@FlamesRunner said: I'm glad I stopped hoarding new servers and just kept a few boxes from known, reputable providers.
Except he WAS seen as a reputable provider. First the whole colo shitshow now this.
Whole thing has kinda shaken my faith in LES style providers. Obviously I was aware that LES pricepoint comes with risk but still.
Gonna park my stuff on Azure. At least until I figure out a way to do cleaner automated backups & restores to a clean VM.
I wish I could say any of this was surprising, but I pegged HostDoc as scammy right after my first month with them and the experience I had. I tested HostDoc when it originally started, the week it started, I believe. The services were not really that great and then his tact for handling live chat was AWFUL. I was, I think, 2 hours late on payment and he tried to tack on a late fee twice the value of the actual service and hold my service hostage. After that, I had no delusions of staying with them or them being a long term provider. On top of that, it was easy to see that 90% of the infrastructure was just rented servers and nothing he was using was owned. As such, I canceled my server , got out after the first month and never looked back.
I then later posted about my experience in a thread where the owner started going off on people on LET and eventually others were taking pity on him so I let my complaints go and didn't continue after him. Though in retrospect, maybe more pressure should have been put on him then, instead of letting it go on another several months before finding his way out with this exit scam. Worst part was, all the community members blindly falling for his prices, his shtick and then doing mass advertising for him of the unsustainable deals he would offer, most specifically during holidays, not anticipating or considering what was to come.
TL;DR;
For me the signs were all there from the start, I tried to speak up a few times about it, but because of how favorable people were to the brand, it seems most of the sentiment was lost on people in their want for cheaper and cheaper services to the point where people were willing to overlook the obvious logical flaws (unrealistic cost) just to get services. It is most unfortunate he was allowed to rope in people with yearlies, where most other hosts in his position we would have openly recommended only month-to-month purchases. However, because of all the fan boys hanging around for HostDoc, many were convinced it was safe to take on longer contracts and blindly dove in.
Sadly it turned out to be one of those cases where, "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck!"
My hope is we are able to learn from this going forward and be a little less proactive / more cautious about pushing and advertising newer hosts which are active without their own infrastructure and selling too good to be true deals.
@TheLinuxBug said: I tried to speak up a few times about it but because of how favorable people were to the brand it seems most of the sentiment was lost on people
@Clouvider said:
There are reliable providers on this forums, just saying. Just stop hunting the non-existent bargain.
One of the things for me in this case was that I'm fairly new to these forums. I knew the 'low end universe' before (had services with OVH, Online, Liteserver, First Root, UltraVPS before registering on LET) but had no idea of all the different providers and promotions.
As far as I was concerned, HostDoc had a very good reputation and good offers. This is why I registered with them on Cyber Monday. This wasn't a lower than low deal, but on fairly new hardware on a fairly good (OVH) network. That they didn't own their own hardware is not unheard of at this price point, so wasn't a dealbreaker for me either. It was only 4 days later that the whole ReliableSite drama began. That's when I got second thoughts about this provider.
Thing is though if not virtually everyone praised the heck out of HostDoc I wouldn't have bought something at his. Because he was known as a reliable provider with good deals. And deals are as addictive as potassium.
As a community we should be more careful with naming any new provider with good performance and deals as the next saviour.
Hopefully this post won't offend any providers...not intended to...
Alas that to be honest is a big part of the problem. Bargain pricing is the main (only?) selling point for LES sized providers. Price it higher and you're squarely in DO/Linode territory or worse GCP/Azure with all of the synergies of their other toys and free tier allocations.
Smaller providers can't compete on features with cloud and can't compete on stability with the big providers. That leaves cost & making this a race to the bottom. Focusing on the choices of a provider that "won" that race and painted themselves into a corner is the wrong interpretation imo. Warning signs or not - this seems very much like a structural issue in the entire industry / community.
Hell other providers here have given me even better deals than doc and said provider seems reasonable. Do I cancel that? Per your logic I should. Yet it's great value (while it lasts). Which is part of the reason why my thinking is doubling down on better deployment / backup processes to absorb the risk my side
Let me add some of my own perspective as a provider.
The issue is when you START off in business and you are already racing to the bottom.
There is no issue selling bulk/cheap as long as there is some profit in every single thing you sell, but when you come to the market selling at a loss or with 50c p/year margins, you are setting yourself up to fail.
