ZAP-Hosting Lifetime Servers - Discussion, Updates
This should be a discussion Thread concerning ZAP-Hosting's Lifetime Servers/Offers
Website: https://zap-hosting.com/en/
Crunchbase Company profile: Click
Northdata: Click
Status Page: https://status.zap-hosting.com/
YABS (from April 2023): VPS, Root Server 1, Root Server 2
In General:
ZAP-Hosting (German company, founded in 2010), after providing Lifetime Minecraft Servers for many years have recently extended their product line to include:
- Lifetime "vServer" (LXC); from 79€ for 2vCores, 8GB RAM, 25GB, 500 Mbit/s, 1 IPv4
- Lifetime "Rootserver" (KVM); from 154.80€, 4vCores, 8GB RAM, 60GB SSD NAS, 500 Mbit/s, 1Ipv4, Intel Xeon E5-2650v2/Intel Xeon E5-2667v2
- Lifetime Dedicated Servers; from 572.80€ for 1x Intel Xeon E5-2603v2, 4 Cores, 1,8 Ghz base clock, 64GB RAM, 500GB SSD, 1 IPv4
- Lifetime Webhosting; from 46.80€ for 5GB, 40 e-Mail accounts, 40 MySQL databases, they use Plesk.
You will find that the products first display the monthly price, but in the box to the right where the price total is displayed there is an option where you can click "OR xx€ lifetime".)
Sustainability:
According to the ZAP-Hosting website, there are currently 4043+ active Lifetime Servers , and about 32863 active servers in total. This suggests that while lifetime deals are often considered to be a rip-off and not sustainable, even after deducting 5000-lifetime servers, there would still be about 27000 active servers that are paid through subscriptions/prepaid contracts, suggesting that ZAP-Hosting has enough revenue to sustain their lifetime offers and/or doesn't just vanish overnight.
The total assets were counted as 1.926.615€ in 2021 according to data from Northdata (link above).
The catch (MUST READ!):
ZAP-Hosting, in the light of extending their lifetime server product line, seems to have updated their Terms of Service now requiring ALL their customers who purchased any kind of lifetime product (Minecraft Server/Webspace/vServer/Rootserver/Dedicated Server and future offerings) to log into their ZAP-Hosting Dashboard AND open up the respective product's control panel (e.g. if you have a vps with them, open the vps control panel; if you have a Minecraft Server..) once every 3 months to avoid suspension due to inactivity. If you service/product has been suspended due to inactivity you will apparently receive an email stating that you have 4 weeks to contact them, before your service/product gets cancelled permanently and any right to refund is waived.
ToS excerpt regarding lifetime products (April 9th, 2023):
§ 10 Lifetime products
(1) Products designated as lifetime products are paid for once instead of recurring.
(2) The term Lifetime/infinite/lifelong describes the lifelong right to use the product until it becomes inactive.
(3)** The case of inactivity occurs if the named lifetime product is not accessed by the customer in the customer web interface within 3 months. ZAP-Hosting then reserves the right to switch off and block the product.
If the customer does not contact us for a further 4 weeks after the blocking (grace period), the product will be permanently deleted and the entitlement to lifelong use will be cancelled.** The customer expressly waives the right to a refund of the purchase price.
After contacting us within the grace or blocking period, the inactivity case will be lifted for the time being and the product will be fully usable again.
(4) Lifetime products cannot be paid for with ZAP credits (ZAP Coins) or ZAP coin voucher codes.
I confirmed via Ticket that you DO NOT get a warning before the service gets suspended and was advised by the support staff to add a reminder on my phone (e.g. Google Calendar) to remember to log into the Dashboard and open up the product page. The support staff, however, indicated that during time of suspension, the data would not be removed from the service, albeit they stated that it's always good to have backups in the same sentence. I suggested they contact their customers 1-2 weeks PRIOR to suspension in order to avoid production service suddenly getting suspended and apparently my suggestion was forwarded to whomever (likely /dev/null ).
