Skip to main content

New Burst Protection Algorithm

To protect users against surprise charges, FeedMail covers the cost of sudden bursts of updates. The initial algorithm, only charging once a day, was too simple. Many feeds regularly see multiple updates a day and the burst-protection algorithm was artificially subsidizing these feeds.

FeedMail is now using an updated algorithm to protect from bursts. The exact implementation is subject to change but is based on the following principles:

  • Updates more than 24h apart are almost always charged.
  • An average update rate is tracked per-feed. If a feed suddenly starts updating faster than the traditional rate the additional updates will not be charged.
  • The average is updated over time, so if a feed continues updating at the elevated rate credit consumption will slowly increase to match the new update rate.

FeedMail aims to be very low cost. To achieve this we need to keep our expenses predictable and fair. Otherwise we would need to overcharge some users to cover uncertainty and higher cost users.

To be fair to users who have purchased credits with the previous expectation in mind existing paid users will have their credit balance doubled to account for this difference. Based on our analysis this means that the remaining balance will last longer for all existing users. If any paid users feel like this will reduce the value of their credits please reach out to our support team and we will find the fair adjustment.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DNS Outage

From 2024-08-26 19:46 to 2024-08-27 11:21 UTC FeedMail had an outage. Until 2024-06-26 20:34 FeedMail was completely down. For the remainder of the outage most emails not sent. It is expected that no feed updates were lost during this outage. Updates would only be lost if they were only present on the feed within the 50min of total outage. Most feeds ensure that updates are present for days so this would not be an issue. Notifications have been delayed and should be sent by 2024-08-27 12:31. This may take longer if your mail provider applies limits and FeedMail needs to retry delivery at a later time. Update : All delayed notifications have been sent successfully. Timeline All times are in UTC . 2024-08-26 19:46 Start FeedMail goes down.   19:53 Detection Automated monitoring reported that feeds were not being checked. 20:34 The Database IP was hardcoded, restoring most functionality. 2024-08-27 11:21 Resolution FeedMail was switched external DNS. 11:24 Schedule of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Digests are now Supported for Owner-Paid Feeds

Owner-paid feeds allow feed publishers to provide FeedMail to their subscribers at no cost. For example the FeedMail Blog is an owner-paid feed. Up until now digest subscriptions were not covered by owner-paid plans. Subscribers could select a digest but they would have to pay for the subscriptions themselves. Digests are now fully supported under owner-paid plans. For users: The owner-paid feeds in your digests no longer count towards the cost of the digest. For publishers: Users will now be able to receive your feed as a digest or included in one of their existing digests. You will be charged one credit for each digest issue containing items from your feed (no matter how many items from your feed are in that issue). Notably this cost will never be more than real-time subscriptions would be.
Post a Comment
Read more

Changes to Billing for Multiple Simultaneous Updates

This change may result in increased credit usage for non-digest subscriptions. Am I Affected? Digest Subscriptions are unaffected . Owner-paid Feeds are unaffected . Frequently updating real-time subscriptions are affected . If you have questions regarding your specific subscriptions please contact FeedMail support . Background FeedMail pricing has always been 1 credit per email notification. However in practice FeedMail would charge at most 1 credit every time a feed was checked, even if there were multiple new items on that feed and multiple emails were sent. In other words FeedMail sometimes undercharged users. Going forward, this billing error will be corrected, which may result in higher credit usage for feeds that were previously undercharged. Correcting this issue is essential to preventing abuse, ensuring long-term sustainability, and maintaining fair pricing. Multiple updates are a rare occurrence. It usually happens on on feeds that update very often (faster than once every 5...
Post a Comment
Read more