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are lifetime vps/vds a scam?
as the title says, are they really a scam? like if you buy one today and maybe a few years/decades pass the company shuts down your "lifetime" vps is gone. I know "lifetime" just means as long as the company is alive then i guess that's it?
Thanked by 1anakara
Are lifetime vps/vds plans are scams or are they not?
- Simple question185 votes
- Yes90.27%
- No9.73%
Comments
High risk venture
It can be. The question comes down to whether the host is reputable and what the price would be paying on a regular schedule (i.e., not lifetime).
Last Black Friday, I bought a few lifetime plans from a provider that has been around for 5 years and has a strong and reliable customer base. The plan I bought pays for itself in 2-3 years. Therefore, it is unlikely that this lifetime deal was a "scam."
But if the provider is younger, and/or the deal is too cheap, be careful.
I mean... they're not a scam - until they deadpool.
Lifetime offers are always a risk, so my rule of thumb is always something like: Take the lifetime offer price, divide it down to yearly or monthly. See how long it would take for it to be "paid off" and "worth it".
If it's "only" 2-3 years and the company has already been around for a while, idk, maybe?
There's a company (not a hosting company) where I've had "lifetime" since January 2019. It cost me $120 at the time. Regular subscription was $4.99 per month or effectively $60 per year back then.
So as long as the lifetime subscription lasted more than 2 years, it would "pay off". Considering it's still valid 7 years later, I'd say it was 100% worth it. Though there's no way to know that ahead of time.
@Saragoldfarb does boloxmedia plan to introduce any lifetime plans?
Can't wait to spend some money on lifetime plan that will last 2 months at best.
Sure. I would also be suspicious of lifetime cloud storage deals.
It reminds me of the story of Cloudatcost.com, you can read about it online and also here
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evangrace_cloudatcost-and-their-bait-and-switch-scam-activity-7267767154538668032-xpbD
As stated above, it's just simple math.
If you were going to be a long time customer anyway, it might be a good deal.
Unfortunately, you only know if the lifetime deals were any good once they're over.
yes at least for 3y or you will only get 1y support and you have to renew your support addon to get any update or help whatever
How can you define lifetime.
"as long the company is alive"
Lifetimes can't really be trusted in current economy where everything keeps going up and up. Be careful!
I think it is a high risk commitment for both parties.
They’re basically all scams, so I usually calculate whether I can break even within three years. Of course, I’d only consider it if the price is low enough, but if it’s too expensive, I won’t even think about it. I like small “investments”—big ones, nah, forget it.
once you understand the true meaning of life, you'll realise that none of them are scams
What the hell is meaning of life even do with web hosting
when inflation is high ;ram, ssd, hdd, electricity, labour all prices increasing every month/year. I doubt all lifetime offers will last very long .
well, even in your own sig, you say 'life is short, be silly' - so perhaps you consider a lifetime offer to only last a short time.
Life in a business sense is quite different to personal, though. very few businesses last even a few years, nevermind a 'lifetime' in the human sense. If I buy a lifetime service, I expect no more than 3 years, which is reasonable. If I get more, it's a bonus, but it's not something I plan for. Even large companies like google cannot be relied upon to provide a lifetime service (even though they do not offer any afaik). Would you buy a lifetime service from google? I wouldnt. They graveyard 99% of everything they touch.
with rising prices of RAM, CPU, Disk, and energy why would someone ever offer lifetime plan for cheap?, Yes, if someone offers 1gb ram, 1 cpu, 10gb disk, 1tb bandwidth for $2K for lifetime then that could be a deal. Normally, low end web host charge $10 a year. but if they close down, the offer is void.
Sir your 7$ once a year WON’T help paying my power bill.
I think at this point it doesn’t matter if company sells you lifetime plan or 7$/yr one, it will work until they deadpool. None of that deals are sustainable.
"Lifetime" usually means "the lifetime of the company," which can be surprisingly short in this industry.
It’s only a deal if you have an immediate use case and can hit the break-even point within a few months. The danger isn't just a "scam"—it's the idle time. So many people hoard these deals "for later," but "later" never comes because the server goes dark before they even finish setting up SSH.
