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Upcoming LET/LEB Review Series
April will be a very busy month for our community, Low End Talk and Low End Box, as we roll out plenty of new initiatives:
- Tutorials are back! We'll be posting one or two each month
- Each month we'll be asking our users important questions via Polls
- We've launched an Editorial section with articles about VPS, web hosting and the industry in general
- We've begun a monthly Q/A style interview series with industry and community leaders
And now we are launching a Low End Box VPS Review Series, led by Low End Talk community member @jsg. The reviews will be performed by @jsg exclusively, who has already completed quite a few reviews in the past on Low End Talk, and his fairness was appreciated by providers and users alike. Once each review is completed we'll post it on both Low End Box and Low End Talk.
Each review will be independent, meaning it is not a head-to-head comparison but rather an in depth analysis of the service by each provider.
We are actively asking for providers who would like to participate in our first review to be published in the next few weeks. All we need is one of your VPS services for a single month. Utilization levels will be low and your participation is appreciated. Interested providers should leave a comment below, or message @jsg directly on Low End Talk.
Comments
This is another awesome idea. Good work @jbiloh and @jsg
I would love to participate! I'll PM @jsg
Just a small detail that may however be important to providers: of course the VPS provided for testing will only and exclusively be used for testing purposes. Nothing else, no private or other use whatsoever.
First reactions/offers from provider have already arrived, so if you are interested, don't hesitate too long.
Hint: If you have a broad product range let us (or me via PM) know, which of your products you would most like to be tested. If possible I will make it happen.
Also to be clear this is not a head to head comparison/competition. Each providers service will be reviewed indepetendly and on its own merit.
Thank you for the great work @jbiloh and @jsg
Just dropped @jsg a PM.
Thanks!
You might have PM'd the wrong guy
@jbiloh Question, how would you ensure a fair review environment? What is stopping a provider from providing/provisioning a VPS in a completely empty node/separate connection?
An idea/suggestion would be, once again, just a suggestion, purchase the VPS/Dedi anonymously, with "LEB expense" account, test it out for a month. At the end of the month, reach out to the provider privately (after the review has been posted) asking if they could refund the fee. Pretty sure between the mods/jsg/you, there's plenty of users that can signup without causing suspicion/getting flagged as "Oh the review cop is here".
IMHO, that would offer a pretty transparent user experience. Pop in a ticket or two too to see how their helpdesk/support system is for generic questions
Most and almost anyone here with half the brain, would not disagree with that. Would make the review transparent. If they don't refund you for whatever reason, most of these are below $10/mo services anyways and you can chalk it off as investments/expenses
Oh thank you my typos, just edited
Great initiative @jbiloh and @jsg. I have PM'ed you @jsg, please check.
Best of luck.
PMed @jsg
Looking forward to participating!
Another one bites the dust
Yep, it's jsg not jpg.
Obviously @jbiloh has the final say but I would suggest the following rules for those tests: any VPS offered for review must
Please feel free to make your own rule suggestions, everyone in our community! We all profit from a reasonable and fair set of rules.
How about instead of providing @jsg the VM, @jsg could buy the service with his/her own credit card, and the provider can re-fund the payment afterwards (that is, if @jsg is OK with that). Or, the provider can provide credits for the test service as afaik WHMCS will randomly choose a node when purchased through account credit or cc?
No sir. Can be manipulated.
Brilliant idea! Great work.
We’re not classed as a ‘provider’ on LET (yet!), but a few of our offers have been posted on LEB. Happy to help if we can, if not will be happy to help once we’re listed as a provider on here
We'd be honored to participate. +1 for another awesome initiative.
Pavin.
This is a good initiative. It would be even better if it includes shared and reseller hosting.
Indeed, the way it is being done is totally nonsensical, none of the reviews will result in any sort of accurate representation of the support, performance etc when they know who is using the service and for what purpose.
So much can and will be manipulated to ensure only positive results.
I agree that this is an issue that needs to be considered.
What is the consensus on how this should be best handled?
Are hosts willing to refund payments that are made once the anonymous review process is completed? Ultimately we are only talking about services that would be $10/month or less, so not a lot of money either way, but every dollar we keep in our community helps produce content and the improvements we are embarking on here recently.
Let's not forget where we are, regardless of where you want to take the site the place is full of doubtful providers. Nobody needs a review of @Francisco services or many others, the quarterly polls speak for themselves.
The only way to give any credence to the reviews which some will rely on when making buying decisions is to announce nothing. Pick providers that frequent LET but don't get as much attention as a service like BuyVM or other popular services.
In other words, don't give providers the opportunity to ask for a review, just review them.
What you are currently proposing is something akin to a story I read about a McDonald's mystery shopper recently, they walked into the store and told the manager;
"Hi, I am from head office, they told me to come down here and check on your customer service and the quality of the food, just treat me like a normal customer".
Yeah, no.
Before the review is published let the provider know it has been completed and request a refund, if they say no, fair enough, it should not make any difference to the review.
Costs should not be that high, what $10 max per review. I will insure up to $50 of the first set of reviews if providers do not refund. That gets 5 reviews, no risk, done the right way.
Sounds good, gonna include this in my next order.