I also confirmed via ticket that the new change with the inactivity clause affects ALL lifetime products and ALL customers, no matter when the product was purchased.
This means that anyone who purchased a Minecraft lifetime server from any of these Threads ( Thread LES, Thread 1 LET, Thread 2 LET) is affected by this and should log into the dashboard and open up their Minecraft server page asap to avoid any suspension for inactivity and/or possible deletion.
This affects, among others, @Logano @Jamph @dedipromo @kalimov622 @yokowasis @Radi .
Ironically, @Neoon mentioned in one of the threads that ZAP Hosting had such an inactivity clause in the past, but at the time of ordering the Minecraft Servers back then this clause had been removed and only came back to light with the extension of the lifetime product line, it seems.
This part about the inactivity clause sounds tedious and annoying, but I'm sure some people might still be tempted and bite. I am/was tempted myself but holding back due to the annoying clause about inactivity.
I am a lifetime hoarder at heart and I can live with Ivacy VPN requesting me to contact them once every 5 years to extend the offer, but logging into the Dashboard once every 3 months is really annoying.
The company has been around for 13 years now and it's likely not going anywhere so fast. It has, however, also never been known to have a stellar reputation in the german gamserver market in terms of performance and customer reviews.
Installing newer Debian/Ubuntu versions (Debian 11/12, Ubuntu 20/22) on Rootservers:
As ZAP doesn't provide these images natively in the Webinterface for Rootservers atm (only for LXC),
you can try @rootnet guide for netboot to install any os, which works great:
@rootnet said:
@somik said:
Could you please make a thread on how you install it? You did it from the netboot, right? Maybe a step by step instructions on how to install the OS if the host doesn't support CDROMs?Thanks @Ympker for the shout.
Disclaimer: I made this guide in a hurry. The wordings may not be accurate with what you would be seeing on your screen while accessing zap dashboard or netboot.xyz menu. @Ympker has already tried this guide so I'll let him jump in and mention if there's any corrections needed or any additions/removal required.
Here you go mate
First thing first, make a note of your IP details, you'll need this later in netboot.xyz couple of times.
IP: 111.222.333.444 (your server's IPv4)
subnet: 255.255.255.0 (with zap-hosting it's always this for linux and windows rootserver)
gateway: 111.222.333.1 (The gateway is always the IPv4 address with a 1 at the end)Step 1: install grub-imageboot
If grub is not already installed in your machine, you can do it so by
apt install grub-imageboot
Step 2: adding netboot.xyz in grub menu
mkdir /boot/images
cd /boot/images
wget https://boot.netboot.xyz/ipxe/netboot.xyz.iso
update-grub2
Step 3: Access your server via VNC
In your Zap dashboard, go to your rootserver and click VNC-Console under tools. Click on 'start vnc tunnel' and then open the vnc webclient.Step 4: Accessing netboot.xyz
reboot your server by sending ctrl+alt+del command in your VNC browser tab. As soon as it reboots, you will see Proxmox boot screen. And soon after that you'll see the grub menu (blue screen). Once you see blue screen/grub menu, use your arrow buttons and select netboot.xyz. The option should show as 'bootable iso image: netboot.xyz' or something similar.Step 5: setting up network interface in netboot.xyz
Once you select netboot.xyz in step 4, let it do its thing. It'll take few seconds and then you'll be greeted with few questions to configure your network interface. Type in these;
- Set network interface number: 0
- IP: 111.222.333.444 (your server's IPv4)
- Subnet: 255.255.255.0
- Gateway: 111.222.333.1
- DNS: 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 (whatever you prefer)
and press enter. You should now be greeted with netboot.xyz menu.Step 6: From here, I believe you are already familiar with how to use netboot.xyz. If not, here's how I do it. I'll post steps for ubuntu 22.04 installation
go to 'linux network installs'. Select Ubuntu and then 22.04 and then select install.
