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Member-driven or Community-focused Hosting
BeardyUnixGuy
Member
in Requests
With cPanel hosters being dime-a-dozen, I find myself increasingly intrigued by hosters like NearlyFreeSpeech and the SDF 'Super Dimension Fortress' branches: US EU JP.
To some degree, WebFaction may be regarded as similar since they are very different from your general cookie-cutter cPanel providers. But, then again, it would probably be better to compare them to alternatives such as ServerPilot.
Excluding WebFaction and referring to the original examples as member-driven or community-focused hosters, I was wondering if anyone knew of other providers that were similar in nature?
Comments
Re SDF: I have a longstanding SDF account: they're old-fashioned shell accounts. You can donate to obtain more privileges on the system. (SDF operates as a non-profit entity in the US.) Old-fashioned shell accounts are nice, but they're not what most people want nowadays.
I've never been with NearlyFreeSpeech, but the pricing structure is not so straightforward:
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/pricing
I don't see what's so special about WebFaction:
webfaction used to be good.
Not sure, but does "UberSpace" qualify in this context?
Was always intrigued by the "pay-what-you-want" concept and they seem to be a pretty professional provider with quite a standing. However, never used them myself.
Okay, could be, but now they're with GoDaddy ...
The shell accounts alone are awesome, especially when you got to play on exotic systems. There is a ton more than just shells available but, as you mentioned, you have to move up the membership ladder. Honestly, I think SDF's MetaArray alone is enough reason for MetaARPA membership.
Agree. Also, with providers like BuyShared, the pay-as-you-go approach doesn't look as cheap as it use to.
It's concerning that they've joined GoDaddy but the user guides will indicate how different the hosting was from cPanel. On the lowest level, it's a shared server. Like I said, not directly comparable to SDF and NFS, but still similar in some ways.
There's also NYX but their new account process could cause some headaches.
Furthermore, there's WELL but they're kinda expensive and don't seem to be as feature-rich. More community, less services.
Earlier, I was MetaARPA for a number of years, but I dropped back to (plain) ARPA several years ago. I don't use my SDF account as much as I used to, because now I can run my own VPS. But SDF was my first practical introduction to NetBSD, which I still use.
Two other "alternative providers" are http://www.panix.com/ (fixed fee-based) and https://ninthfloor.org/ (donation-based).
Yeah, I've never joined because way too much effort. Given the dates on the pages, I also wonder how active they still are.
Sorry, way too expensive.
Tbh this seems pretty retro now that shared and vps hosting are so easily accessible, and sometimes free. I have some stuff on afreecloud.com (on their paid plan so it would stop expiring due to low usage) and it's nice: it's @KuJoe's service so maybe doesn't count as community.
It looks like hcoop is still around: https://hcoop.net/ Pretty cool but expensive by LET standards
.
You'd think that for $7/m, they could keep their budget page a bit more up-to-date:
https://wiki.hcoop.net/HcoopBudget
This is great! Definitely fits the bill!
I actually came across the provider some time back but failed to find an English link while skimming, so thanks again for this!
Just to note that the German page has much more info, for example:
( https://uberspace.de/prices )
Which basically says that they "propose" a monthly payment between €5 and €10.
I suspect they haven't been very active in the past few years. I slightly knew the guy who wrote most of the code as a student, but he graduated and has real work to do now. It's just not that attractive any more to organize coops around commodity compute hardware. Something like a group colo rack in a DC or other fast internet connection might make more sense. I could imagine wanting to put some stuff in one.
The Well is still around?! Wow.
I know about VPSFree. They're a registered nonprofit that has been providing VPS, doing talks and workshops for over 10 years now.
https://vpsfree.org/about/
Looking...
Obviously not "Free as in beer".
Of course, nobody gives out "free as in beer" VPS.
Those of us that once paid for "unix shell accounts" now pay for VPSs (which now cost less in one year than what we once paid for one month of shell access).
Definitely true.
When I said "but they're not what most people want nowadays", I had in mind ordinary people who want to have a web presence, for whom shared hosting (and not a shell account) is the best solution.
Actually there have been a couple of those (which all eventually disappear as do all great free things that someone else is paying for).
By any chance, are you aware of any other providers similar to UberSpace? But with more
for the English language.
Sorry, I'm not.
But at least they are trying now to be more attractive for the English speaking market.
And in addition to that, this is still a pretty unusual business model, that can only be sustained if you target and grow the right user base.
However, let me know if you need any help with some unclear information, that might be only available in German.