3 ms·

Softlayer are great at this. Their sites lists prices over $1200 but talk to sales and you can get it close to cut in half and if you order enough servers you'l

Softlayer are great at this. Their sites lists prices over $1200 but talk to sales and you can get it close to cut in half and if you order enough servers you'll get it at 75% discount. I guess the value of sales staff knowing about the customer is quite high.

modoc 15y ago
Yes. Go with SoftLayer. We have tons of servers, and get a great discount, especially on RAM. They have been great.
jaredstenquist 15y ago
Agreed. Call Softlayer and name your price. All my servers are 50% cost of retail.
- jaredstenquist 15y ago
  Oh any their support is second to none IMHO. I've called at any hour of the day and had a tech diagnosing my issues on the phone with no wait.
tshtf 15y ago
So anyone who wants servers needs to talk with sales and negotiate a discount? I think the point of this post was: Quick quiz: can your entire sales staff be replaced by a nicely formatted HTML table? If the answer is 'yes', then you are subtracting value and wasting my time. When comparing between hosting providers, most lack the time and resources to negotiate with each provider to find out what the "real" rate is. Hosting should be a commodity, providers should treat it as such. I think there are probably good opportunities for hosting providers that provide an honest rate.
- andrewf 15y ago
  SoftLayer has the nicely formatted table. The prices on it seem quite reasonable - except they charge up the wazoo for RAM.
idlewords 15y ago
So that tells you there's at least a 300% markup on their services, plus you're paying for all those wonderful salespeople...
psykotic 15y ago
Oh man, this kind of thing drives me up the wall! Yes, differential pricing can be a boon to buyer and seller alike. If the seller could offer their product only at a single price point, they'd be forced to price it out of the range of some customers while leaving money on the floor from other customers for whom the expense is trivial. I get all that. But no-one likes to feel like a chump being sized up by a con artist. Not even people with money to burn. When the default price is marked up so excessively, you're being taken for a ride, plain and simple. You should be boycotting them, not praising them. There's plenty of opportunity for differential pricing in the hosting space by offering a sliding scale of service-level agreements, higher resource limits, priority tech support, and other special features. Let's keep the douche bag negotiating tactics confined to the used car dealership lot.
lukestevens 15y ago
Fascinating from a marketing point of view - offer steep discounts to higher-value customers, and those customers will (a) appreciate the "discount" and (b) evangelize your service telling others to get in touch for said special discount.

modoc 15y ago

Yes. Go with SoftLayer. We have tons of servers, and get a great discount, especially on RAM. They have been great.

jaredstenquist 15y ago

Agreed. Call Softlayer and name your price. All my servers are 50% cost of retail.

jaredstenquist 15y ago
Oh any their support is second to none IMHO. I've called at any hour of the day and had a tech diagnosing my issues on the phone with no wait.

tshtf 15y ago

So anyone who wants servers needs to talk with sales and negotiate a discount? I think the point of this post was: Quick quiz: can your entire sales staff be replaced by a nicely formatted HTML table? If the answer is 'yes', then you are subtracting value and wasting my time. When comparing between hosting providers, most lack the time and resources to negotiate with each provider to find out what the "real" rate is. Hosting should be a commodity, providers should treat it as such. I think there are probably good opportunities for hosting providers that provide an honest rate.

andrewf 15y ago
SoftLayer has the nicely formatted table. The prices on it seem quite reasonable - except they charge up the wazoo for RAM.

idlewords 15y ago

So that tells you there's at least a 300% markup on their services, plus you're paying for all those wonderful salespeople...

psykotic 15y ago

Oh man, this kind of thing drives me up the wall! Yes, differential pricing can be a boon to buyer and seller alike. If the seller could offer their product only at a single price point, they'd be forced to price it out of the range of some customers while leaving money on the floor from other customers for whom the expense is trivial. I get all that. But no-one likes to feel like a chump being sized up by a con artist. Not even people with money to burn. When the default price is marked up so excessively, you're being taken for a ride, plain and simple. You should be boycotting them, not praising them. There's plenty of opportunity for differential pricing in the hosting space by offering a sliding scale of service-level agreements, higher resource limits, priority tech support, and other special features. Let's keep the douche bag negotiating tactics confined to the used car dealership lot.

lukestevens 15y ago

Fascinating from a marketing point of view - offer steep discounts to higher-value customers, and those customers will (a) appreciate the "discount" and (b) evangelize your service telling others to get in touch for said special discount.