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I was confused by the e-mail too but assumed that I was just reading it wrong. Why would they hike the prices by 15% AND charge me an extra €12 a year? That seems very excessive.
I guess I read it right. It's a shame as I have two good boxes with them that I have had since 2012. Over €30/year each for 384 MB is just not cost effective now. Not a chance I'll be renewing.
The same with the exception that they already discontinued some old boxes at 2019 and hooked me up on more expensive solution
The real shame is even after saying they go out of their way to provide a quality product and customer service, they lack respect for those same customers. In his reply he outlined the fact that their expectation is to lose customers and this is part of their goal, to free up resources on existing infrastructure and reclaim IP addresses that they can now sell for more to a new customer. So the real answer is, they don't care if you're upset, they want you to leave and they want to make more money off the resources they can resell once you do.
If they really cared about retaining their customers they would grandfather existing products and then start charging this for new services instead. Unfortunately, this is not their approach and obviously at this point money is more important to them than their customers.
After being a long time customer, I won't lie, I too am very much considering canceling my services. More so based on the disrespect of me as a customer, than on the premise of the rising cost. There are many less disingenuous ways to increase your bottom line than extracting it from your existing customers on already existing products, so this is a purposeful choice they made which only advantages them as a business and not the customer.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
Everyone who doesn’t deadpool leaves the LowEnd eventually, it’s the circle of life. They want to go B2B, it’s a business choice.
LET will remember this betrayal though. LET never forgets.
@Nekki that was funny, honestly the first laugh in all my day.
But LET or not, is necessary to increase prices due to inflation. I would even recommend a price revision in the rules, specially with hardware cost going up more and more recently, contrary to the previous years.
True, but hasn't Prometeus effectively been irrelevant to LET for a long time now?
You'd need to go back quite a few years to see when Prometeus last figured prominently in the top-provider polls.
They have always been B2B, it isn't that they 'want to go'. They originally sold here on LET to supplement their income at the time because it was convenient and easy for them to sell on LET, so they took advantage. Based on the previous reply they obviously expected once they stopped posting new offers that people would leave (which to me seems silly to think, but what do I know). Since they didn't leave, their goal now is to price them out so they get upset and leave anyways so they can reclaim IPs and resources to sell to 'business' customers which will pay more.
Don't be confused and think B2B is something they are only now moving towards. It is more that they no longer want to deal with the overhead from having a bunch of cheap accounts (support, resource upkeep, etc) and are using raising prices to do this instead of just telling customers to 'get out'. This is re-enforced by the fact I have never seen a host add a charge for an IPv4 which was essentially included in the cost of your service at the time of purchase but now they want to change the terms of the contract and charge you additionally for something that shouldn't even be considered a separate product to begin with.
Bottom line: It is no longer convenient for them so now they just want the low end users out so they can make more money from the same resources.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
Tell that to Hetzner.
Why? You get a single IPv4 with their servers and I have never seen them add an arbitrary new cost for my existing IPv4 that is included with the server. If you have purchased additional IPv4 IPs which are a separate product, then they just raised the price of the product, it is different than starting to charge more for the IPv4 which was originally included with the service as Prometeus is planning to do with this change. Essentially if you want to keep the previously included IPv4 IP you will now have to pay more even though you were never sold the IPv4 IP as a separate product to begin with.
Cheers!
Another thing to note is that they're stating they are willing to be a middleman and be a broker for their client and IP-space. However, they are passing off the variability/instability of the IPv4 space price increases directly to the customer through their strategy.
Which, fair. Customer takes on more risk (could be defined as costs as well) with the provider taking on less risk. That's their flavor of hosting, and that's fine. It's just how different people operate their own business. It's not conventional in my experience, but it is what it is.
Then a positive note for those who own their IP space and operate under these domains is that they can offer somewhat more reliable/guaranteed stability from price increases in IPv4 space. This can become another marketing point (or another "bat to hit someone over the head with") for their competitors.
