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DigitalOcean, simple predictable pricing......NOT!
LosPollosHermanos
Member
They went and changed their plans and prices on me without any notice as far as I can tell. Not what I would call predictable pricing. They used to have a 25GB NVMe plan for $7 but now NVMe starts at 35GB for $8. They are also quietly trying to phase out their $6 25GB SSD plan. It's still there on the API but I can see that they created identical plans starting at $7 so the writing is on the wall.
Of course I don't care about a $1/month difference if I was just planning to buy/resell a handful of servers. When you multiply that x100's of servers it's a different picture.
Comments
If you need 100s of vps's you could afford the $1 price increase
Prices can't stay the same forever. You should expect and plan for price increases.
They definitely should have sent out a notice about it though. Strange that they didn't.
It's not just the price change, albeit with more storage. It's the fact they got rid of plans I was already using.
Walk me through your business logic where bottom line costs don't matter and don't add up. An extra unexpected $500/month increase in my expenses is not a trivial increase to me. Also, what do you think will happen when I pass those costs on?
I don't see the problem here.
You reevaluate the value of what you're providing as well as the overhead you're using to provide it. Not all businesses survive.
The pricing page still shows:
1 GiB 1 vCPU 1,000 GiB 25 GiB $0.01042 $7.00
Or what's the issue exactly? I can't find 35GB $8 anywhere.
Edit: Only for Intel VMs. Was skipping them, as no sane person would buy them
I don't like DigitalOcean, haven't had a good experience with them at all but I'm still trying to figure out what the issue is? Things cost more and they have to pass that onto their clients to stay solvent. If you're managing 100+ servers and don't have a plan B or plan C when prices inevitably go up, you've got more pressing issues at hand.
They may have had to expedite their rollout plans as their stock price plunged 25% in the past week.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Always.
The problem is that the plans that I was previously using and advertising to my customers no longer exist. There was no announcement or heads up given about it ahead of time as far as I can tell.
It looks like they are trying to phase out lower end plans entirely and this is one way that they do this. Another way is to limit the amount of orders they accept and what datacenters they are available in.
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/announcing-new-basic-premium-plans - 08/03/23
Did you see this by chance?
You're right, they still show the 25GB NVMe plan for AMD on their control panel. I suspect they will try get rid of the AMD one next.
Looking back at the dates now, their stock fell 25% the day they announced the pricing changes. So it seems you're preaching to the choir.
Their idea is probably to upsell customers from the $7 to the $16 plan since only the smaller one got more expensive.
Seems like they've switched gears and are targeting tech startups vs regular joes. It certainly COULD be more lucrative (contracts, less people to support, etc..) but if it turns out the regular joes are the ones who are currently buttering their bread, they're going to be in a world of hurt by alienating them.
Making it more difficult to order lower priced plans to "ensure a simple UI experience" is certainly one way to try spin it.
Doesn't everyone and their dog want to try upsell to more profitable plans? I know I certainly do.
It's great if you can but you also run the risk of losing the cash flow that's keeping your current infrastructure running and the people running it employed. One without the other doesn't make any sense, so if you can't fulfull what you're currently obligated to (or there's a mass exodus of clients to greener pastures) - they're going to be speeding in neutral.
Have you checked out Vultr?? They have the same plans at the price point you were looking for. They've been absolutely rock solid for my clients and myself.
I use both Vultr and DigitalOcean. That way I have alternatives when one of them pulls a stunt like this. I think DO API is a bit better and since I do everything over API they are my primary. I also prefer DO Datacenters. I think most are more custom setups with more redundancy. Vultr appears to just lease rack space with the possible exception of NJ. Probably with whoever gives them the best deal.
Most companies don't own their own data centers at all, and simply lease space in larger facilities. Choopa might actually control their whole space in NJ though, not sure.
You really have to do a lot of volume or get away with some high prices to make it financially viable to manage facility certifications, power, building maintenance, all that jazz. Of course, basement data center is always an option too I guess 🤣
Damn it why cant I get a candy bar for a nickel anymore?
Sounds like your business model is the problem? Buying and reselling a service that you have no control over is just a poor business strategy. It is lazy and you're paying the price now.
That's not entirely fair. Every provider falls under that same logic if you view it from a relative perspective. How many data centers own the power companies? They're reselling power they have no control over.
You don't even know what I am doing.