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Plans are in the works to respond to Linode and Digital Ocean. Plans have been in the works for... some time now; but... yeah. My 'automation debt' is absol

by lsc 13y ago

Plans are in the works to respond to Linode and Digital Ocean. Plans have been in the works for... some time now; but... yeah. My 'automation debt' is absolutely killing me here. (lack of capital isn't helping much, either, but right now, insufficient automation, and my inherent conservatism are probably the biggest problems.) I'm doing existing customers first, of course, and starting with customers that I promised upgrades to a long time ago, which is actually slowing the whole process down quite a lot. Another interesting thing is that right now, I charge a $4/account charge, then a incremental fee, right now $1 for every 64mib ram/1.5gb disk, which means that as you get a larger plan, you get more stuff for your money. As far as I can tell, none of the other players do that (and some competitors do the opposite, giving you more resources per dollar on the smaller plans than on the larger plans.) - so I am wondering if I should reduce or eliminate that fee.

_delirium 13y ago
It seems like transfer would be an 'easy' upgrade in that it doesn't require a lot of per-server manual effort, just a change to the billing system (threshold at which accounts are billed for overages). But I dunno if that makes sense, given purchasing decisions and your cost structure. Are people's purchase decisions keying off transfer quota at all, or are RAM/HDD are the real price-point issues? And if they are, would doubling transfer, say, make a difference, or would you have to match Linode (currently offering 10x the transfer at equivalent price points)? So maybe this is a dumb idea.
- lsc 13y ago
  oh, you are right on all above. right now I'm way overbuying transit... not quite 10x, but 5x, so I really should increase quotas. For a long time, it was that my network was so shitty that doubling traffic would make the thing fall over, but that problem is fixed... new network is way more robust. so yeah, I should increase transfer expectations. I mean, in reality, I follow the 'use all you want, limit you when you get crazy' model, rather than hitting you with a big bill when you go over. (I should make that a selectable option) so it's really similar to what digital ocean is doing with their 'unlimited' - obviously, if you go crazy on an 'unlimited' system, you get limited. My limits are 'setting expectations' - but right now they are setting expectations that would have been reasonable in 2007, which is silly, as my current network is pretty robust, and really can handle more.

by lsc 13y ago

_delirium 13y ago

It seems like transfer would be an 'easy' upgrade in that it doesn't require a lot of per-server manual effort, just a change to the billing system (threshold at which accounts are billed for overages). But I dunno if that makes sense, given purchasing decisions and your cost structure. Are people's purchase decisions keying off transfer quota at all, or are RAM/HDD are the real price-point issues? And if they are, would doubling transfer, say, make a difference, or would you have to match Linode (currently offering 10x the transfer at equivalent price points)? So maybe this is a dumb idea.

lsc 13y ago
oh, you are right on all above. right now I'm way overbuying transit... not quite 10x, but 5x, so I really should increase quotas. For a long time, it was that my network was so shitty that doubling traffic would make the thing fall over, but that problem is fixed... new network is way more robust. so yeah, I should increase transfer expectations. I mean, in reality, I follow the 'use all you want, limit you when you get crazy' model, rather than hitting you with a big bill when you go over. (I should make that a selectable option) so it's really similar to what digital ocean is doing with their 'unlimited' - obviously, if you go crazy on an 'unlimited' system, you get limited. My limits are 'setting expectations' - but right now they are setting expectations that would have been reasonable in 2007, which is silly, as my current network is pretty robust, and really can handle more.