Don't buy a lifetime plan for a "maybe" project. Treat it as a prepaid 1-year plan and you won't be disappointed when it eventually goes Deadpool.
In my experience – yes, most are. I've been burned before. Now I run everything on my own VPS with proper monitoring. The peace of mind from knowing exactly what's happening on your server is worth paying monthly for a reliable provider.
"Depends".
I didn't want IncogNET to compete on price points and resource specs for Black Friday by doing stupid plans like 16GB RAM 6 vCPU for $7/mo or whatever so did like 5-10 (I forget) stock of the two smallest plans in each POP as a "lifetime deal".
Super limited. Sold out at a reasonable and sustainable pace and I filled up some unused space on existing hardware. Incredibly sustainable because it was very limited and not something we "needed" to do to cover bills for the next month's operation costs or anything like that.
I'd be weary of any provider whose main selling point is lifetime deals, however. That just seems like a recipe for disaster. But if it is a provider that you already know or trust and it's not their main source of revenue it isn't a huge risk.
Pretty sure I've got a MXRoute lifetime deal and a NameCrane lifetime deal. I'm not stressing over it.
Yeah it was 10 of the 512 MB (smallest) plans and 5 of the 2 GB (second smallest) plans.
Yeah evaluating provider reliability and sustainability is the most important thing. That’s why providers that are too young and providing lifetime services are generally to be avoided. I generally don’t take the risk unless the business has clearly been stable and profitable for at least 3 years.
Good deals imo. I’m considering namecrane and wish I had an MXroute lifetime
Yeah life short stop worry. I said this because I see the death quite a lot to admire every single moment.
it's just marketing, you calculate how long you need to break even on what you paid and if you think the provider will last that long. if it lives past that timeframe you won.
the joke is the 2 or 3 providers here i'd consider worth teh 'risk' i also wouldn't want to burden them with the loss.
For recent lifetime vps prices I have seen, it was equal to 7-8 years of paying yearly, so I thought it is not worth it. But maybe you want to support the provider...
It’s not easy to offer a lifetime VPS, but it’s definitely not impossible. The key lies in proper financial planning. If the one-time price of the lifetime VPS is invested wisely, the returns (interest) generated from that amount should be enough to cover the recurring monthly cost of maintaining the VPS.
Its still high risk, even though i am selling lifetime vps.
Hi,
i would be quiet careful about this assumption what is meant by "lifetime".
For example:
If you rent a virtual server based on an Intel Xeon 2680v4 physical server and the provider stops selling this product, then its the end of the life time.
Or its the end of the lifetime if this Intel Xeon 2680v4 physical servers dies on age or what ever reason. Then its end of lifetime too.
At least this are interpretations of what "lifetime" is that i red here in the forum or somewhere else.
And obviously lifetime offers can not exist in combination with something that continuously require resources ( power, hardware, staff, internet, what ever ) and economic based offers.
At some point in the future the continuously required resources will have eaten up the price you paid. At latest at that point who ever sold this to you will make sure that he does not need to provide it anymore.
In >20 years of being in business i did not see a single example that worked in a way how it might be expected if something is advertised as "lifetime".
Nowadays things are even worst. You are busying a vacuum cleaner / sound boxes / surveillance cam's and similar that works by using cloud stuff.
And, guess what, the device you bought works perfectly physically. Not at its end of lifetime or what so ever. But, the vendor company realize that cloud cost money, continuously and stops the service... so guess what what stops too ;-)
Well actually zap-hosting does provide lifetime products long enough to hit that point and they seem to be doing okay with it. They are "just to big" to really care and they try to get some reinvestments by doing discounts on upgrades, like 4GB RAM -> 16GB RAM for 25% off.
I wouldn't expect any small providers, less than hundreds of thousands or even millions in revenue, here on LET to provide such service tho.
Edit: They also are upgrading hardware every few years, whenever they have no similar hardware left in stock and components die
Depending who's life is used as reference.
Your life? 99% Scam.
Their life? Probably not.