This is a better and much more accurate way of doing it but I would still be worried that the name could become known - once you start requesting a refund and explain why that name will ultimately spread as the ‘LET/LEB’ tester between companies.
The most accurate way would be to try and keep the name of the user testing as quiet as possible without attracting such attention from each host.
Sir would your like fries with your server? Our servers are blazing hot and we guarantee nothing but hot and crispy fries, once your cpu starts spinning.
I mean as I said above, there's enough users to go around doing 5-10 signups a month.
The best would be have multiple reviewers - Siskel had Ebert for the Movies. In comedy, some had multiple foils- the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges. Sometimes things work better with more than one opinion. Poisson has his list, maybe poisson and @jsg could work independently and post independent reviews- could spark discussions or at least some balance
Tagging @poisson @Falzo and maybe @MasonR , some of our additional veteran reviewers
Reviewing/test buying is a old profession and many governments have it as a part of customer protection. The guidelines are not based on 'consensus', but on what actually works. Unfortunately they rely on one fundamental premise: the buyer can be anonymous.
In short:
1) The person (any person) signs up at the goverment as a test buyer.
2) The person visiting and buying at the shop SHOULD NOT REVEAL that he/she is a test buyer.
3) The person gets the payment (refund) from the government (not the shop).
4) The government is always hiring new people for the job to guarantee anonimity and prevent against test buyer recognition.
I don't see how until providers are ready to accept anonymous orders. An unhappy provider can influance future reviews from the same person in many ways. Do you remember when a provider posted a customer's "anti-fraud system profile link" directly on LET? I do. It's an ancient thing. I mean there are centuries old records on outing restaurant critics...
In the end: nothing.
If a provider is willing to bend the game he can do it, no matter whether I, @jbiloh, his company, or my grandma purchases the test VPS.
That said, I'm happy to report that so far no provider has tried to bend my tests. How do I know? Because I'm not easily trusting (well, in tech things anyway), I'm technically quite well trained and experienced, and I control the benchmark software which has been designed to be a "good neighbour" on a node but also to e.g. trash caching.
Plus, I have become quite visible and if I would tell that some provider has tricked that would be heard and it highly likely would translate to a very significant loss of trust around here. Plus the users of the tested providers; they tend to speak out if they see a review that is considerably off. So far I did not have that case.
So, in the end it is trust based - but trust that not breaking also is in the providers interest.
As for a LET expense account that's for @jbiloh to decide. Frankly, I'm not sure it would be a good solution. Similar, albeit less grave, with myself. The hosting business is a small world and no matter who's account is used would soon translate to "LET test incoming".
I personally tend to see and play it just the other way around: let them know that I want a VPS for testing ... because their way of dealing with that provides valuable information.
That's weak point, I'll admit that openly. I'm a quite experienced guy and I'm not sure I'd be good at mimicking some unexperienced user Joe. Plus, even if I could it would mean little as support is a thing that is largely defined by the human factor - on both sides.
All I can offer you in that regards is some quantitative impression (like "fast" or "slow", etc.)
Sorry, no. Why should I, beyond doing the testing and review, also take additional risk?
Plus it simply isn't necessary, see above. But hey, if anyone wants to pay for the test VPSs, just let me know.
In theory. In real life though everyone tested played it nicely. If my reviews were far off due to having been tricked there would have been many users telling me.
My guess of an explanation: If a provider tricks me he'll get a bit more sales for a quite short time - and then he is burned at LET/LEB for a long time.
Secondly, I try really really hard to be fair myself (remember the review that was rather bad and then the provider told us about some problems he had and I gave him a 2nd chance and did the testing and review again?). One needed to be real a__hole to respond with fraud to being treated fairly. At the same time not tricking and playing fair too gives the providers a nice return.
2nd response batch
There is a problem with that assumption: It didn't happen. So far no provider played tricks (beyond not putting my test VPS on his busiest node).
Also note that I did have my reasons to propose the rule that we do not test/review new providers but only those who have been in business for a while (how much of a while is to be decided by our community).
Thank you (sincerely) but unless we switch accounts that approach won't help a lot. After a short while "jsg real name & bank account" (or anyone else) will basically be the same as "Oh well, LET test incoming".
FYI: I do work independently. @jbiloh hasn't dictated anything so far and I have no reason to think that'll change. He politely and friendly asked my for my support and I committed to support because I like our community and because I think that jbiloh has done damn enough to deserve some trust by now.
@All providers who contacted me or told here that they are ready: Thank you!
Right now it's a bit early as we have to think about some practical issues and what kind of VPS will be the first tested but I'll come back to you. Thanks again.
Thanks for the mention, but hard pass. This isn't a place I want to spend much time at anymore.
Hope you'll reconsider. Lot's of very positive stuff happening here the past 2+ months.
Either way, hope you and your family are staying well in this very unique time.
I haven't purchased nor seen anything new or interesting in quite a while now, hence I have not much to offer in terms of review right now. maybe easter brings something?
will watch and wait, meanwhile let's see what @jsg has to offer in terms of reviews...
maybe that makes me look at LEB and actually read something after long time again - if it's gonna be readable at all that is :-P