Heroku maximum monthly charge with Hobby plan?

Question

I have always been a free Heroku user however I recently changed an app to run on the Hobby plan. I noticed the hobby plan details say that it is $7/month/dyno. This confuses me a bit, is there any way I can be charged more than $7/month with one application running on a Hobby plan? If a ton of users happen to go to the site will there be some Dyno scaling that will end up costing me more than the list price? Is this possible? Thanks

Obstipation

By default, it won't auto-scale. That's a paid add-on. devcenter.heroku.com/articles/adept-scale – Roentgenology

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a billing question to be directed to the vendor. – Roentgenology

@Roentgenology I just figured I could get a quick answer here that might help others since the Heroku contact setup is kind of convoluted – Obstipation

Answer 1

Heroku does not autoscale dynos (as of the time of this answer). As a commenter notes there are addons that do so and even full on third party services.

If you are worried about big traffic spikes and don't want to use addons like the one above or third party services, I'd recommend setting up some basic monitoring with an addon like NewRelic and/or Librato. With those services, you can set up alerts for traffic spikes and scale up your dynos yourself; then you will have total control. I'd recommend having one or both of those anyway for basic monitoring.

That said, you asked if there is "any way" you could get charged more that $7/month and there is: paid addons, upgraded DB plans, SSL are some ways. But as far as dynos go, Heroku does not autoscale.

More info about pricing at: https://www.heroku.com/pricing

Revkah

Ok thanks. Yeah I got a little worried upon seeing the constant repeat of "Estimated Monthly Cost: $7.00". Also this means, if I have two projects on the $7.00 project that's a dyno for each, thus $14.00 a month correct? Just want to make sure there's no surprises – Obstipation

That is my understanding. My guess is that the "estimated" part is a legal thing. You could also ask the support team before you switch: help.heroku.com (requires log in, IIRC) – Revkah