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Introduction: Caliber Node + Horror Story
CaliberNode
Member
Hello Lowendtalk,
First, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Robert, though some of you may know me as Winter. When I'm not tinkering with servers, I work full-time as an arcade route technician. One day I'm deploying containers, the next I'm accidentally shocking myself on 12V coin mech wiring. If anyone ever wants to talk arcade machines, I'm always happy to.
The Story Behind Caliber Node
During COVID, I was laid off and decided I needed another source of income. Like many people, I thought, "How hard can it be to turn a $5/year VPS into a million dollar company?"
As it turns out... much harder than I thought.
So I opened eBay and bought about 15 refurbished Dell E5 servers loaded with RAM. A few days later, FedEx showed up with a mountain of hardware, and I was convinced I was ready for the the $5/year VPS market.
Fast forward about a year, and those same Dell servers were collecting dust.
I figured it was time to get started. I opened a fresh Google Spreadsheet, filed for an LLC with the State of NC, and suddenly I was a CEO... or at least that's what I thought at the time.
Choosing a Colocation Provider
Living in North Carolina, colocation options are limited. I did what any normal person would do I opened Google and eventually landed on Cogent, which had opened a "new" facility in Raleigh.
Without even touring the building, I signed a one-year contract.
I mean... it's Cogent. How bad could it be?
Let's just say if you've ever been inside that old Sprint building in Raleigh... don't turn on the lights.
The Website
Like most startups, we launched with a template, WHMCS, and just enough customization to make it look presentable.
After all, I was selling $5/year VPS plans.
What more could I possibly need?
Reality Sets In
The following year was rough.
We made virtually no reputable sales and spent more time dealing with spammers and abuse than actual customers. Between abuse reports and colocation costs, it simply wasn't sustainable.
Eventually, we shut everything down.
Ironically, to this day, I still haven't sold a single $5/year VPS.
Back to the Drawing Board
Rather than give up, we started over.
We built our own control panel from the ground up and ditched WHMCS entirely. This time we asked ourselves a different question:
How can we embrace the low-end hosting while building something that's actually useful?
The answer was simple.
Instead of selling another VPS, we built a platform for hosting open-source applications using Docker. By sharing infrastructure efficiently, we could dramatically reduce costs while giving customers an easy way to deploy and manage self-hosted software.
Today
Today, Caliber Node hosts more than 140 managed open-source applications.
They're not virtual servers and they're not trying to be. They're designed for people who want to run great software without spending hours configuring Docker, reverse proxies, databases, and SSL certificates.
We've also come a long way from those old Dell servers. Today our infrastructure runs in professional datacenters with redundant power, real networking, and enterprise hardware through providers such as OVH and GTHost, with our primary focus on the eastern United States.
It's been a long road with plenty of mistakes, but every failure taught us something that helped shape the platform we have today.
Thanks for taking the time to read my story. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you for allowing me into the community.
Comments
where deals?
welcome to LET
First. Don't forget to apply host rep tag if you want to offer services
Edit: fuuuu
Working on that now. Exactly why I didn't post any offers or links. A simple introduction.
Can I buy a $5/year VPS?
Bahaha! Please don't! Lol
Ok.
What would it take to distribute NDNts-video through your app store?
$5/y vps is yesterday, we need to $3/y
Would require a maintained docker image for starters. I did do some testing and I'm a bit worried about how ndn6-file-server registers its prefix that might be a slight wall. Something we can work past tho feel free to pm me. And instead of actually running the encoder I could build it so it automatically runs on media upload.
Send me those servers no?