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Providers, have you seen more VPS customers using them for VPN lately?
FairyHosting_com
Member, Patron Provider
in General
Have other providers noticed more customers buying VPS mainly to run their own VPN over the last couple of years?
We’ve definitely seen more of this. Quite often, after some time, the customer comes back asking for an IP change because the original IP is already detected or blocked by some services as VPN/proxy traffic.
The problem is that IPv4 addresses are limited, so constantly replacing them obviously isn’t a solution.
Interested to hear how other providers deal with these requests. Do you normally change the IP, charge for it, or refuse if there is no technical problem with the address?
Comments
I run basically all mine as VPN, to some degree, but I've never requested an IP change or got blocked. Lol
Ensure to cover each address block you use with these three
I guarantee you the amount of IP rotation requests will decrease drastically
You seem to offer services in Estonia, I'd assume a lot of Russian customers may be interested in using the service as a VPN after internet gets more restricted there lately.
If you look into the Requests section, you'll find Russian people looking for services for VPNs primarily in northern Europe.
In your ToS mention that you are not responsible for client side network restrictions. IP being blocked by GFW, RKN, etc as it's are not something you can control anyway.
We introduced a mechanism to let customers change IP address of their service after a fee of $3. Changing IP manually for free is not an option since it doesn't scale and will only lead to more IPs getting blocked.
that's a very cool feature, well done.
I am curious. Do people visit hubs with this vpn?
I've definitely had some Slow Servers signups specifically for VPN purposes. I haven't had any complaints though, so far.
Don't forget to announce yourself over the BitTorrent DHT network.
Clearly we're missing certain critical information. As obviously, just using it as one isn't an issue. There has to be a specific activity tied to it.
I used, until now, Oracle Free Tier but want to change to better providers before the storm. EU is introducing mandatory age verification for social media sites sooner than later, starting with Austria in early 2027 so expect things to get even worse.
Hi,
before we allowed an IP change within 24h after renewal ( as it made anyway no difference if they just rent a new server and get a new IP and cancel the old one, or we just give a new IP to the old one ).
But now we refuse any IP change no matter what. Normal VPN usage will have no issues normally with blocking or what ever.
But VPN usage involved in fishy things ( bot like usage, mass requests, streaming capture, ... ) will have issues with blocking ( and ruining IP reputation ).
At the end for the 5-6 EUR VPS's those customers rent, they cause too many issues. So i am perfectly fine with them cancelling their server(s) with us and doing their usecase somewhere else.
i've done the same when i was using hostup, cuz they gave 2 free ip changes a month. i was using them all the time.. For fun
Yes!
We always allowed Tor exit relays, but our IPv4 ranges are actually filtered in Russia because of the prevalence of VPN/anonymizer users.
We used to do it with one time setup fee per IP price until we replaced to a customer in which the new assigned IP was blocked in Russia too and the customer demanded again replacement for free. From this case on, we explicitly state before the order in which customers have to tick and agree on no IP change possible. Because of this we had bad reviews in trustpilot too. It is really not worth the time as @layer7 said.