How is giving him a free dyno (albeit one that spins down when it's idle) "screwing him over"? Be specific.
The cheapest Linode is $19.95/month, and that's just a bare VM. You have to do all the sysadmin stuff yourself. For $15/month more, Heroku takes care of all that for you. If your time is worth anything at all, maintaining your Linode is going to burn up more than $15/month.
Now, granted, for some use cases the Linode makes more sense (I have one of those, too, and have been happy with it and the company overall), but I don't think either company is screwing anybody over. Both are offering good value on their products, but those products are different. Linode gives maximum flexibility, but at the cost of full responsibility. Heroku gives maximum convenience, but at the cost of less flexibility.
I call it being screwed over when you pay over $100/month to have your site 'spin down'.
I grant you that Heroku is a great service. Having a reasonably big site you'd need a system admin who costs $100/hour, Heroku saves on that too. I am not arguing against the technical convenience that it brings you. But I believe the policy of spin downs should depend more on if and how much you are paying, rather than if you are paying for a specific element of their service, in this case a dyno. It does not cost $15/month more to achieve what the poster wants, but $35/month.
He's not paying "$100/month" for dynos. If he wants to avoid spin downs, he has to pay for a dyno. That's not hidden.
" But I believe the policy of spin downs should depend more on if and how much you are paying, rather than if you are paying for a specific element of their service, in this case a dyno."
You're seriously arguing that if you buy several items from a company, they're then obligated to give you a completely different item for free?
It is easy to play devil's advocate on something like this. Technically yes, you are right, it is not hidden. What I am saying is that I find it bad form that they spin your stuff down when you are paying so much for a SERVICE.
The purpose of the dyno is not to prevent spin downs, it is a provision for background processes, think processing orders, updating information from external APIs every hour, etc.
Your comparison is obviously bogus as we are dealing with a service, not products. It is more like paying for a spotify premium account and still having to listen to ads. He is being treated like a free user, while he is paying for premium service.
The cheapest Linode is $19.95/month, and that's just a bare VM. You have to do all the sysadmin stuff yourself. For $15/month more, Heroku takes care of all that for you. If your time is worth anything at all, maintaining your Linode is going to burn up more than $15/month.
Now, granted, for some use cases the Linode makes more sense (I have one of those, too, and have been happy with it and the company overall), but I don't think either company is screwing anybody over. Both are offering good value on their products, but those products are different. Linode gives maximum flexibility, but at the cost of full responsibility. Heroku gives maximum convenience, but at the cost of less flexibility.