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Something about bonuses for credits or "topping up" just feels shady. I think you could accomplish something similar without it looking so bad by just offering a promo on triennial plans. That's what GreenCloud/HostHatch/etc do. And it worked wonders for VeloxMedia's scam...
Many other providers also run it. Berohost also does it because I have used it.
This isn't a scam superficially speaking.
Of course, it could be legitimate
I see this 20% bonus from Berohost on Black Friday. rarecloud's bonus is literally 10x that and comes at a time when most hosts are raising prices. In my opinion they're very different situations
Bonus credits aren't automatically a scam, but this one is obviously very suspicious
I just put some money on the top up to purchase a Plus VPS for 1yr
i get this error
We hit a problem setting up your server. Your payment is confirmed and nothing extra will be charged. Open a ticket and our team finishes the setup for you, usually within minutes.
I opened a ticket with No response yet.
Awesome my service was just activated... I will post some results soon
wtf my vps down and i dont see new invoice for payment
GQI-145802 why my vps down and canceled ?
You make a fair point, but to be completely clear: the funds you top up do stay in your account forever! It is your money, and it never expires.
Only the promotional bonus credit has an expiration date.
The goal isn't to give away free money for perpetual renewals, but to give you enough balance to test all our new cloud services. As for a "2 months free" promo, our current campaign is actually much better: we usually offer up to 3x credit, and right now for our campaign on LowEndBox, we are offering 4x credit for the community.
More details here: https://lowendbox.com/blog/rarecloud-returns-to-lowendbox-with-a-rebuilt-cloud-platform-new-console-kubernetes-mcp-and-up-to-4x-credit/
That is true for annual plans if the next renewal date falls outside the bonus window. However, here is an important detail about how our billing system works:
Promotional bonus credits are always spent first, leaving your real account balance untouched.
For example: if you have €60 total (€30 bonus + €30 paid credit) and order a €30 service, the system consumes the €30 bonus first. This means you don't need to rush to pay your annual renewal early; your real €30 credit stays safe in your account and can be applied to your renewal next year whenever it comes due.
I completely understand how things might look from the outside, but let me explain what is actually happening:
Price Adjustments & Infrastructure Upgrades: We are on solid ground, but we do operate on thin profit margins to keep prices low. Historically, we offered low-end hardware at low-end prices (like older Intel E5 nodes). Recently, we upgraded almost our entire infrastructure to enterprise-grade hardware (Intel Gold, AMD Epyc, Ceph storage) and expanded to new locations, all while keeping those same legacy prices. Combined with rising datacenter, network, and power costs, price adjustments on older, underpriced plans became necessary. However, these are modest tweaks (e.g., a €10/yr plan might move to €12/yr, not a massive spike). We announced this early so clients could lock in their current rate if they wanted, or cancel if they preferred. It also helped us expand faster, delivering our High-Availability Cloud and Managed Kubernetes platform.
Deposit Match Promotions: Offering 2x, 3x, or 4x deposit bonuses is a standard growth strategy used across the industry (similar to AWS, DigitalOcean, or Vultr offering initial credits). Requiring a small initial top-up ($1 or €10) simply prevents abuse while giving real users extra resources to test our new platform.
I completely respect your decision not to renew 7 months early. You should always do what makes the most sense for your setup! I'm glad you are happy with the performance, and rest assured, we are here for the long run.
P.S.: For everyone following this thread, we just launched a major feature article on LowEndBox featuring our rebuilt platform! 🚀
If you haven't checked it out yet, we have completely revamped our cloud stack from the ground up:
To mark this relaunch, we teamed up with LowEndBox for an exclusive Credit Match Promo:
Example: With 4x credit, an entry-level Cloud VM (€3.99/mo) effectively drops to under €1/month.
👉 Check out the full breakdown and technical overview by @raindog308 here:
https://lowendbox.com/blog/rarecloud-returns-to-lowendbox-with-a-rebuilt-cloud-platform-new-console-kubernetes-mcp-and-up-to-4x-credit/
I completely understand the skepticism given past industry history, but comparing a time-limited top-up promo to multi-year lock-in scams misses how cloud growth actually works.
Every major hyperscaler does this exact same thing:
Are all of them running a scam? Obviously not.
When you have infrastructure capacity available, offering initial promotional credits is the most effective way to let developers test your product. You get enough balance to spin up instances, stress-test the stack, and benchmark performance. Once the promotional credits expire, if you are happy with the platform, you stick around as a paying client. That is just smart customer acquisition, backed by confidence in our service.
What is actually suspicious and unsustainable is selling deeply discounted 3-year or 5-year lock-in contracts just to secure immediate cash flow to keep lights on. We do the opposite: our deposit bonus is bounded, time-limited, and capped at 1 use per account. Your deposited cash never expires, and we ran the unit economics carefully to ensure full long-term sustainability.
Glad to hear the system sorted it out for you! Apologies for the brief delay on setup. Looking forward to hearing your feedback and benchmark results once you test it out.
We checked ticket #GQI-145802, and Ebin has already replied to you there. It appears a cancellation request was previously submitted for that VPS, so the service's termination was automatically processed at the end of the billing cycle.
Please reply to the ticket and let our team know if you still need active services with us, and we will gladly help you get everything set up!
It's a matter of trust, and you are not AWS. If the promo was structured differently, I would have placed an order. But it's only my opinion, don't take it personally. GLWS
p.s. you misattributed my message to itachikonoha
I know we're not AWS, I'm just saying that is nothing different with our promo, we're just offering extra credits as a promo, that's it.
P.S.: Check this: https://lowendbox.com/blog/rarecloud-returns-to-lowendbox-with-a-rebuilt-cloud-platform-new-console-kubernetes-mcp-and-up-to-4x-credit/
We are not new on this forum, and we are here for a lot of time and we are here to stay. If LowEndBox didn't trusted us, they wouldn't accepted to promote us.
I think my biggest issue is that if I order an annual VPS using PayPal, and you do some rug pull / exit scam <6 months from now, I'm confident I can win a dispute
But if I paid for account credits I imagine that is very different legally. I'm not really interested in finding out
Obviously it's a bigger concern with LET providers as opposed to AWS/Google/etc
https://lowendbox.com/blog/veloxmedias-crazy-offer-three-vps-bundle-for-15-mo-plus-other-cool-bogo-offers/
https://lowendbox.com/blog/second-to-the-last-deal-for-2024-veloxmedias-1gb-kvm-in-california-for-only-10-year/
https://lowendbox.com/blog/veloxmedia-two-hot-offers-for-you-10-year-offer-and-a-vps-with-5-ipv4-unmetered-bandewidth/
https://lowendbox.com/blog/this-offer-from-veloxmedia-is-packed-full-of-bonuses-for-our-readers-cheap-dedicated-server-and-cheap-vps-offers-in-seattle-and-california/
https://lowendbox.com/blog/veloxmedia-has-awesome-dedicated-servers-deals-in-seattle-and-california-plus-a-sneaker-vps-deal/
https://lowendbox.com/blog/double-wow-can-you-believe-this-a-7-year-vps-in-california-from-veloxmedia/
This is not a flex lol.
So, this is more like a trust issue from you, not a issue with the billing system...
Yes. I never mentioned your billing system
i did some math, their services have a high base cost, so if one deposits $165, they only have like 3 years of linux vps with 4 vcpu and 16gb rams, which is kinda fair (e.g hostdzire india let special plan which is about $190/3)