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Funnily enough we're on the receiving end of nearly the same move right now.
Ours is with MailChannels which we get via Naranjatec. We're on an annual email plan, their system auto-charged the renewal before the actual renewal date (stored card, which they won't let us remove), and when we asked to drop from 250K emails down to the 50K plan we actually need, the answer was basically "this is how we've always worked, you have to make changes a month before renewal."
I complained about it because it felt wildly unfair and they did move us to the smaller plan in the end after pointing out this wasn't stated anywhere including TOS, but the difference came back as account credit, not a refund. Because of this, we've ended up with a 1K EUR credit balance for something like a 100 EUR per year service.
Wow. Pretty clear this company has cash flow problems...
I have an even better deal from them, 2GB RAM for 10 EUR/year, from BF too. It has been very stable for the 2 years that I have it. Did not get any kicking out E-Mail yet, but it is definitely worrying.
I think most of the criticism comes from poor execution of plan C. In theory, just cutting unprofitable deals will work and that's fine if you have a monopoly over your niche, but in practice you'll end up losing money due to people leaving. It's possible to sugarcoat bad news in such a way that it doesn't result in a riot, or at least minimize the damage that occurs to those who are most likely to start a riot.
Instead, you should slightly increase the price of higher-end products while minimizing the price hikes on extremely cheap promo services. At the end of the day, two guys complaining that their $20/month service went up by 5% is less of a PR issue for you (and gets you more money) than ten guys complaining that their $20/year service went up by 50%.
maybe we all just need a TL,DR ?
I messed up with a lot of people because of our operational decisions. (This is not referring to you.)
I'm sorry I messed up, but I'm going to use the resources we recovered from the rollback to run another round of promotions. (This is also not referring to you.)
Yeah, it's tough for everyone. (Here it means many people.)
It seems that so far, no one is complaining much. Most people won't take any action over this kind of small-scale default. But I hope this isn't a regular practice for sellers, and I also hope we don't say, "They're not the first to do it."
I think alot of us here are either trolling or in denial. Some of the expectations and requests I come across, especially in the offers section, simply aren't sustainable for any provider in this economy, even if they wanted to offer them, I have seen crazy low prices here.
The reality is that almost everything has become more expensive over the past couple of years. Electricity, internet, phone bills, and even our food & beverage costs have all gone up significantly at least 60-80% after covid and especially the last couple of years.
Hosting providers live in the same economy we do, so it's unrealistic to expect prices to stay the same forever while also demanding 24/7 uptime, fast support, latest and greatest hardware etc... Then, if there's even one hour of downtime, people roast them here, I imagine they will also open countless support tickets, and start multiple forum threads.
All of that comes at a cost. Anyone who doesn't see that is, as the @host_c said, either still below 14 years his parents paying his bills or still living in the past and I think that's the truth.
I've been with SolidSeoVPS since 2014 and they are not small or a summer host, still have some servers at the same price while i had few services price increased over the years couple bucks. I also have servers with Hetzner and OVH, and they've both increased prices over the years not because they all are greedy because they want to stay in business and provide the same quality level of service.
If OVH, Hetzner, etc. and many big names providers have had to adjust their pricing, it's hard to believe smaller providers haven't been affected even more.
Just my two cents.
Naranja KVM-NVME-5GB-BF (€20): Quick, hide—don't look at it!
There is a difference here though.
When you make a contract with a client and ask advance (as a provider) upfront, then you make a promise that while the contract is in place, the conditions mentioned in the contract will be respected (by both party). That's a risk one is taking while taking the advance and that's why the client wants to pay upfront for future months. As a provider, one also accumulates a capital which he can invest in his own business, the liability of which is coming in future months but NOT in the current scenario.
In this case, Naranja offered annual contract Up to November. So just let client run till this annual contract expires and THEN offer them either to end the contract or if they want to continue, they must do at the elevated contract price (basically it will be a new contract).
Otherwise, if any party can change whatever circumstances are whenever they feel like it, then the world will be chaos.
In my workplace too, we make contracts with various providers. Some times, the party gets benefitted when raw materials get cheaper but we pay amount as per what contract states (even knowing that if we change supplier it will be profitable for us but we do not do that). Similarly, the supplier takes the loss if raw prices get higher. When the contract ends, we offer bidding and either stay with the current or move to a new one.
I don't wish providers go Naranja's route where they change prices at the middle of the contract. Let the annual contract expire and then bring the changes.
You can say thanks to greedy SaaS with La La Land margins , customer associates downgrades with enshittification. Thanks to MBAs and private equity, people thought providers are looking for higher margin. Burn the bridges, pamper the whales.
Let me collate yours with the below.