You need to build a stable base, sometimes that means you need to stay working in your shitty day job for a few years while you build up a stable foundation.
I sell stuff cheap, sometimes I sell stuff so cheap that it would be a loss if I sold everything at that rate, sometimes you have a few nodes with say 4GB ram unused and a chunk of disk space free that have been full/locked for years and already more than cover their own costs + profit under no significant load, that is when you go for the 20 x 512mb plans for €10 p/year.
The issue is that some people see this and think that's the standard business model and they need to compete, this is when you start seeing the flash in the pan hosts that you just know will not last, you get an instinct for it, you just know they are either selling raid 1 as 10 or they have no raid at all, I have seen it myself when hosts have reached out for help with things and some kid puts the nodes (yes plural) root password in a skype message like its some emoji and you start trouble shooting performance issues for them and see that they have 60 VM's running in a single sata disk sold as raid 10. (true story)
Its a complete wash with dodgy tactics and zero common sense selling.
So you cant judge a host on price alone but i would say it is fair to say that if a deal looks unsustainable and the host is say less than 3 years old, it probably is long term unsustainable, all circumstances are different though, it could be a loss leader to make a name and they have solid financial backing.
I would say dont depend on any host, even the big ones go pop, if you are going to use lowend, have your own redundancy and disaster plan and only spend what you can afford to loose, no business is bombproof.
@havoc said: Hell other providers here have given me even better deals than doc and said provider seems reasonable. Do I cancel that? Per your logic I should. Yet it's great value (while it lasts). Which is part of the reason why my thinking is doubling down on better deployment / backup processes to absorb the risk my side
There is few key items I would concentrate on. Does the host you are working with own their infrastructure? If not, how long have they been in business providing the specific service you are looking to purchase?
If they own the infrastructure outright and have their own network setup for example, there is a real investment into that and generally, most who make money at it in the business, make longer term multi-year contracts to get the best prices on colo and power. This usually means they are more likely to have better investment and a better chance of long term existence. Many of the best (successful) 'low end' providers have done it / do it as a loss leader as well, it can be cheaper to break even or even take a small initial loss than to spend money on 'advertising your brand' and many will use it as a way to lower their advertising budget and get their brand name known.
The thing you need to be able to do is determine the difference between those companies which are established and able to offer the deals because it is advertising vs. those whom are literally running a one person business with rented servers on razor thin margins.
I am not saying don't ever support the small business whom currently operates with 'some rented hardware' , just set your expectations accordingly going in. If it is an OVH reseller, for example, the overhead can be quite low in some circumstance, so hosts reselling there with cheap plans makes a lot more sense, than for example, someone reselling Tier 1 networks for $3 for 4TB of traffic. Be logical and look at other offers in the same price range to determine if the price can be sustainable and if you like the services, don't be afraid to upgrade to the next tier. Most hosts are really hoping to get you in the door with these deals and that you will like their service enough to upgrade and pay for their higher tiers, especially it you really use the resources. That is how they stay in business long term, not from your $3.00 promotional server that you purchased.
If you are really concerned though, again, set your expectations correctly and only buy-in on a monthly basis. That way, when / if the day comes that you get the notification the service is going away, your max loss is no more than 1 month of service (a few dollars) and you won't be disappointed, instead, happy you had an opportunity to have a great cheap service while it lasted.
You missed the part when I said "known" as well. By that, I mean any provider that has been in business for at least half a decade probably won't go out of business (i.e RamNode/LunaNode/BuyVM/etc).
@TheLinuxBug said: even take a small initial loss than to spend money on 'advertising your brand' and many will use it as a way to lower their advertising budget and get their brand name known.
This x 1000! Never-ending flash sales usually are dead giveaways of poor business practice.
@FlamesRunner said: You missed the part when I said "known" as well. By that, I mean any provider that has been in business for at least half a decade probably won't go out of business (i.e RamNode/LunaNode/BuyVM/etc).
@havoc said: Bargain pricing is the main (only?) selling point for LES sized providers.
Many of the providers here seem to enjoy being in the hosting business. Many of the providers here seem to try to do a really good job with personalized customer service. Price well may be a very significant selling point for LES sized providers, while still not the main selling point and certainly not the only selling point. Just my two cents. :-)
@Not_Oles said: Many of the providers here seem to enjoy being in the hosting business.
