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Pretty amazing that a company like DigitalOcean can shake-up the market for VP servers prior to even taking funding. Their $5 servers have changed the game for

by holdenc 13y ago

Pretty amazing that a company like DigitalOcean can shake-up the market for VP servers prior to even taking funding. Their $5 servers have changed the game for nearly every hosting company that offers virtual servers. And to think they've managed to offer this while bootstrapped, is incredible.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yapcguy 13y ago
Not really. How did it change the game for service providers over at LowEndBox.com, who have been providing VPS servers for $5 or less, before DigitalOcean even existed?
- rgbrgb 13y ago
  In my experience, a lot of the services on LowEndBox.com are pretty sketchy. I'd go to production on DA.
  - coolnow 13y ago
    Not really. Most offers on LEB and LET are from recognised and proven providers. There are some fly-by-night providers that pop up over summer and disappear, but actually reading the offers on LEB will tell you how long the company has been offering their services for and how often they post deals. I lurked for less than a day on Lowendtalk and got an idea of the most respected/high quality hosts such as: BuyVM ChicagoVPS Prometeus (and IperWeb) HTTPZoom Iniz Ramnode I've had a box with most of these (apart from Ramnode which is highly regarded) and i can say i've had an awesome experience.
    - nikcub 13y ago
      both ChicagoVPS (for the second time in a year) and Ramnode were hacked a little over a month ago - tons of servers deleted, customer db's dumped online. I think "sketchy" is a good characterization when a pick of the "best" hosts have severe problems.
      - coolnow 13y ago
        So, a vulnerability in the control panel used in probably >90% of all lowendbox providers, combined with a specific person applying the exploit to Ramnode, makes them sketchy now? Man, Apple must be the sketchiest company out there now, you know, with the week long downtime for the Dev Center.
        nikcub 13y ago
        I've audited both WHMCS and Solus. I found a half-dozen bugs in minutes of looking at each codebase. I can't express how horrible this software is that 90% of these hosts are running on - they are both an absolute trainwreck. More hacks are only a matter of time, especially when neither company responds to emails or security incidents well.
        biot 13y ago
        How much real engineering are these providers doing? How well do they understand their stack? If they're all running the same underlying software, it suggests that setting up such an operation doesn't require much skill and it's heading to "script kiddy" territory. Sketchy? Certainly suspect and needing a lot of due diligence which my gut tells me that (a) they won't fare so well; and (b) they are so low-margin that they would be unwilling to participate. If Apple got hacked because their dev center was powered by a $10 control panel script then yeah... they'd be extremely sketchy too.
      - pavs 13y ago
        CVPS is as sketchy as they come, they have a fan-following of past-users who makes fun of their offering. They got hacked more than once and each time they botched their response to customers. As someone who have used quite a few servers from LEB over the years, there is no way I am going to put anything serious in most of their offering. There are some exceptions, like Ramnode, BuyVM, but DO pretty much made the choice easy for me. Why bother taking a risk? 1) Cheap price and good offering and service. 2) Now I know they are going to stick around for a while.
        yapcguy 13y ago
- dscb 13y ago
  Hourly Billing Stored backups (for free) of servers that you can set up at a later date instantly via an api It's not about being a $5 vps for me, it's about being able to pay $0.014 when I need a small vps for 2 hours.
  - jeffasinger 13y ago
    Hourly billing is huge for us. Our service is mostly CPU bound, embarrassingly parallel, and so far, 90% of usage is centered on a time slot that's about 8 hours per week long. We will save a ton of money by scaling down during the off hours, which means only Amazon, Rackspace, and a few others make any sense at all.
    - nthnclrk 13y ago
      I agree. This was massive for me. Being able to create a Droplet (from an existing backup) within a minute, test out an installation for a day, and have it cost almost nothing is huge.
- pbreit 13y ago
  Is LowEndBox and actual provider or just a listing service? The two don't even appear similar to me.
  - coolnow 13y ago
    It just lists offers from actual providers.

by holdenc 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yapcguy 13y ago

Not really. How did it change the game for service providers over at LowEndBox.com, who have been providing VPS servers for $5 or less, before DigitalOcean even existed?

rgbrgb 13y ago
In my experience, a lot of the services on LowEndBox.com are pretty sketchy. I'd go to production on DA.
- coolnow 13y ago
  Not really. Most offers on LEB and LET are from recognised and proven providers. There are some fly-by-night providers that pop up over summer and disappear, but actually reading the offers on LEB will tell you how long the company has been offering their services for and how often they post deals. I lurked for less than a day on Lowendtalk and got an idea of the most respected/high quality hosts such as: BuyVM ChicagoVPS Prometeus (and IperWeb) HTTPZoom Iniz Ramnode I've had a box with most of these (apart from Ramnode which is highly regarded) and i can say i've had an awesome experience.
  - nikcub 13y ago
    both ChicagoVPS (for the second time in a year) and Ramnode were hacked a little over a month ago - tons of servers deleted, customer db's dumped online. I think "sketchy" is a good characterization when a pick of the "best" hosts have severe problems.
    - coolnow 13y ago
      So, a vulnerability in the control panel used in probably >90% of all lowendbox providers, combined with a specific person applying the exploit to Ramnode, makes them sketchy now? Man, Apple must be the sketchiest company out there now, you know, with the week long downtime for the Dev Center.
      - nikcub 13y ago
        I've audited both WHMCS and Solus. I found a half-dozen bugs in minutes of looking at each codebase. I can't express how horrible this software is that 90% of these hosts are running on - they are both an absolute trainwreck. More hacks are only a matter of time, especially when neither company responds to emails or security incidents well.
      - biot 13y ago
        How much real engineering are these providers doing? How well do they understand their stack? If they're all running the same underlying software, it suggests that setting up such an operation doesn't require much skill and it's heading to "script kiddy" territory. Sketchy? Certainly suspect and needing a lot of due diligence which my gut tells me that (a) they won't fare so well; and (b) they are so low-margin that they would be unwilling to participate. If Apple got hacked because their dev center was powered by a $10 control panel script then yeah... they'd be extremely sketchy too.
    - pavs 13y ago
      CVPS is as sketchy as they come, they have a fan-following of past-users who makes fun of their offering. They got hacked more than once and each time they botched their response to customers. As someone who have used quite a few servers from LEB over the years, there is no way I am going to put anything serious in most of their offering. There are some exceptions, like Ramnode, BuyVM, but DO pretty much made the choice easy for me. Why bother taking a risk? 1) Cheap price and good offering and service. 2) Now I know they are going to stick around for a while.
      - yapcguy 13y ago
dscb 13y ago
Hourly Billing Stored backups (for free) of servers that you can set up at a later date instantly via an api It's not about being a $5 vps for me, it's about being able to pay $0.014 when I need a small vps for 2 hours.
- jeffasinger 13y ago
  Hourly billing is huge for us. Our service is mostly CPU bound, embarrassingly parallel, and so far, 90% of usage is centered on a time slot that's about 8 hours per week long. We will save a ton of money by scaling down during the off hours, which means only Amazon, Rackspace, and a few others make any sense at all.
  - nthnclrk 13y ago
    I agree. This was massive for me. Being able to create a Droplet (from an existing backup) within a minute, test out an installation for a day, and have it cost almost nothing is huge.
pbreit 13y ago
Is LowEndBox and actual provider or just a listing service? The two don't even appear similar to me.
- coolnow 13y ago
  It just lists offers from actual providers.