand on the topic on a new post rather than the official one.

Appendix B: The Other Option

On the aforementioned poll, 10%+ voted for another option. The majority of those people said that all of the above were problems with their Replit experience. I am sooooo sorry for not including this in the main article. :frowning:

Appendix C: The Community does not Like the Change

I’ve said this once and I’ll say it once again. The community does not want this change to happen.

Take this Repl which is trending with just shy 300 likes at the time of writing this.
It is quite literally titled, “Do Not Make Hosting Paid,” and lists the reasons of why you shouldn’t have to pay just to run programs.
Additionally, it has a section showing the amount of times when the Repl was unpublished by moderators; just taken off the platform.

And now, as of 18:58 CST, it has been taken down again from the entire platform.

taken down from platform, 18:58
taken down from platform, 18:581350×859 64.5 KB

18 Likes
2

Bibliography??? Or no??

1 Like
3

I really don’t know at this point, does it even matter?

1 Like
5

short, and well composed. no ranting at all! very impressive statement nnbp! and yes, i totally agree.

6 Likes
6

Out of 43 votes, 75% is a significant ratio (32 people). However, I agree with some of the points raised here. Lately, Replit’s performance has not been the best, and it could certainly improve. Additionally, there’s the issue of pricing, which is relatively high. Considering that most Replit users are below 18 and may not have the means to afford it or make purchases due to personal or age-related reasons, this can indeed impact their overall user experience on Replit.

8 Likes
7

I’m all for Replit, they’ve always been a good platofrm. But swapping Free Repls with Deployments just doesn’t sit right. I’m sticking with Replit, but seriously hoping they’d rethink the whole replit.dev and deployments thing. It could win many folks back.

4 Likes
8

Btw guys, saying most Replit users are under 18 is something you shouldn’t be relying on, as you have nothing concrete to back that up.

It is probably safe to say most active community members are below 18, but Replit has many more users than just its active community.

Replit has over 20 million users. The active community is barely 100 users, let alone a majority.

11 Likes
9

Does any staff even take a look at this topic? Or take in any consideration? They say they do, and it’s hard to change, but surely hearing the voice of the people makes up the company as well? What is a platform without any feedback? Nothing. If Replit Staff were in the same position as us, I’m sure they would’ve agreed. Seriously, though: why, Replit, why!?

5 Likes
10

It doesn’t seem like Replit has seen this post, but it feels as if they’re becoming more and more money-driven as time goes on which I do understand. However, when you sacrifice the user experience with it, it doesn’t have much appeal to many consumers.

5 Likes
11

Yes Replit staff actively monitors new topics and ones like this are ones that we would directly alert them as it contains valuable feedback. But it is a weekend (and a holiday one in the United states) staff are not as active so you many need to wait until Tusday for a response

7 Likes
13

Well I probably won’t move from Replit, since the only problem I have is sharing websites with others.
I’ll just use some other hosting website, but other than that, I’ll still be on Replit.

5 Likes
14

I think (OPINION) it would be stupid to assume the majority is over 18. Replit was best for education and schools for a long time, until the changes.

3 Likes
15

No offense, but it doesn’t really matter what you think is

to assume. Cactus’ point still stands.

2 Likes
16

Not many people who came to Replit through school are going to be hosting anything. My secondary school and sixth form used Replit, but out of the 150 students using the platform, less than 5 have gone on to use it further than simple console repls.

However, there is another group of students who use Replit in a different way: proxies. These will also not be affected as they only need to be awake as and when someone wants to use them, not 24/7.

The final potentially large under 18 group, is discord bot hosters. They will undoubtedly be affected, however I have seen many times that most have been willing to pay for Always On, and so autoscale repls, should supposedly be cheaper for them anyway.

Of course, I’m aware there are a few insane child coders on Replit, hosting such amazing projects. However, it’s clear they are by no means the majority of users, and therefore, while it’s nice for them to be considered, it wouldn’t make sense for them to be the deciding factor on large, product wide, platform changes.

7 Likes
17

checks out. alright, makes sense

1 Like
18

Where did you post this poll? I never saw it before.

The active users’ input should be considered as highly important as they are the people spending the most time on the platform.

Of the active members on Ask most have admitted at some point or another to being under 18. Adults were never driven away from the forum, and other forums have adults, so surely there is a reason that the majority of Ask users are minors. From what I’ve seen of the Replit community, it seems to be similarly comprised of children. My personal experiences indicate that Ask users tend to be more mature (and thus potentially older) than many mainsite users (though certainly not all). Either adults make up a majority and actively avoid the community and rarely contribute to the support forum or children make up the majority of users.

5 Likes
19

StrawPoll

2 Likes
20

Active users is a different concept to active community members. There are many many more active users of Replit than active community members.

5 Likes
21

I’ll bet you 5,000 cycles that in the first day of January there will be a flood of “active users” asking why their stuff isn’t working anymore.

7 Likes
22

Oh yeah. It’s also unclear about how they’re going to smoothly transition from now till January 1st. Let’s just hope that nothing bad happens during that process…

3 Likes