Yeah that's fair. Not looking to knock anyone's fine work - I sure as hell can't run a VPS provider.
And some here are offering my things I couldn't get easily elsewhere at similar pricing. This whole drama has just made me think about the pricing & market segmentation more I guess
@FlamesRunner said: You missed the part when I said "known" as well. By that, I mean any provider that has been in business for at least half a decade probably won't go out of business (i.e RamNode/LunaNode/BuyVM/etc).
Thanks guys. I will probably add a note to all hostdoc posts. Ultimately, I think the conclusions are valid back then, so they can stay, but a cautionary note is in order so that people can see what are unsustainable deals.
@havoc said:
Alas that to be honest is a big part of the problem. Bargain pricing is the main (only?) selling point for LES sized providers. Price it higher and you're squarely in DO/Linode territory or worse GCP/Azure with all of the synergies of their other toys and free tier allocations.
I don't know about everyone else but the offerings/control interfaces of GCP/AWS/Azure/etc. confuse the hell out of me. Like I have to go to 10 different places just to get a VPS up and running.
I am not an IT guy for a living, just know enough to be dangerous, so that's that.
That's what draws me to low-end, besides the price point. I am much at ease with what's being offered here and how to operate the client panels than those big guys.
@terrorgen said: offerings/control interfaces of GCP/AWS/Azure/etc. confuse the hell out of me. Like I have to go to 10 different places just to get a VPS up and running.
Yeah they try to cater for everyone's needs which results in a billion possible combinations.
Once you figure out what part of the maze to look at though deploying a VPS is exactly like a provider here: Size, location, login credentials & give it a name.
...well that plus the pay 3x the price part of course
I hear you. Definitely had some learning moments too. e.g. On Azure:
Click Stop button on control panel
...VM stops, billing stops
sudo poweroff
...VM stops, billing does not stop
The non-VPS/VM parts of the cloud offerings also still confuse the hell out of me. Esp cause each provider is doing their own thing...very little standardization
I deleted my Azure VPS but still get charged the next month. Went into the control panel and found that I have to delete some unused resources for me to not get charged again!
Whereas here, it's clear that when you deleted your VPS (cancel service), you won't get charged any further. Whether you can get refunded for the unused periods depends on the vendor's policy.
Comments
Except he WAS seen as a reputable provider. First the whole colo shitshow now this.
Whole thing has kinda shaken my faith in LES style providers. Obviously I was aware that LES pricepoint comes with risk but still.
Gonna park my stuff on Azure. At least until I figure out a way to do cleaner automated backups & restores to a clean VM.
There are reliable providers on this forums, just saying. Just stop hunting the non-existent bargain.
Clouvider Limited - Our LES Exclusive Unmetered Dedicated Server Offers
I wish I could say any of this was surprising, but I pegged HostDoc as scammy right after my first month with them and the experience I had. I tested HostDoc when it originally started, the week it started, I believe. The services were not really that great and then his tact for handling live chat was AWFUL. I was, I think, 2 hours late on payment and he tried to tack on a late fee twice the value of the actual service and hold my service hostage. After that, I had no delusions of staying with them or them being a long term provider. On top of that, it was easy to see that 90% of the infrastructure was just rented servers and nothing he was using was owned. As such, I canceled my server , got out after the first month and never looked back.
I then later posted about my experience in a thread where the owner started going off on people on LET and eventually others were taking pity on him so I let my complaints go and didn't continue after him. Though in retrospect, maybe more pressure should have been put on him then, instead of letting it go on another several months before finding his way out with this exit scam. Worst part was, all the community members blindly falling for his prices, his shtick and then doing mass advertising for him of the unsustainable deals he would offer, most specifically during holidays, not anticipating or considering what was to come.
TL;DR;
For me the signs were all there from the start, I tried to speak up a few times about it, but because of how favorable people were to the brand, it seems most of the sentiment was lost on people in their want for cheaper and cheaper services to the point where people were willing to overlook the obvious logical flaws (unrealistic cost) just to get services. It is most unfortunate he was allowed to rope in people with yearlies, where most other hosts in his position we would have openly recommended only month-to-month purchases. However, because of all the fan boys hanging around for HostDoc, many were convinced it was safe to take on longer contracts and blindly dove in.
Sadly it turned out to be one of those cases where, "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck!"
