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Is there anything commercial that is both cheap and popular that doesn't cut corners to get there? edit: Point being, I don't see how DO could get their act to

Is there anything commercial that is both cheap and popular that doesn't cut corners to get there? edit: Point being, I don't see how DO could get their act together as their business model essentially requires them to act like this. If they don't cut corners in one area then they will somewhere else.

jiggawatts 6y ago
They don't have to treat the customers as the enemy. They do so by choice. The root cause of the "DO killed our business" situation was that DO accepts credit cards for payment but provides "cash equivalent" as the product: Rented CPUs can be used crypto mining. But from the "outside" it's practically impossible to distinguish between crypto mining and legitimate high CPU usage, they "look" the same. Hence, DO felt that they were "forced" to kill everyone that signs up with a credit card and starts their CPU at 100% load, because a significant percentage of the time that's some hacker using a stolen credit card number to mine Bitcoins. DigitalOcean feels forced to treat customers as the enemy, because a significant percentage is the enemy. However, this business model of "we give you cash for credit cards" is their choice! Nobody forced them to do this. Credit cards aren't legally mandated tender. Not every shopping centre till provides a cash out service. Some take on this risk. Some don't. I've noticed that less well-to-do areas of my city don't offer this service, but the more posh areas with lower risk do offer cash out. Does the shopping centre get burnt by this sometimes? Yes, but that's their risk to bear. Digital Ocean is like a shopping centre in a low-rent district full of drug addicts that offers cash out. That's their choice to accept that much higher level of risk. What they're doing however is passing on the consequences to their customers. They're not bearing the risk. It's your risk to bear that other customers mine crypto on DO droplets. So what alternative does DO have, you ask? They could just ask customers to transfer money up-front, much like pre-paid SIM cards. Many other companies operating in high-risk customer markets do this kind of thing. Heck, Azure and AWS do exactly this: They offer enormous discounts if you pre-pay. Absolutely huge, like up to 50% or even 80% off! See: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reserved-vm-instan... So this is what DigitalOcean should do: When you sign up, on the next page after you've created your account it should give a full-page choice screen with two columns: Column A: "Prepay for savings and guaranteed service levels" -- blah blah blah, we won't randomly kill your account, and you get a 20% discount! Column B: "Credit card sign up" -- blah blah, ideal for dev/test, ideal for non-critical workloads, we may suspend your account if the usage exceeds certain thresholds, etc...

jiggawatts 6y ago

They don't have to treat the customers as the enemy. They do so by choice. The root cause of the "DO killed our business" situation was that DO accepts credit cards for payment but provides "cash equivalent" as the product: Rented CPUs can be used crypto mining. But from the "outside" it's practically impossible to distinguish between crypto mining and legitimate high CPU usage, they "look" the same. Hence, DO felt that they were "forced" to kill everyone that signs up with a credit card and starts their CPU at 100% load, because a significant percentage of the time that's some hacker using a stolen credit card number to mine Bitcoins. DigitalOcean feels forced to treat customers as the enemy, because a significant percentage is the enemy. However, this business model of "we give you cash for credit cards" is their choice! Nobody forced them to do this. Credit cards aren't legally mandated tender. Not every shopping centre till provides a cash out service. Some take on this risk. Some don't. I've noticed that less well-to-do areas of my city don't offer this service, but the more posh areas with lower risk do offer cash out. Does the shopping centre get burnt by this sometimes? Yes, but that's their risk to bear. Digital Ocean is like a shopping centre in a low-rent district full of drug addicts that offers cash out. That's their choice to accept that much higher level of risk. What they're doing however is passing on the consequences to their customers. They're not bearing the risk. It's your risk to bear that other customers mine crypto on DO droplets. So what alternative does DO have, you ask? They could just ask customers to transfer money up-front, much like pre-paid SIM cards. Many other companies operating in high-risk customer markets do this kind of thing. Heck, Azure and AWS do exactly this: They offer enormous discounts if you pre-pay. Absolutely huge, like up to 50% or even 80% off! See: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reserved-vm-instan... So this is what DigitalOcean should do: When you sign up, on the next page after you've created your account it should give a full-page choice screen with two columns: Column A: "Prepay for savings and guaranteed service levels" -- blah blah blah, we won't randomly kill your account, and you get a 20% discount! Column B: "Credit card sign up" -- blah blah, ideal for dev/test, ideal for non-critical workloads, we may suspend your account if the usage exceeds certain thresholds, etc...