There's reason why hosts can't really lock-in the pricing.
First, the most obvious electricity "contract". Datacenter, energy traders often refused to honor the hedging or insist on spot-pricing. Perhaps citing force majeure
Now, on the question of why providers can't just stockpile components?
Providers knows that moving parts need to be replaced because it has annual failure rate (AFR). Hardware also have a limited period of warranty (1-5 years). That means if the providers "locked in" the components for the prepaid period, they're limiting the ratio where manufacturer would give replacement for free or small amount of expenses e.g remote hands, shipment, etc. This also gets factored in when calculating the base cost of a service.
So, at best they stockpiled 1 year worth of hardware. Then, they would have to get more hardware because the chance of
drives to be replaced > replacement drivesgets dangerously high.The only way to lock in the component pricing is by making a deal with the upstream, which is impossible even for Steam.
There's no vendor who could offer quote with long validity
Also, @host_c what's DDR4 AFR and years before it require replacement?
But that is the risk when you take amount upfront. If you can not take that risk, one shouldn't offer annual pricing in the first place. That's why contracts are in place.
Because your cost has increased, it doesn't mean you can change the amount in contract also.
Sound like business decision. Make it right or wrong will cost dollars.
That's what a contract is for. As long as contract is binding, you can not change parameters. Let the contract expire and you can make a new one.
If you can't take the risks, you shouldn't offer a contract in the first place.
Many vendors in various enterprises get blacklisted when they can't respect the contract and change according to their needs.
Correct. Vote with your wallet. Cancel servers and forget vendor. Time will deal with them.
It is interesting that you were just brave enough to spill it out [even though this is so obvious but yeah...you are 14 thing
] and people rushed to thank you and note hate to breaching the contract [99% of people do not really understand how contract law works but well, I am mama's lawyer on the sofa 
].
listen if you want to discontinue a service i prepaid for, it's fine, shit happens.
process my prorated refund and we can just part ways np.
providers usually give credit.. rarely cashback.
so .. just use the credit for some time and move out.
they should allow credit transfer.
I just feel lot of providers did these deals as purposely unsustainable for the advertising, which they should swallow for a minimum X period not kill deals a year or 2 later.
Or they purposely ran on low profit margins, which plans should simply adjust to % where they keep doing so.
What I feel wrong here is, providers are cancelling an entire node that is not loosing a lot, potentially advertised and helped gain them many customers and they simply want that node back to re-sell at current market rates.
I understand power has increased, but these are older deals with paid off hardware, factor in current-cost replacements of aging hardware bump the prices 20-30%, still a solid deal to customers you knew what you was getting. Out-right cancellation, or 100% increases are just uncalled for.
No one is insulting the current 2026 deals, they are shocked at this happening to older hardware this extreme countless providers here have done as I said with a fair operating cost bump, or alternative services offered out of respect for their clientbase. So I guess that’s C, personally most hosts I’m with have already assured me my deal stands or will be adjusted so many are doing B.
I however feel for providers with the current market that don’t have existing loyal connections to fair priced hardware, it’s awful i’m actively building multiple gaming machines for a LAN setup, this alone outside of business is an eye-opener in current market even with used hardware, it’s truly diabolical.
I think prices should increase across the board, as it’s such a competitive market there is no fear of it not returning upon hardware’s price changes in the future market. I wouldn’t blink at most providers doing a 25-40% bump on services and that’s the sad reality. I only look in disgust when they do such impactful changes all within the same fiscal year to existing “promo” plans, they was promo for a reason raise them in-line with the original % profit aim of them and nothing more seems simple?
But they will have nothing nowhere even close to being this attractive for price-to-performance as what the user already had, and got cancelled. Without looking at their site, but typically - aside from "deals" - many providers will only have something silly like "1 GB RAM for 5 EUR/month" on their sites as regular offer.
So I really really expect this user gets refund to his bank card without any issue, otherwise this would be entirely on another level of evil.
@LEBUserJoe
Agreed with you on many topics here
Also, my reply is a general reply to issues exposed over this topic, not specifically to Naranja or others, as the underlying issue is the same for all.
100% true, now to what extent were the these offered it remains subjective for each provider, yet yes, these "crazy promotions" were given in context of marketing, mainly to enter the market or to show the people what they can do. For the sake of this reply, LET's take these as 100% loss/loss-making or at best break-even but for that period of time that they were released, not for the next 2-3 years, as they are used to atract better profit services down the road.
I see no issue here, as to enter an oversaturated market like hosting, even if you are the best of the best, you can only do one thing, low price to attract customers, it is the only game you can play.
Basically you undersell your investment from day 0.
