Ask HN: Alternatives to Serverless Framework?

17 points by Azeralthefallen 2 years ago | 9 comments

Looking for alternatives to the serverless framework, we have been using it heavily since V1, however with their new licensing changes it is no longer viable. V3 is EOL at the end of the year and we need to migrate to something else before that.

We were quoted low 6 figures per year for our existing infrastructure which is actually more then we pay for AWS for our usage of API Gateway / Lambda. We also were told there is no way to automatically opt out of features such as traces/metrics, it must be done through their UI, which is extremely frustrating because it is a massive price hike and is worse then what AWS offers overall from what i saw.

ac360 2 years ago |

CEO here. Candidly, our average deal size is less than $1K. We have not done a 6-figure deal for the Framework. I'm not aware of any mature discussions around a deal this size because most folks are gradually incrementing to V.4, which is the right approach.

I highly recommend you discuss this with us/me. We're small, approachable, flexible, and you've been with us so long we're more motivated than ever to make this work.

You can opt out of the observability features in the Dashboard.

camhart 2 years ago | |

I've been using serverless framework since v1. I'm trying to wrap my head around this idea of credits... Paying per lambda invocation? Why do I need to pay serverless framework per lambda invocation? If I'm not using the dashboard can I opt out? Can I disable that and not have to pay?

1 Lambda invocation = 4 metrics. 4 million Metrics = 1 credit. Credits are $4 each. This comes out to being 20x more expensive than what I pay AWS for lambda invocations (granted, it doesn't include runtime costs).

ac360 2 years ago | | |

There is no cost for Lambda invocations with the new Serverless Framework license. Pricing IaC around Lambda invocations does not make sense. Instead, pricing is a fixed fee for each Framework Service Instance (e.g. app) you have.

If you use the Framework's (optional) observability product, pricing is based on Traces and Metrics, like most observability solutions.

Credits are used to pay for these various features.

fitzgera1d 2 years ago |

Serverless Framework V.4 actually looks great: https://www.serverless.com/blog/serverless-framework-v4-gene...

solardev 2 years ago |

If you're using JS, it's a one click deploy to Vercel Functions https://vercel.com/docs/functions

Caveat: I don't know all of Serverless's features. Our last company used them as a legacy service but new stuff was just written in JS and put on Vercel alongside the frontend. For simple edge functions, it was a lot easier to manage (or really not manage, just write it and git push and you're done)

astuyvenberg 2 years ago |

Yeah the way they've executed this license change is really unfortunate.

SST has a good guide for migration: https://docs.sst.dev/migrating/serverless-framework

Otherwise you might consider doing the same with CDK. As a last resort you can use CloudFormation's new import/export tools and manage the stacks with SAM.

It's really too bad, I'm sure a more reasonable pricing scheme (framework only?) would lead to more adoption, but I'm sure that revenue had been a huge challenge lately and it seems like that means it's the end of the road for the Serverless Framework until v3 is forked.

(disclosure: I worked there for a while)

gardnr 2 years ago | |

SST is working to relase ion which uses pulumi instead of CDK: https://sst.dev/blog/moving-away-from-cdk.html

notaharvardmba 2 years ago |

AWS Chalice checks many of the boxes if you’re Python. https://github.com/aws/chalice

brianleroux 2 years ago |

Stable for years. Actual open governance so no more startup bait and switch. https://arc.codes