Each design decision has benefits and negatives. By deciding to rent IPs you're keeping the option to be flexible, but you're losing price stability in the long-term (which is passed-on to the retail customer). Now this doesn't mean LIR fees will remain constant forever, but it does mean more stability than having another person in the middle who owns the actual IP space. Coming here now, it seems to not be the best option for the retail customer but... unfortunately that's the situation you find yourself here.
I wish the best for everyone who is impacted by this decision. I will admit strict hosting-wise they're a great shop. But it's clear when many people see factoring in IP costs (and ability to communicate with the open internet) is not part of the full hosting product they provide and is an added on service that (on the retail side) lacks stability.
I feel like you’re splitting hairs somewhat because you’re obviously aware they actively courted the LowEnd for years, but yes, you are factually correct, they have always been B2B.
I should have said ‘they want to go fully B2B’ to be absolutely correct.
It was confusing and since it was @Francisco who asked it first, @Maounique was compelled to reply it intelligently. However, end-result was that there was no straight forward answer, still it is not. Was their customer for a while but they were not really friendly in answering query (a long time ago). I guess, now I get it, probably language issue.
The final answer was 15% increase applied before VAT and then 1 euro per IP a month is attached at the end.
This was my interpretation of the calculation.
Mine too, and mao's wording seems to confirm that. Mao brought up they considered bumping additional IP's to 2EUR/month, but didn't.
Francisco
Maybe now LET is not their targeted market.
What a bunch of lies and BS...
1. We did not leave let because of price issues. We were kicked, banned and threatened with hacks. Added to this the attacks and whatnot, the position of the main business has been threatened and there was no choice;
2. At first we repurposed some hw which was leftover from main VMWare cluster at upgrades. The prices at that time were covering the costs and we were happy to provide a service for friends and have fun, some people maybe remember pranks and whatnot. When LET became hostile, threats and bans started to flow when BuyVM felt threatened although we never competed with them, we understood this is not a market for us even as the costs were still covered more or less.
3. After leaving (banned) we fully expected people to move over to new CC hosts or other "hatched" operations in the CC "laboratories". For some reason, that didn't happen, which left us with a lot of tied in new HW which we expected to be free in a year or two. OK, we grandfathered the old plans and only forced a change when the hardware failed or the platform became obsolete (centos 5 then 6). I think we treated LET way better than they threated us.
4. The current increases in prices and the low density (many people DID move to cheaper products) per node means we can no longer subsidize the old and obsolete products (OVZ6 and XenPV on centos 6). Each time we were forced by EoL distros and platforms to retire products we offered same or very similar priced products to old customers at better (many times double or more) specs.
5. Yes, Prometeus is a business hosting in a premium location in a premium new DC on premium HW and cannot compete on the low end market with ppl renting hw and running fly by night operations, but we could have if LET would have been kinder or at least not that hostile. Let's not forget LET kicked us and has been heavily biased towards other providers, we just expected the members to show their displeasure by leaving the services too.
We ran these services at a loss, maybe more than half the time, not "profited" from anything or anyone, there is a wide choice of low end products, some even similar or better, I was sure nobody will miss us. And I still think I was right.
To the few people which stood up against the abuse we were subjected to (both as provider and personally), thank you, will never forget the people that took a stand and even resigned when the rules were broken and twisted to chase us away, I am sorry if your service is also more expensive now, but we will always be ready to make special deals for our old customers (regardless of the attitude here, I have no idea who most of you are, both attackers and supporters).
Of course we can forego the cost of IP on a new service for you, but OVZ6 and XenPV plans running on centos 6 are NOT the future.
When we will launch the new lines of products, just open a ticket and tell us you would like to have a discount of 100% of the first IPv4 or a recurring discount for IPv6 only products. We will treat everyone the same, don't need to tell us who are you here, friend or foe, if long time customer, will be treated the same.
Once again, simply keeping ad infinitum OVZ6 and Centos 6 is not "grandfathering" it's a recipe for disaster and you should remember you were offered quite a few opportunities to move out, some took them.
We encourage you to vacate those obsolete services and ask for a discount on the new ones instead as we proceeded before for the people which upgraded voluntarily.
