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What happened to all the low-end providers
asterisk14
Banned
When I joined this magnificent forum, there were many real low end providers such as:
Host1Free - 128MB, 1 IPv4 $0
VirtualVM - 128MB, 1 IPv4 $0
Nephoscale - 1 year FREE cloud.
RIJX - 128MB, 2 IPv4 $5/year
And many others in between $0-5/year including Virmuck, AlphaVPS etc.
Now even NAT offers are above these. What happened to all these types of providers and these low-end cheap offers and will we ever get back to these types of value?
Comments
No, the BilohBucks invoice destroyed the fine margins for these plans.
Check offers from @Cam and @Abd:
Here are their offer threads:
Saar, please check back when the next summer comes.
IPv4s are generally more than 1 USD/EUR a month (with some exception-hoarders who are now profiting anyway, not keeping lower prices).
Also, Putler's war (and even before the war, preparing for it, Putler raised energy prices) increased costs for power, the lack of chips and storage (miners) increased hardware prices, 128 MB also is not doing much...
I got an 256 MB NAT for free from @Neoon and it was too low for my usage scenarios.
Your list is 75% free offering, free is not sustainable, unless you are not the product and clearly on those offering, they are giving free products. Are not they ?
IPv4 became way more expensive and there's a massive shortage now
And many others in between $0-5/year including Virmuck, AlphaVPS etc.
Just can't help yourself, can you.
I would have expected 256MB minimum + IPv4 for the same prices these days ($0-5/year)
I see you've been here around the time I also joined, deep respect to you! Those were the days and indeed as rightly said by esteemed forum members who have posted, we're living in some different times.
Of course, if one has a huge budget or is already making profits - a $0 dollar deal for a short period of time can probably used to welcome sales but I would suggest a $0.01 depending on gateway fees so you weed out freebies altogether and actually get potentially paying customers.
Personally, I'm not fond of free services anymore - none of my data or apps would I want to lose and my confidence in free stuff is just not there for reliability reasons and the impression of privacy and safety even though this is not always the case.
The real answer here is one - IPv4.
ipv4, electricity/datacenter cost, forum memberships, would have cost the very low end to increase their prices.
Oracle literally gives you 24 GB ram (192x as much as the free ones you posted) for free
Another point: mainstream operating systems are requiring more memory. I have to do some tricky things to put a modern distro into a 128MB box. Even 256MB is not a lot of memory today.
For now.
I think the "customer acquisition" phase for a lot of clouds is coming to an end.
Francisco
It was useful to have some cheap 128M $3-5/yr boxes to play with.
Computing power doubles every few years (unless you buy a Celeron) and memory gets cheaper, so should not be a problem. I would have expected at least 256MB box to be around $5/year now based on the price in 2013 which gave you 128MB for $5/yr.
@asterisk14 consider IPv4 cost
Definitely IPv4 cost. But really, what long term "business" is going to hand our service for free? If you want to be a business and offer services like this, you have to make money, unless you're running off funds that you don't care about and you make money in other way. It's management, support, and resources that cost and you're just giving it out. NAT and IPv6-only services still have underlying costs.
it never worked for me.
But, again, many providers have a problem with my real data, they are much more likely to take the fake.
Thats a cycle that keeps renewing with variations.