My hope is we are able to learn from this going forward and be a little less proactive / more cautious about pushing and advertising newer hosts which are active without their own infrastructure and selling too good to be true deals.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
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20+ Years IT Experience in Linux/Windows Hosting, Administration and Development
This 100%
One of the things for me in this case was that I'm fairly new to these forums. I knew the 'low end universe' before (had services with OVH, Online, Liteserver, First Root, UltraVPS before registering on LET) but had no idea of all the different providers and promotions.
As far as I was concerned, HostDoc had a very good reputation and good offers. This is why I registered with them on Cyber Monday. This wasn't a lower than low deal, but on fairly new hardware on a fairly good (OVH) network. That they didn't own their own hardware is not unheard of at this price point, so wasn't a dealbreaker for me either. It was only 4 days later that the whole ReliableSite drama began. That's when I got second thoughts about this provider.
Thing is though if not virtually everyone praised the heck out of HostDoc I wouldn't have bought something at his. Because he was known as a reliable provider with good deals. And deals are as addictive as potassium.
As a community we should be more careful with naming any new provider with good performance and deals as the next saviour.
Hopefully this post won't offend any providers...not intended to...
Alas that to be honest is a big part of the problem. Bargain pricing is the main (only?) selling point for LES sized providers. Price it higher and you're squarely in DO/Linode territory or worse GCP/Azure with all of the synergies of their other toys and free tier allocations.
Smaller providers can't compete on features with cloud and can't compete on stability with the big providers. That leaves cost & making this a race to the bottom. Focusing on the choices of a provider that "won" that race and painted themselves into a corner is the wrong interpretation imo. Warning signs or not - this seems very much like a structural issue in the entire industry / community.
Hell other providers here have given me even better deals than doc and said provider seems reasonable. Do I cancel that? Per your logic I should. Yet it's great value (while it lasts). Which is part of the reason why my thinking is doubling down on better deployment / backup processes to absorb the risk my side
Let me add some of my own perspective as a provider.
The issue is when you START off in business and you are already racing to the bottom.
There is no issue selling bulk/cheap as long as there is some profit in every single thing you sell, but when you come to the market selling at a loss or with 50c p/year margins, you are setting yourself up to fail.
You need to build a stable base, sometimes that means you need to stay working in your shitty day job for a few years while you build up a stable foundation.
I sell stuff cheap, sometimes I sell stuff so cheap that it would be a loss if I sold everything at that rate, sometimes you have a few nodes with say 4GB ram unused and a chunk of disk space free that have been full/locked for years and already more than cover their own costs + profit under no significant load, that is when you go for the 20 x 512mb plans for €10 p/year.
The issue is that some people see this and think that's the standard business model and they need to compete, this is when you start seeing the flash in the pan hosts that you just know will not last, you get an instinct for it, you just know they are either selling raid 1 as 10 or they have no raid at all, I have seen it myself when hosts have reached out for help with things and some kid puts the nodes (yes plural) root password in a skype message like its some emoji and you start trouble shooting performance issues for them and see that they have 60 VM's running in a single sata disk sold as raid 10. (true story)
Its a complete wash with dodgy tactics and zero common sense selling.
So you cant judge a host on price alone but i would say it is fair to say that if a deal looks unsustainable and the host is say less than 3 years old, it probably is long term unsustainable, all circumstances are different though, it could be a loss leader to make a name and they have solid financial backing.
I would say dont depend on any host, even the big ones go pop, if you are going to use lowend, have your own redundancy and disaster plan and only spend what you can afford to loose, no business is bombproof.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
i can only think of
There is few key items I would concentrate on. Does the host you are working with own their infrastructure? If not, how long have they been in business providing the specific service you are looking to purchase?
If they own the infrastructure outright and have their own network setup for example, there is a real investment into that and generally, most who make money at it in the business, make longer term multi-year contracts to get the best prices on colo and power. This usually means they are more likely to have better investment and a better chance of long term existence. Many of the best (successful) 'low end' providers have done it / do it as a loss leader as well, it can be cheaper to break even or even take a small initial loss than to spend money on 'advertising your brand' and many will use it as a way to lower their advertising budget and get their brand name known.
The thing you need to be able to do is determine the difference between those companies which are established and able to offer the deals because it is advertising vs. those whom are literally running a one person business with rented servers on razor thin margins.