The fact you KNOW all this and still make up lies and try to make us look like the bad guy here proves leaving LET was the right decision and not even ours, we were chased away.
When was Prometeus banned on LET, I don't remember that ever happening.
That is surprising since you were one of the most hostile people in the "leadership" and maybe even had a hand in it.
BTW, where are the refugee offers? Simply popping up to get "clarifications" is probably not enough @Francisco. I expected the full fanfare of fanboism and all. Time is not lost, I see Lee is already on it as well as HalfEatenPie and probably the rest of the gang is warming up.
Does this sentence strike anyone as very odd? "We decided not to do something that we couldn't legally do anyway... hope that makes you feel better".
That was written by Uncle and his English is not the best, he means the prices were not increased right away.
But the price will be hikes starting the next term which depends billing cycle.
TL;DR version:
1. Increase in power and IP prices forced Prometeus to increase prices.
2. There will be no exception for the obsolete products. Who wishes to continue to host on Centos 6 must pay a price for it, all people which wish to upgrade will get serious discounts including free IPv4 (one per product) and if the specs are not higher can keep the old price.
3. Please keep the personal attacks and malicious interpretations out of this thread, I will be happy to answer any pertinent question here, attacks I will answer in the Cest Pit.
No, he means the prices were not increased at the time when power started to increase in cost (about 6 months ago) or when IP prices increased at the beginning of the year, for example, he means the move was delayed as much as possible. Retroactively is not used correctly, he means it like "before" or "at the time".
In short, people could still renew at the old prices so far even as they were not sustainable already for many months.
No, not at all, some twisting of history there. There was never any issues with Prometeus and certainly not with Uncle on LET other than the usual member moans, groans and threats. For definite not when I was a moderator on this site and I am not aware of any other time that Prometeus was somehow targetted or even banned by LET staff.
Any 'issues' that could be related to Prometeus were through you, your comments and actions, it's always been about you.
What your gripe against LET have to do with your clients? Clients really couldn't care less about your personal issues with Fran, LET or anyone. We may chit-chat here, but when it come to paid hosting it's about business relationship.
Strange, as OpenVZ 6 has been EOL by Prometeus in November 2019 already and those plans discontinued. Or you discontinued only the cheapest plans at that time?
Before that, in February 2019 KVMx plans also migrated from Solus to Virtualizator in order to consolidate all plans under the same GUI and management interface.
Every single time a host raises their prices, there is drama.
Very mild one so far!
What is strange there? Discontinued never meant removed, we simply didn't sell them anymore. ANY OVZ6 including the Biz ones.
More or less, the issue was that old KVM plans were also running on CentOS 6 and we have retired those servers completely as the hardware was also obsolete. We have offered replacements at same price with HUGELY increased resources, especially for the little ones, sometimes tripled.
Yes, and? This can't stop us from giving a better treatment to old customers, as noted, whether they are friendly or not here, actually any old customer can ask for a special deal, they know that, we have made them even without any reason, just because people asked nicely. Now we have a reason to protect old customers from these price increases, but there will be no exception for the obsolete plans. The risks are too great, they have to carry a hefty price tag so ONLY the people with no alternative should stay on those. If you absolutely have to run OVZ6, centos 6, debian 7 or even 6 as some still do. As long as there is no breach, we don't force people out but the risk has to be priced in. There will also be limited support and periodic consolidation as more and more people choose to finally upgrade.
Move to new services, one IPv4 is free and maybe even the price for the service remains unchanged for same or lower resources. We will save by keeping old customers with no issues and by retiring old and inefficient hardware.
Oh, they were removed in 2019. Several of them on the different nodes.
I am not arguing or anything, just correcting you as my old OpenVZ 6 Prometeus boxes (few of them on different nodes) were discontinued long time ago and replaced with more expensive KVMv2 with some discount.
That's exacty what I am asking. You said "I think we treated LET way better than they threated us". Who's LET?
I am surely not. In relation to the Prometeus I am client who purchased advertised offer and this is it. Your old private dramas with some individuals here don't interest me and they aren't part of my business. That's not Prometeus clients business.