netboot.xyz will do it's thing to prepare the installation. It's going to take its time. Don't be alarmed if the text shows "done" multiple times and there's no activity after that. Netboot is still doing its thing in the backend. Eventually (after 1-2 mins), netboot will say "unable to find a medium with live file system. And it will ask you few questions. Input these answers
- attempt interactive netboot from a URL? yes
- static or dhcp ip config? static
- IP: 111.222.333.444 (your server's IPv4)
- Subnet: 255.255.255.0
- Gateway: 111.222.333.1
- DNS: 1.1.1.1 (if you want to add more than 1 nameserver, you can do so here. Just leave a space between each entry, for example 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1 8.8.8.8)
- vlan id: leave it blank
- url: the default url configured in netboot is for the previous version. It does not work. so type in https://releases.ubuntu.com/jammy/ubnutu-22.04.2-live-server-amd64.iso (or you can use any ubuntu mirrors or your own link to the ubuntu ISO. If Ubuntu releases a newer version by the time you read this, make sure you adjust the URL accordingly.)
- http_proxy: leave it blank
It will start downloading the ISO and then greet you with the Ubuntu live installer screen. From here, simply follow the on screen prompts to install the ubuntu server. Make sure you select 'install ssh server' when it asks in the installation steps.Steps for installing Debian should be the same, but much more simpler. With debian installation, you won't have to enter an url for ISO download. The only place where debian installer will fail is on the network config page. By default debian installer tries DHCP. It will say network config failed. All you have to do is select 'static network' on that screen, enter the IP details you noted down earlier and then carry on with the remaining on-screen prompts.
Comments
Someone buy one, lifetime, put proxmox on it, resell cheap NAT KVM's here.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
If this hasn't been made clear upfront (and particularly if it was changed at a later date), it might be seen as an unfair contract term
It was not in the ToS back then when we all ordered on December 2021. I also have a ticket from back then which states that support agent is not "aware" of any inactivity clause.
Might ask them regarding this, but probably not worth the hassle. In a year or so they'll probably try again.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Well even as the new guy I have to weigh in I guess. As in my general topic post I commented that I had decided to get a mess of servers as it's kind of addicting with the prices here so I saw this one and decided I would take the dozen I had and make it a bakers dozen. I spun up an Ubuntu server and as a real world example thing I had a github pulled up on my laptop so I cloned it to the vps and started building it at the same time as my laptop so I could get a feel for it. The vps gets suspended for crypto mining for running make with gcc....... In total fairness when I looked at the code they showed me and I looked at the github I was looking at (yeah I forgot, adult add is a thing and I walked away from the laptop to clean the toilet) it was xmrig which is a miner for cpu crypto mining. I responded to them in a lighthearted way as that's what I do and let's say that it kind of went downhill from there. After I explained to them that there was no mining or no intention of mining they agreed to flip the vps on after an os reinstall and that if it happened again they would suspend the account with no refund. I get the mining thing but there was no mining just gcc which is allowed. Still going to play with the vps so I am still not sure if it is a good one or not (it did seem to be building about the same speed as my laptop before I walked away) however I wanted to give people a heads up of how they respond to using gcc and how deep they watch.
its in the ToS right now, despite that, they can update the ToS as they want, they would have to notify you though.
You could disagree, which they would terminate your services.
Also, Keep in mind.
"The customer expressly waives the right to a refund of the purchase price."
So if they push something you don't like, you fucked.
I doubt that they would do it but still, they could, so lets say something gets expensive or abused, things might change and you need to eat it.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
So did you order a lifetime vps? If so, care to share https://yabs.sh Benchmark with us?
That is true, but while AGB/TOS are important in Germany it doesn't mean anything they state there is legally fine. E.g. they could write in their TOS, that you have to give them your newborn, if you forgot to pay but whether that holds up legally is another question. Then again, who wants to go to court over some virtual server. So yeah, unless you legally challenge questionable changes to TOS, you'll have to deal with it..and if you legally challenge them it's usually the end of the relationship between client and provider one way or another..
