This content is outdated! Please follow the links inside the blog post to get the actual information about current definition of an IBM Cloud Lite Account.
I got a question to my YouTube Live Stream about, if I notice actually possible IBM Cloud lite account changes.
“after a few days when I tried to repeat the process in a new lite account I started getting a message when selecting IBM Cloud Foundry that “This option isn’t available for your account type. Upgrade your account to continue”. I have no other services provisioned. Have IBM changed something in the last few days? Would appreciate your thoughts on the same.”
The YouTube Live Stream I did some times ago.
Findings related to the IBM Cloud Lite account
I wrote an blog post about a year ago called Get started with IBM Cloud – a student perspective. In this blog post you will find a link to the actual IBM Cloud account documentation. In the IBM Cloud documentation you see what’s included to an IBM Cloud lite account.
The following image shows that currently the lite plan includes Cloud Foundry “Free community build packs“ and the IBM Cloud lite plan services you find in the service catalog.
In this image you can see the current features of an lite account.
Convert an existing IBM Cloud trial account to a free IBM Cloud lite account
You can also convert an old existing IBM Cloud trial account to a free IBM Cloud lite account by following the instructions in that link “Enter your email to obtain a link that you can use to start the conversion of your Trial account to a Lite account”.
Summary
With all of that in mind, I wasn’t able to find a real change in the IBM Cloud Lite Account.
I hope this was useful for you and let’s see what’s next?
Greetings,
Thomas
#ibmcloud, #liteaccount
Thomas Suedbroecker's Blog 
Hello Thomas,
I stumbled upon the same issue with Cloud Foundry this evening.
“This option isn’t available for your account type. Upgrade your account to continue.”
This prevented me from deploying the App and continuing the setup..
I’m not sure why this is..
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Hi Tinh, it doesn’t happen to me. So, you should contact the IBM support. Maybe they can answer your question. Greetings Thomas
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Dear Thomas,
same thing happening on my side.
An account – created on 1st July 2021 but no longer available – did work.
Now it is impossible to chose “Cloud Foundry”
The answer of IBM support from today was :
After further review, it seems that Cloud Foundry is no longer available for Lite accounts.
Please upgrade your account to continue using the Cloud Foundry application.
That’s not what I wanted to do.
Any other possibility to use Node-Red without upgrading from Lite ?
Thank you for your response.
Greetings
Georg
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Hi Georg,
thanks for your feedback.
I can only reference to the official IBM documentation as I did in the blog post, which seems to be different what the IBM support is saying in your situation.
Maybe you can use Code Engine in a payed account. Code Engine has a free tier.
Regards,
Thomas
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Hello Thomas,
thank you for your feedback – really fast.
I just found this document, updated on Sep 2nd 2021:
https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-node-red-starter-application/
There you can read: “This tutorial requires an IBM Cloud Pay-As-You-Go account” …
Maybe this is the reference.
Normally I run Node-Red on a Raspberry Pi. For teaching others, the Lite Account – without any offset (payed account, Credit Card, etc.) would have been perfect.
Thanks for your videos. Really good work.
Regards
Georg
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Hi Georg,
thanks for your feedback and pointing me to the new tutorial.
Greetings Thomas
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Hi Tinh,
Did you get any reply from IBM?
As it happens with Foundry, the Code Engine isn’t available for a Lite account.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best Regards,
João
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