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Locktropist
NAT Warrior
Is there a lack of truly good Hosting deals on HostBoards & why?
As for the lack of good deals on hosting, there has been a saying around low end for a long time, pick 2 of the 3 options below:
1, Cheap
2. Fast
3. Good
Companies come and go all the time, and not just hosting providers, it is part of life. I am only saying this because you seem quite disillusioned lately. Try to cheer up, life is too long a time to be unhappy.
Comments
There's ONLY two notable deals here on les that aren't spam and/or isn't in moderate to high chance to close down soon
Disillusioned is not the same as realism, Both are attainable without it affecting his/her personal happiness in life.... does affect the community in its little microcosm though!
Most of the offers I've seen here that I'd be interested in are duplicated on LET or WHT. Yes, that means the HostBoards unique offers have rarely been appealing to me. On the other hand, once or twice, when the same offer has been elsewhere and the link or promo code was HostBoards specific, I have used it so the provider would know I saw it here. At one time I'd have been interested in Virmach offers, but that hasn't panned out lately. This place ranks behind LET and WHT for offers generally in my experience. I mainly find myself mainly here for tech discussion and Virmach state-of-affairs until my contracts expire.
Would it be better to have more tech discussions, general fun shit posting threads, or ?
Yes to tech, personally not very interested in "fun shit posting". I prefer the reduced drama, rants, and rage fights here compared to LET.
If more tech discussions or how to's are what you want. What do you feel stops you from having them now ?
Reading how to's generally not of interest to me, but I could imagine they might be to some. No blockers to having tech discussions currently. Seems fine in that regard.
Hope that helps, just one person's perspective.
All I can say is once we've been asked to price-match a few dozen Dedipath offers, I was completely blown away by what they were selling and for how much. They're so far out of the realm of possibility that I don't even counter those requests. It's flat out "No, we can't do that.". I think if anyone actually saw the scale of this prior, deadpool incoming would not have been as much of a surprise.
Regarding unsustainable deals I do think its very provider-specific. I know the 8.69/19.69 non-IPv4 deal we have was called sus on LET, but it's pretty straightforward easy math given the whole picture (infrastructure, hardware on hand, and complete business model).
Few HostBoards-only deals we've done somewhat recently performed well. I have tried to give metrics to some other providers. It's easy to 'default' to LET as a provider because you are so busy and to come up with a good sales thread takes additional effort. It is true that the traffic is lower, so if you're tossing a decent but not-dedipath-tier offer out you are likely to default to the most eyeballs per post forum.
That being said, the space absolutely needs redundancy (my opinion) so I've been making an effort to run some HostBoards-only true exclusives (while restocking popular past ones) and planning a few more out now that we've exhausted the pre-planned sales events.
Personally I only use providers who allow me to pay with PayPal. Although I have only issued a dispute one time in the last ten years. That was HostDoc when he deadpooled three days after I bought a big yearly VM.
That being said, given the expectations of some customers regarding low-end products I can understand why some providers may not want to use services where they get a $30 charge back fee on a $10 yearly VPS because the customer does not understand why they cannot use 100% of the CPU all the time for transcoding.
In my opinion there are basicly 3 types of providers that make lowend offers.
New small providers just starting out who are willing to work for free to get a foot into the market, hoping that they will be able to raise prices and make some money later.
Older more established providers who make their money in a higher end market, who make low end offers on old equipment as a way of giving back to society or a hand up to the people from very low income countries. In other words charity. They back out of doing this when the thing they though was helping people stops being appreciated, or becomes too much work, or affects their real money making business.
Masochist, I would include providers like VirMach in this category. These are providers that have a strong belief system, are extremely tenacious, and who will do whatever it takes to overcome any obstacle in their path, even if these obstacles are of their own making. Long after most of us would have thrown in the towel, they still keep going.
The mythical low end provider that makes a living by selling 2 core, 2GB, 50GB NVMe, unlimited transfer Vms for $10 or $15 a year. Has the latest hardware, does not oversell, has great customer service, and does not mind customers wanting refunds whenever they feel the provider's service does not live up to the customers standards.
I know I said above there was only 3, and then listed 4. That is because the fourth one, in my opinion, does not really exist. Maybe I am completely off base in my thinking. I surely would not mind if someone was to convince me otherwise.
That does not always apply, I got a few Ryzen Machines with SSD/NVMe for 10-12€/y.
They have been solid, It depends what you buy and from who.
Is 9€/y sustainable? I have Deals where I pay less, did they deadpool yet? No.
Do they include IPv4? Yes.