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
As they are based in the EU, there are limits to what they can do, as stated here with some examples:
Just saw your reply. Yep I went and got the lifer and am running it now and sending the output to a text file. I'll upload it as soon as it's done.
Don't expect too good performance but lifetime means a longer lifetime there than on many other services imo.
Benchmark still running?
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Yeah after dealing with their ticket people I am not expecting much....
Yeah the server became unresponsive and I had to shut it down through the website and restart it. I dont think it was the test thing. here is the link it generated https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/857624
Thanks, not too bad.
Single: 677
Multi: 1168
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
I have no idea what I'm looking at so I will take you'r word for it lol. All I know is that I keep loosing ssh with it and my experiance with their ticket people so far.....
The fact you did get ticket replies today, on a Sunday and on Easter, is commendable though. But yeah, mostly L1 agents online rn.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
I think one of the people was listed as a level 2 but yeah I agree it's a major holiday so the response time was surprising (around 15 minutes each) although to be fair the do say 24/7 so.....
I waited 4-5 hours for response today.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
wow.................. May I ask who? Plus you probably have a manly server, I have little kids toys.....
Who? Support Agent? I won't share their name but I don't think it would matter who answered either. It was a question they were likely not too happy to answer (whether old lifetime deals were also affected by this inactivity fee).
I only have some small lifetime Minecraft server with them and my vps are tiny too
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Sorry I meant which provider didn't put 2 and 2 together lol. As an aside if you attempt to upgrade from ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 evidently iy trashes the machine. Time to go see if I can find out how to rebuild it.....
if you have access to a kvm vnc, you could write netboot.xyz to the hdd and reboot it, then use that to install 22.04 directly without upgrades, if it is the LXC one, SOL
See I know what those letters are...... I just have no idea what they mean lol.
Also ZAP Hosting (Mc server).
Fml. Just ordered Finland 2vCores, 8GB RAM, 25GB . Fwiw, I would have had to login every 3 months now anyway, in order to keep alive my Minecraft lifetime server I bought in 2021.
The VPS interface looks clean and simple Pw login is disabled by default, you can add/generate ssh keys in the interface which are added without reboot (LXC). There is also DDoS Manager which allows to choose between different modes (always-on, temporary, and some semi-protected mode). You can manage rDNS, reinstall, start/stop and use VNC from the management interface, too.
I opted for Finland, because German location didn't look really stable on their Status page (lots of 1-2h downtimes) compared to Finland which has been up 100%. YABS is coming after my vacation
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
There is even an option you can enable to run Docker containers on your LXC vps
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Hi @Ympker , how the vps performance and uptime?
Hi, I only recently (22th of April) set up monitoring on Hetrixtools, but Finland LXC seems to run stable: https://hetrixtools.com/report/uptime/f409b9c69d3f363d8ef67455d5e6d4bc/
FIO test wasn't that great, but it's okay.
I also have a Rootserver (Germany) which I prepaid for 30 days with free ZAP coins trialing it atm to see performance. Rootserver had slower FIO results on both, Finland and Germany, though. However, CPU scored more. To be fair, they were happy to let me try FIO on both, Germany and Finland Rootserver (they refunded my payment once so I could try the other location which was really nice), however both FIO results weren't that impressive, unfortunately.
FIO Rootserver Germany:
FIO Finland Rootserver
I also run a full YABS of Rootserver, but results are at home on PC.
Can post later.
Hope this helps
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Thanks @Ympker . I thinking using this for some low trafic personal wordpress web.
It should be perfectly capable for that use case
Finland seems to have better uptime than Germany, so perhaps choose that one.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Finland and Germany... do they use Hetzner's datacentre?
Stacksocial link (aff) containing a gift of $10 after your first purchase.
I took the plunge and bought a "lifetime" dedi. They seem to use Combahton network (quite prem) at Germany. Will try to post more info about it tomorrow.