New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
What do yo look for in a provider?
DataIdeas-Josh
Member, Patron Provider
in General
What do you look for in a provider rather they sell VPS, Dedicated, Colocation?
Provider type
- What do you use the most of?42 votes
- VPS50.00%
- Colocation16.67%
- Dedicated23.81%
- Other9.52%
Comments
What service you use use the most of?
What do you look for in the company to make you choose them?
@AlienData_Josh I think you are off on the right foot! Your service has been stable and network performance has been great. Pricing is also just right also! So keep up the good work!
Thank you for the kind words.
I was meaning for this thread to be about anyone. Not just my services.
Like for instance Colocation. I look for location, does it flood?, Available ISPs.
That's why I went with the DC I am at. It's close but a very nice facility. Great people always helps as well.
I just colo stuff.
In terms of what i look for, there are things that can be provided when starting and some that take more time.
=>Can be done right from the start:
=> Takes more Time:
=> Things that i find genuinely nice: (but not everyone can do it, aka the value added)
just the first few that come to mind.
Now i think you are really asking because you want to understand how to provide more/better services to a growing number of customers....
I will start by saying: i think you are generally going into the right direction.
But, i would like to provide you some feedback from an outsiders perspective:
1) Your presence/Image: This is way too complicated in my eyes. You have too many brands and it makes stuff more confusing than it needs to be. Go the minimalist route and merge stuff together. Let me give you an example:
Make either Alien Data or dataideas your main brand. Regardless of wich one you choose, bring all the products to just that one. Set the rest up as sub-products. Like Aliendata as main brand for example. Just have one shop/order process without switching brands. Set the sub-projects to link to specific sites of the main brand. ie. raspberry servers => aliendata/pie-servers. Maybe brand your colo as: aliendata/dataideas-colo ... and so on
2) Think about the stuff your products communicate. Getting into a niece market => good for the most part. (altho i think the 256gb store pies are under-priced and might loose you money in the long run => might add a bit of doesn't quite know what they are doing perception).
A think i observed in the other thread, but i cant fully put my finger on - is why i perceived the "cold storage with temper proof bags" idea as a desperate way to add more business in an area that doesn't make a whole lot of sense for your brand.
=> some mad ideas that i haven't fully thought thru yet, but probably someone more smart than me has done that and figured its not worth doing:
Maybe an option to have a server backup shipped out on a disk? (Disk Price+Service Fee (20?30?) + shipping)?
Option to buy hard disks after the end of the rental period for a fixed amount of money. (ie: for 2tb hard disks => x after the first year, y after the second year, z after x number of years).
On Dedicated: Ability to send in your own disks
Final Note:
What works really well for me in real life, is asking myself the question:
"How can i help my customers make more money, or have more fun/joy, or better quality of service"?
As for colo, most smaller customers probably will just ship you one box, want a few of your addresses and not worry about the rest. the larger they get, the more they want to do themselves.
i lol'd
edit: i also dont get why you still don't have a note about how the billing works on the pi and aliendata site directly, so customers are not surprised at the checkout.
So the Company is Data Ideas LLC. as the main company. Alien Data Is a brand of that.
RPIServers is also a brand.
The ColdStorage is also a brand.
I have multiple brands. But at the end of the day all money will go to Data Ideas.
As far as your concern on the Cold Storage. I have a decent clientele that is into prepping.
I had 2 threads for the colo/vps and then one for rpiservers. The mods had combined them together.
I have multiple options for things. If you want something special that is not shown. Just send me a pm/email and we'll work something out that will fit your needs.
Thank you for the write up though. It will help those starting out or give others ideas!
As far as this thread. I am just looking at works for others. But at the same time it also will help other people that is trying to start up to see what works as well. This isn't just about me.
Colocation and stuff like that is good, but it isn't the biggest product anymore, in my personal opinion. Dedicated servers with decent price to performance ratios and VPS with good add-ons like additional space, bandwidth, hourly billing are going to be much more popular. If you are in a exotic location, you don't even need to be value for money, plenty of people will pay more for the location (like the three midrange clouds, they offer 1GB RAM per 5 dollars and it's still a very good price for uncommon locations).
The thread title question and the poll are two different questions.
Just saying it could feel more solid
i am happy for you
Yes, its multiple questions. As the title can suggest that you might look for multiple things. Things that are not in the poll.
I gotcha. Once I finish the website. Things should flow better.
In this case think of the company Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.
They own multiple brands.