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Although I typically deploy my development environment or experimental services on UpCloud, I do not always stay updated on its announcements. Recently, I discovered that UpCloud has introduced a new plan called the Essentials plan, which enables certain cloud services to be deployed at no cost. The complimentary services are generally associated with network components or serve as the foundation for other cloud services. This feature is particularly useful when retaining foundational services, such as a load balancer, is necessary, while tearing down all services and reconfiguring the DNS and other application settings each time we temporarily clean up infrastructure to reduce costs is undesirable. 


When reviewing the service specifications of the cloud services in the Essentials plan, they appear to be very similar to those in the Development plan. The difference in service levels is unclear, but it could be related to hardware or resource allocation. For instance, the load balancer in the Essentials plan shares the same specifications as the one in the Development plan, featuring one node and a maximum of 1,000 concurrent sessions.


Changing the plan of existing services from Development to Essentials is not possible through the UpCloud control panel. The Essentials plan appears to be only for new deployments. For instance, it is not feasible to switch an existing loadancer to the Essentials plan via the control panel.


The new option appears when we want to initiate a new deployment.


What is peculiar is that we are still able to change the plan through its APIs. I attempted to switch my load-balancer plan from Development to Essentials using Terraform, and the operation was successful. The cost is now zero; however, even after this action, the control panel still does not display an option for the Essentials plan.


We can see that the cost is already zero in the previously deployed load-balancer, but there is no information for the Essentials plan.

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