In a recession you learn who your true strategic partners are. It is fair enough that prices need to be increased in line with cost, however, a 100% increase with one month notice is #@#**. In our case it would be a 600% increase as this forces us onto the enterprise plan. Budgets for 2023 have already been agreed this late in the year, so this is a hard sell to the C suite.
Our conclusion is that we can't rely on DBT cloud. What is stopping them from doing this again next year?
DBT is a great tool, however, in the end it is just a Ninja templating engine. I have build something similar myself in the past, and for now I can just use dbt-core with VsCode.
Most people will just use the sql templating and scheduled cron jobs features of the cloud, which is very easy to self host.
There is cloud IDE, which is just ok in my opinion. I'd rather use a local editor, but might be a value add for some.
The cloud plans also has metadata features and APIs, which could be worth it for some use cases.
The most interesting thing tied to the cloud is the new metrics feature, but I don't really like how it's done (metrics are defined as sql fragments in YAML). Really using metrics depends on proprietary parts that dbt cloud only has, so if you are using this, you'll probably be paying for the cloud.
The cloud offering makes development easier for analysts, that are good at SQL, but not necessarily familiar with tools like VSCode. It is worth $50 per developer seat, however not $100 and definitely not $600 if you are onto the enterprise plan. For the enterprise, there are discounts available, however there is a high risk they won't be available in a in years time.
Our conclusion is that we can't rely on DBT cloud. What is stopping them from doing this again next year?
DBT is a great tool, however, in the end it is just a Ninja templating engine. I have build something similar myself in the past, and for now I can just use dbt-core with VsCode.