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Oh, look who it is. My biggest fan. Pay for a year (or three), get a year (or three). Seems simple. Want to continue? Options are available. You wouldn't know, because like many replies you're either purposely being obtuse or don't have the ability to comprehend option 2.
Whole lot of 夸张 from general agitators.
It's funny, you will actually end up being extremely accurate in a roundabout way
What if the decision solves these 2 things at once?
Many people keep saying it is an easily solvable problem, but it simply is not. We'd have to enact things that would be provably damaging and inconvenient (and result in a loss of business) for higher tier products. The only other alternative is continue to fight in the trenches and hire more people to try and stay on top of a problem that is not generating enough revenue to justify that decision. It would carry additional risks with it as well.
I opted to close the revolving door responsible for almost all of the abuse/issues, and open another one for existing customers caught up in an unfortunate situation that decide to peek inside.
We thought this title belongs to us?
Our picture, as seen here, is basically your brand ambassador now.
Wishful thinking.
Bit of a bummer but fortunately I look like I have some time to sort out any of my plans with late Jan being the first impacted.
May I ask, the recurring discount noted in option 2 for the new plans. Is there details on what that would be or is that going to be offered case by case via support? For me personally I’d have the 1.5 and 4.5GB plans that I assume a lot of other people here have that are the ones impacted and would be keen to know what that looks like to transition.
I understand that they are not profitable(esp my yearly at $5 a year), but I do wish there was a greater time window than 2 weeks.
Thank you @crunchbits for the promo offers provided so far.
This year is ending so sad..
It's started with the Inception Hosting closure (without real customer/VPS migration solution).. and now this..
Lot of "unsustainable" deal from new, 'unknown' providers (VPS for 9USD for 2 years, etc) appeared while the old, affordable, reliable providers started to disappearing or 'step backs'.. I'm disappointed a bit.
This is the cycle of very low-end priced VPS. no way to avoid it when it doesn't make money.
Whoa! That is really scummy behavior. What an awful God-complex some people have.
That's really unfortunate, I was looking forward to crunchbit offer this black friday..
As was I. However, I'm wary of BF deals now. I might just wait for their regular VPS line to restock.
I think it is a good business decision to focus on more profitable/sustainable plans. Let's see what they have on BF...
For what it’s worth, I feel relieved that I won’t have to renew two more idlers.
They will probably have offers this BF, just not as cheap as in the past
This is also why we likely won't be doing the $6/year (or $12/year) flash sale again. The support demand, low profitability, and abuse from these types of services make it not so sustainable for us. You'll end up having a load of clients that will end up generating more tickets and it causes a lot more work for the support team. On top of this, datacenter costs are increasing heavily, IP costs are increasing heavily, payment gateway fees have increased, and the cost of everything in general is increasing heavily. The already low margins will probably just shrink even more over time. In my opinion, these cheap yearly plans are typically not so sustainable and are just a major pain to manage unless you heavily rely on automation and have some sort of cheap support cost combined with owning or leasing the IPs for very cheap (since that's the primary factor). A decent amount of the clients (such as abusers) that these promotions attract are generally not great anyway.
If Crunchbits feels that these plans are causing too much hassle than its worth, then I fully understand their decision to cancel the promotion. The only wish that I would've had is for them to clearly specify some sort of migration path to some higher paying plan - like mentioning an exact price and specification for the closest plan on their DIY VPS lineup that a migration would be possible to.
Some LET providers fall into the trap of offering cheap XYZ promotion yearly deal and then having to deadpool just months later because they realize that the revenue won't be enough to sustain themselves. Or they run into some price increase or other situation and don't have the cashflow to absorb the cost from the $0.20 per month margin they make per plan. Competing on price is really just a race to the bottom. If you oversell to make ends meet or expand too fast without fixing existing services, then you will have an endless churn of clients. The Black Friday thread is sort of a breeding ground for this sort of behavior.
We did price increases for our newer services and stopped doing a lot of the unsustainable promotions. This directly led to massive improvements and optimizations in our infrastructure because we suddenly had the cashflow to upgrade everything. We went from renting everything to owning everything. Even if there may be some small issues from time to time (usually hardware related), it led to massive stability improvements and massive performance improvements. We stopped selling every plan for a couple of months while we focused on upgrading our infrastructure and fixing issues that we had. If we had continued the pricing that was there before, no way this would have been possible. I am fine with keeping the plans that we currently have since they were such limited promotions with only very few clients, but moving forward, unlikely I'd do a similar promo again.
This is unrelated... but as for our $6/year promotions that we used to do on Black Fridays...
The reputational loss is not worth it. People really get pissed when our website crashes or if we try to do something creative (like a captcha). Like @afn who said that someone should be "killed and burnt in front of everyone" and that the person who thought of it should "seek medical help" for doing our unprofitable, unsustainable, loss-leading promotion in 2022. Or people like @raza19 being frustrated as they might have stayed up late and couldn't get the offer due to such a limited quantity. Why should we even bother posting these unprofitable and unsustainable limited time promotions when it pisses off people and potentially takes away sales from the lineups that subsidize these promotions? People like these probably don't have a good view of our brand over a promotion that was completely unsustainable, unprofitable, and served no real purpose anyway.