Yes and no, I will tend more to the NO part, yet some might have done this deliberately, but in context of my first reply, I will say no, they did not do this deliberately just to raise prices afterwards, they did this for marketing. ( LET's assume that not all are scam from day 1, as in that case, the sole purpose of this forum sees to exist )
Also, that Marketing that you most people will say it was stupid, got many of you insane good deals that you used for 6,12,16.... X amount of time, so be honest here a bit before you shit-spray all those that did it and today cannot live up to the promise anymore, but more on this down this post.
True to the fact that in 2-3 years they have been payed off, except replacements, as in low profit margins, those don't fit the math, they never were part of it.
Now ask why? Was the provider dumb? well, as much as you wish to say yes, well, no. ( at least not all
)
The soul purpose to start a business is that you have some type of hope that it will succeed in the long run, you cannot start the spreadsheet with:
A - running costs
B - hardware/stuff
C - what if all goes to shit in 2 years.
You literally go all in, and if it plays off in 6-12 mo, then you start to worry about the rest.
You do look back to 12-24 MO and see what the prices are, and for 2023-2024, you have a +/-15% at most on some SKU and expenses. ( so a pretty stable market, I would say rock solid to whatever happened for the past 8-10 moths )
If you do contention plans, then you are not here as a startup operator, as the LE* is not your place to start with low profit margins.
So guys, you should also be aware of your expectations here on this forum or other places like this, as some of you confuse a LE* operator with a 10 year old IT company that saw near bankruptcy more than once and has the expertise to handle difficult times.
Tho my money is on A for the more established ones, and a large part of them are checking out C in some form.
I will stick to my 1650 TI for the rest of 2027
Well, the issue on raising prices on promo deals that now eat your ass in daily expenses is verry tricky, and does differ from case to case quite a lot.
But in general you would need a 200-500% ( x2 to x5 ) adjustment today on those, yet, as others said, that will make you "a piece of shit something"
Also, the amount of % increase really depends on what the operators expenses changed in the past 2-3 years. For some not that much, for others it can be as high as x2 or x3.
Form outside it is easy to say, hey RAM got only x2 and NVME x2, but you are charging me x5 on recurring so fuq you.
.
Remember what I wrote at the beginning, calculate those 2-3 year old promos as a 100% loss to begin with, so yes, a correct price adjustment would be x5-x10 on those in some cases.
No one wants to pay 30 USD on a 10 USD promo from 2023. - So I get your issue here guys.
A small, 5-50% increase ( from 10 USD to 15 USD for example ) will not fix the issue today in my view, it will just postpone the problem to the next 1,2,3.... X month, yet, some might think it will give them enough time to survive the storm as it might pass. This is a bet here, some will do it and succeed, some will fail at it, there is really no correct way to answer this in my view.
Sincerity, I think the most correct way for those PROMO VPS that are a loss today is still what I wrote in C, end it and call it a day, as whatever adjustment an operator will try to do will not be ok PR wise, and depending on case, it will not solve the issue.
Regarding the ending, yes, put it down ASAP, as the longer you drag them, the higher the risk that you will not see the popcorn thread as a business.
I will also not just blame providers for these mistakes, I would add some context to it.
See, the limits for VPS for example here on LET ( yes yes, with all the "hey, if it would be higher it would attract more scam") are totally outdated, even for 2022.
And also, that 10 USD limit rarely helped SCAM wise if I recall.
Now, I wait to be spanked
So @host_c $3.2/yr @FAT32 sales when?!?!
Ok, ok, we’ll accept $4/year
I think one of @layer7, @ReliableSiteHosting, @fiberstate had tell a story about their distributors canceling their order despite it's already ordered months before the BF.
And let's not forget about this
I do remember that one, and since 2026 we started using only brand new disks, yet the price tag on throes is................ I will borrow "diabolical" from @LEBUserJoe above
Funny to see that from May, and now there have been 2 significant price increases (just on HDDs) since then. It's definitely a complex situation, bit of greed/bit of some hardware vendors being squeezed hard by big tech (we're talking source, like Micron/SK) for so many years now getting their chance.
I do believe it's temporary, but the 'new normal' will absolutely remain elevated.
The only thing I can never figure out are TVs. They keep getting bigger, better, and cheaper.
I know. When I open my supply cabinet and saw stacks of HDD on mint condition. I just smile since it costs pretty dollars
Yeah, I mean, A freaking flagship phone is 1000 USD, and a 75" TV is much less then that, and a TV does have a lot more parts in it compared to a phone.
Hmmm, maybe I should stack up on TV's, as it might be the next big boom
I was almost going to recommend someone get a storage warehouse and buy all the best deals asap