This is Q about shinyapps.io pricing plans. I can't find the info online, or see another method of contact.
I want ~30 people to be able to use my (public, non-authenticated) shiny app at the same time, for teaching. In my free plan, I can set the maximum number of worker processes to 10, but the save changes button is greyed out above 10.
Is there a higher limit on the maximum number of worker processes if I upgrade? If so how does it scale with the different monthly plans?
The Basic plan and above may configure up to 10 workers per instance.
To go beyond 10 worker processes, additional instances may be created.
So I can pay for a Basic plan, get 3 instances of this application, have 10 workers on each and thereby have 30 simultaneous processes serving the same application? Sounds like exactly what I need, thanks!
One thing that's not clear to me is how this is supported by hardware - how many virtual cores are available on each instance? Are there 10+ virtual cores so that performance scales linearly with the number of worker processes, or are there fewer, so that performance (serving speed to each user) saturates? Ie. will a 3x10 setup like the above actually handle 30x the number of users as a 1x1 setup?
A related documentation/behaviour mismatch report (in case it's helpful, not looking for a response):
The shinyapps.io UI allows max number of workers to be set to 10 on the free plan. The response above, and the 'performance boost' caption on the pricing page imply that having multiple workers is only available on the basic plan or above. I haven't tested whether the increased max number of workers is actually used in the free plan, but the UI behaviour at least doesn't match the docs.
I haven't tried this myself yet, but what about setting up an rstudio.cloud space that your students can join. Have the shinyapp as a 'project' in the space that each student can make their own copy of and run independently?
Not as straightforward as just hitting a URL, but you can have the environment all setup so that all there is to to do is hit 'Run App' in RStudio and they each have the app launched in their browser being served by their own RStudio Cloud instance - for free.
Thanks Paul, that's a nice idea.
Given the time available and level of experience for this cohort of students, it's probably a bit much to manage. But it would be great for a more involved practical!