Any reputable provider want to refuge deal me a 1c/1.5gb VPS for my Bitwarden install
I have some great suggestions for web hosting providers. Charge $10 a month for the first six months, and if a client continues to use your services, drop the price to $5 a month from the seventh month onward. This is just one example, however, this pricing structure can be applied to any web service.
I know this approach is the reverse of what we see in the real world, where most providers compete to offer the lowest prices upfront. However, unintentionally, they onboard thousands of spammers or newbies who create hundreds of support tickets. Instead, if prices are higher initially and lower later, real clients with sustainable businesses will stay, and providing support will become easier with increased revenues.
This is exactly the reason why I am conflicted about whether to organise more BF Flash Sale event or not, not because of the less than ideal planning by providers, but also the amount of people who feel entitled.
It is a tough market, and the low end "spirit" is probably long gone. Providers no longer want to spend time on low value users and consumers feel entitled to squeeze more and more from the providers.
It used to be more fun and providers use BF as a way to give back, people enjoy the interaction in megathread and having much fun rather than buying it for profit. But now all I hear is chargeback, abuse and complaints. Most providers would just avoid this completely and make their life easier.
Thanks to those people who spoiled the fun, I guess the end of low end "spirit" is nigh.
Oh well, just when I was transferring small workloads to those yearly VPSes. I guess now their support would have ample of time when you have less customers. This is upsetting
You are lying to yourself mate.
No, I've just been here long enough to see how people buy
For most people these VM's are throw aways. Yes, some users are going to be super annoyed having to move (like @Murphy's pretty annoyed for instance), but people get the deals while the deals good.
It's a tough reality. Datacenter's suddenly near doubling the prices in some cases. IP's are at historic highs. Sure you can get some cheaper blocks here there, but you have to pay a premium to get blocks that aren't going to yeet you the second they get a better deal (or decide to just sell them).
Add that with rising support staff costs and it sucks. Sure you sold 3000 of some crazy cheap plan for $10/year or whatever, but how much are the IP's/hardware/etc going to run you? Probably more than that $30,000/year you 'pocketed'.
Francisco
Reality is we all know it's specific group of people / Community who is spoiling the show. But again we can't be racist by not allowing them to participate in such fests or offers because some of them may be genuine. If providers intend to give back to community via such offers or Fest, they should limit one deal per account. So that M*J don't turn this into a flea market (example:n**eseek)
One classic example was set by @Dasabo where People who were not able to show patience during his offers & started abusing / threatening him, he quickly offered refund & permanently closed their accounts making it clear that he is not interested in dealing with such people in future & they won't be able to purchase any of his products/services in future. I think that's the approach that every provider should take. Ban their accounts & IPs forever.
So I think, for the merchants who come to LET to do promotion, if there is no reasonable operation strategy/plan, the promotion is equivalent to digging a hole for themselves.
Price competition will bring an objective number of user groups, while also increasing the follow-up operation cost. It is not easy to see this. So once the increase of operation cost is not seen before this problem becomes a difficult one that has to be solved at the moment, examples like Crunchbits will emerge.
Therefore, it is estimated that experienced merchants will first launch a new brand when they come to LET for promotion in the future, with the purpose of testing the scale and operation and maintenance of the low-end market. At the same time, they will protect the existing brand like the foundation of a tree and ensure the original operation and maintenance and service quality. In this way, the mechanism to combat operational risks looks more reasonable.
Joke aside, If I want going normal VPS line-up is there available right now or I just waiting the order page button was available?
This sums up my own position really well. I value long-term consistency from providers. If there's any time limit involved, I am not interested.
I have deals that are paid 3 years in advance with a few providers, but wouldn't have taken them if there was a 3 year limit.
I often leave servers like that idling for a year before even starting to use it. Sometimes I even renew them after multiple years of idling.
Crunchbits wasn't one of the providers I got servers from last BF, and I would have probably grabbed a good deal from them this year, but after seeing this post, I now know to rather avoid.
Open a ticket as per the email, @crunchbits mentioned in another post on another forum there is stock but he didn't open the DIY public order form in order to ensure there was capacity for those who wanted services after the discontinuation of these yearly promos.
I have 2 active yearly services, also have some funds on the balance and there is nothing in stock to spend it or replace the existing services.
A bit tricky, huh.
no capcha please and no 2FA, I ( as the customer ) like to get my account stolen and open disputes on PP support that I cannot log into my stolen account.
- I think you get the irony.
Truth is that the purpose of a limited sale is to increase brand awareness and promote yourself as a company/brand. ( much more useful if you are new on the market like us and others)
Any provider is ok to BURN some resources for Marketing ( rather give the $ to the customer in a promotion then to google ads is what I say and I am confident others also think like that )
@Advin and others are 100% right.
It is disappointing to see that those cheep promos get abused more than a lady worker at the corner of the street.
Totally understand the decision taken by @crunchbits , this also gave us an insight on some things on the long run we did not think about. - THX
Where user and password names of VPS are flying like crazy on the forum?
The customer that will cash out more for a service is not the one that will abuse it ( most of the cases ) - but I like your idea.
PS: @FAT32 - I know we are late on the BF deals, we will send you some, so cheer up
If I may, I would suggest to not accept offers from providers which are less than 1 year in business. This way we might be able to avoid some scammers trying to take advantage of the recession with offers too good to be true.
I can already see them on LET, and it is not even Black Friday yet.