I am not saying don't ever support the small business whom currently operates with 'some rented hardware' , just set your expectations accordingly going in. If it is an OVH reseller, for example, the overhead can be quite low in some circumstance, so hosts reselling there with cheap plans makes a lot more sense, than for example, someone reselling Tier 1 networks for $3 for 4TB of traffic. Be logical and look at other offers in the same price range to determine if the price can be sustainable and if you like the services, don't be afraid to upgrade to the next tier. Most hosts are really hoping to get you in the door with these deals and that you will like their service enough to upgrade and pay for their higher tiers, especially it you really use the resources. That is how they stay in business long term, not from your $3.00 promotional server that you purchased.
If you are really concerned though, again, set your expectations correctly and only buy-in on a monthly basis. That way, when / if the day comes that you get the notification the service is going away, your max loss is no more than 1 month of service (a few dollars) and you won't be disappointed, instead, happy you had an opportunity to have a great cheap service while it lasted.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
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20+ Years IT Experience in Linux/Windows Hosting, Administration and Development
@havoc
You missed the part when I said "known" as well. By that, I mean any provider that has been in business for at least half a decade probably won't go out of business (i.e RamNode/LunaNode/BuyVM/etc).
wget https://s.flamz.pw/dl/bench.sh && bash bench.shcurl https://s.flamz.pw/analytics/bench/stats.phpThis x 1000! Never-ending flash sales usually are dead giveaways of poor business practice.
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Wow, you must be new.
Can't believe it's been so long...
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Many of the providers here seem to enjoy being in the hosting business. Many of the providers here seem to try to do a really good job with personalized customer service. Price well may be a very significant selling point for LES sized providers, while still not the main selling point and certainly not the only selling point. Just my two cents. :-)
MetalVPS
Yeah that's fair. Not looking to knock anyone's fine work - I sure as hell can't run a VPS provider.
And some here are offering my things I couldn't get easily elsewhere at similar pricing. This whole drama has just made me think about the pricing & market segmentation more I guess
And great. You rock.
@poisson mind to add warning to the LEB reviews leaderboad ? https://lowendboxes.review/chart/
Hmm
3,4,5,6,10,15
Maybe time to refresh the list, call this one archive and do a March 2020 edition?
VPS reviews and benchmarks |
Thanks guys. I will probably add a note to all hostdoc posts. Ultimately, I think the conclusions are valid back then, so they can stay, but a cautionary note is in order so that people can see what are unsustainable deals.
Deals and Reviews: LowEndBoxes Review | Avoid dodgy providers with The LEBRE Whitelist | Free hosting (with conditions): Evolution-Host, NanoKVM, FreeMach, ServedEZ | Get expert copyediting and copywriting help at The Write Flow
I don't know about everyone else but the offerings/control interfaces of GCP/AWS/Azure/etc. confuse the hell out of me. Like I have to go to 10 different places just to get a VPS up and running.
I am not an IT guy for a living, just know enough to be dangerous, so that's that.
That's what draws me to low-end, besides the price point. I am much at ease with what's being offered here and how to operate the client panels than those big guys.
The all seeing eye sees everything...
Yeah they try to cater for everyone's needs which results in a billion possible combinations.
Once you figure out what part of the maze to look at though deploying a VPS is exactly like a provider here: Size, location, login credentials & give it a name.
...well that plus the pay 3x the price part of course
I hear you. Definitely had some learning moments too. e.g. On Azure:
...VM stops, billing stops
...VM stops, billing does not stop
The non-VPS/VM parts of the cloud offerings also still confuse the hell out of me. Esp cause each provider is doing their own thing...very little standardization
I deleted my Azure VPS but still get charged the next month. Went into the control panel and found that I have to delete some unused resources for me to not get charged again!
Whereas here, it's clear that when you deleted your VPS (cancel service), you won't get charged any further. Whether you can get refunded for the unused periods depends on the vendor's policy.
Simple as that.
The all seeing eye sees everything...
Beautiful FR bench still alive
I bench YABS 24/7/365 unless it's a leap year.
So, just run iperf until they take notice..
My pronouns are asshole/asshole/asshole. I will give you the same courtesy.
Bummer, 5PM EST THursday.
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thats what she said..
@cybertech welcome back from your mini break. Glad to see the bench ?
VPS reviews and benchmarks |
Maybe he said it.
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Did you just assume his her gender?!
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