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At least Vultr makes money, or tries to. DO just gives money. I just got $5 credit because I shut down an instance I had for two days. That's on top of the $80 I already got for free. I paid $10 once to apply my first coupon. So I got $95 credit for $10. Doesn't seem like a decent business model to me.
I'll give Vultr a shot when more of their "exotic" locations are available.
Speaking of that, where did you get those credits? I have been following their Twitter since I signed up on DO, but I have yet to get any credits apart from the ones I got when I signed up.
Complaining that a company gives you free stuff? Wow.
I assume their "DDOS Protection" is what they're also offering on Constant dedi's etc.
Anybody have experience with the protection in general?
It has, it has a AWS compatible API. We are currently testing this in-depth with a select group, as our cloud deployment is a Cloud Building Block deployment in Beta stage.
A real cloud is a scalable solution billed per hour, so in that nowadays generally accepted terminology of "cloud" the instance provided by DO is a real cloud instance.
They can add features and lower price (cant be much lower than free you know), it is not like DO was ever unique, they just had tons of cash to spend, same as OVH,
DO started as a true startup until they got a few million dollars of backing, This is not really "tons" of cash to spend, most players in this industry have significantly more then a few million dollars to spend without giving away shares.
OVH borrowed over 400 million Euro with the need to repay it very fast (3 years) afaik. They did not dilute any shares but they will need to repay or refinance within 2 years (as i believe the first 12 months passed).
It is however a violation of copyright, since both companies are US based i think Digital Ocean "may" have a good case against this upstart, as they clearly copied their design & packages. This could get messy if DO decided to make a case against Choopa.
You're looking for trade dress. Sure, they can file for copyright infringement (nothing stops anyone from doing that) but given current web design practices, the concept of 'cloud' imparting the visual cue of blue and gasp clouds, it's really going to be a major uphill battle. As much as you may like to think package selection is copyrighted, it doesn't change the fact that the legal definition of copyright doesn't cover copying ideas or facts.
P.S. I did this for a living so I've more than brushed up on the actual copyright case laws. The risk of DO ever winning any claim under the copyright statute is effectively zilch. But please, let's keep barking up this tree because it's entertaining.
this
thanks for screenshot since they already remove that from their website
They Just start it, so give a chance first, I am waiting for their Japan location.
There was the initial $20 coupon I used and there was some $60 action in December (I think). With that last action you just had to click a link and you'd get $60 added.
No, not at all. It's just not a viable business model in the long run, I mean: they have to start making money at some point to make the investors happy. I don't see them making a lot of/enough money to keep everything running with the way they throw free credit around.
Ben Uretsky ( @zagi ) has said DO is profitable in interviews and I don't have reason to believe he's lying. I think you have to remember that the vast majority of people don't look around for credit or coupons when purchasing any service -- they sign up at full price. Those of us who keep tabs on things enough to know about deals like the ones you mentioned are in a very small minority.
He can say what he wants, who beside the IRS can really verify his statement at this point? If you've never seen an episode of American Greed then this is a good time to tune in :-)
I have given out enough coupons and deals to know that this is simply not true. People will flock to a good deal to the point where they're willing to suffocate you without any regard for your hard work or even worry if you're gonna be here tomorrow to provide them with service. They just demand more for less. It's that simple, and it's everyone that's doing it. There is no minority.
Very true, however I doubt that the Digital Ocean investors will ever see their money back. Investing in a hosting company with a (no)business model like that is like starting a car company to make a four door sedan based on a 20 year old platform. If you want to make a small fortune then start with a bigger one and invest in a car company, or Digital Ocean for that matter. They wanted to start a price war, and they might loose it. Honestly, I couldn't care less.
However you'll have to remember that when a company starts making money and being profitable it shows some signs of corporate growth. Digital Ocean hasn't yet outgrown their kindergarden website design, their control panel hasn't really seen any improvements, they have yet to move to true RAID 10 SSD storage, and the list goes on.
Another thing that healthy companies do, especially in the hosting business is acquisitions. Profitable hosting businesses tend to buy out their smaller competitors and integrate them into their infrastructure. That hasn't happened either. I think that Digital Ocean is stagnating pending a swift death that will be triggered by their own price war (that they've started).
I don't doubt your experience here @marcm - and I would guess this is a common experience for providers with some LEB offerings - but I'm curious if you find that the bulk of your more "local" customers who came to you outside of LEB, actively chase down and swarm around deals beyond - say - a first month discount?
Customers who use our services to make a living, which are folks that basically host one or more eCommerce sites or other business/commercial oriented services usually don't look for a discount. The only discount that they expect to find is if they prepay for one or two year term. This is how business people think. I do the same thing by the way when I buy products or services.
The category that is actively seeking deals are hobbyists and people who either don't make money from hosting their content or they are on the dark side of the business (spammers, software pirates, etc.), folks that get the boot anyway as soon as they get caught.
This is actually why I decided to re-brand the business. Phoenix VPS is becoming Perfect Hosting Guru, and while the name sounds generic, it's quite unique. This service will be oriented towards offering managed products mostly for WordPress, Drupal and Magento customers. For Core Services there is KVM Shell, which will also be renamed in order to incorporate other virtualization technologies. Core services are dropping in price, so it makes sense to offer them unmanaged at a low price right off the bat.
This way no more coupons and deals are required, as customers will be offered a choice between 5 star service and the fast food all you can eat buffet. It's the only way to make it in this business, there is no middle ground here. And if there ever was one, that's long gone now.
This is simply amazing, Finally something just like digial ocean, Without the bad infrastructure and poor quality of staff.
@Maounique
Yeah I'm sure its by design and yeah they currently don't have any of the cloudy features, and restrict 1 IP per VM. It's just disappointing because they advertise price per hour and you need to destroy the VM to avoid being charged for it. They will add snapshots in the future which means you can copy the whole VM then destroy it but then you will be assigned a new IP, I like these sort of cloud hosting for development testing so its a shame they are doing it the way they are.
Glad you clarified
let's copy the model now
vultr block SMTP ("to avoid spam")- need to give them credit card authorisation and fax them copies of my CC in order to open up SMTP. Bummer - just wanted my fail2ban alerts...
That's actually not a bad idea, might have to implement it as well.
Yes, because your customers are guilty until proven innocent.
Sure, you do not want spammers taking advantage of the top service and great price. But isn't there a better way to achieve this than faxing my credit card imprint??
Open the SMTP port for 15 minutes per day (daily alert messages are fine).
Route my SMTP via the NSA.
Interview me with a Skype call and assess my suitability.
Trade a kidney.
But faxing my credit card?
Actually I won't required that. Seriously it's not required to verify someone's identity. For example when someone runs their CC through Stripe their CC number is not visible to the merchant except for the last four digits, however name and address are, and it will say if it successfully passed the verification, including CVV. That plus a copy of the user's ID should be plenty.
Only one feature what better in this Cloud -> many locations, 3Ghz processor.
But only time show the real "killing features" between DO and this one.
There are a few free email delivery services up there (up to a certain number usually very large).
You CAN run your own mail server on a different port or simply a proxy to change the port. While I do not like the all guilty until proven innocent approach, one has to protect own customers, especially for startups which are the favourite target of spammers.
FTFY! Who uses a fax these days...?
tried em out this morning... Used a fresh Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation on each (1GB) and here are the results: (left is DO, right is vultr)
For CPU keep in mind it probably is fair share.
...on both, so what's your point?
Doesn't change the fact that the core performance you can burst to is 1.5x or even 2x higher on Vultr.
DO allows miners, so I dont know how fair share is that.
I guess they limit you after a while.