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Do you think the maximum pricing rules on VPS offers need to be reviewed?
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No. That's way too much for a single plate.
Yes.
Let's have a quick look at VPS hosting. There are clear cut simple resources, mainl disk space and memory. Disks can be raided or not and they can be spindles, SSDs or NVMEs. Sure, there are some differences (like with RAM) but they are minor (e.g. faster SSD vs. slower one). In short, that's easy to compare.
And then there are items that are more in the shadows, mainly processor and connecticity/traffic.
And then there's the basic block, the server hardware with which low end VPS hosting started. The big driver was and is the fact that there are (somewhat roughly summarizing) 3 layers. At the top there are companies (of any kind, hosting or otherwise) who buy new gear and who keep that gear (e.g. for tax reasons) for a limited time like 3 years. The middle layer is "2nd hand first class", hosters who buy 2nd hand hardware from the top stratum at a very much better bang for the buck ratio; the equipment is still in top shape, the processors are still kind of current (yesteryear instead of yesterdecade) and the price is very considerably lower. And at the bottom end there's those who use 3rd hand hw that already served two life cycles.
Side note: All three layers can be within 1 company.
As a customer however you just see specs. Maybe you can know or guess how old the processor is but generally everything gets vague and all you see is that a VPS has x vCore, x mem, x disk space. And frankly, is doesn't seem to be that important as long as it's a nice offer and working well.
For the providers however vCore is a very major factor because it's what their business is based upon. After all vCores is the basic building block of the VPS business. Plus mem and disks can be extended, processors not so much (and not so easily also in terms of calculation).
To put it bluntly, if we look at a 16 real core system then it's the decisive point that earns you money or not whether you simply pass on those 16 cores or whether you pass on at least the 32 threads as vCores or whether you slice and dice it down even more to sell, say 128 (low end) vCores.
Add to that the fact, that most customers first and mostly look at prices. If you sell a no matter how great VPS, say with vCore == real core, and ask considerably more than the cheap seller chances are that the majority of customers will simply click away from your offer.
Unfortunately that question is alo one of importance for us users.
That's why I want more clarity. I have no problems at all to buy a VPS where a vCore is, say 50% of a real core - but I want to know. I want us users to be able - if we are interested (which many are not really) - to get a more tangible bang for the buck number.
Btw that also was an important consideration with my benchmark. Having, for example AES or not (in hw) can be a killer factor for quite some use cases although it seems to be just a small detail. Another very good example is cache size which often is more relevant than processor clock (but often not seen).
E.g. "1 vCore ~ 1/2 of a hw thread".
except VPS prices are deflationary
Years ago, prices here are way cheaper than other well known providers.
And for good reason, too. For example, if a provider revealed that you can use sustained 20% of the cpu 24/7, the provider would probably lose a lot of sales even if most customers will never use even 10% cpu 24/7. Also, providers may be reluctant to reveal how they share cpu time, how they throttle, and how they monitor customers.
If knowing how much cpu you can use is really important, the best compromise is probably for providers to reveal the specs of the host node so you can roughly make a guess of how much cpu you can use. (Or you can ask the provider directly)
For example, if a host node had 40 threads and 256 GB of ram, and you had a 4 GB vps, you could probably use a bit more than 0.625 sustained load regardless of how many threads you are given. (I don't understand why providers use qemu or limit frequencies on cpus, but I usually take that as a sign of overselling)
Based on what I know and can comprehend, your entire post looks like a good and reasonable thinking / suggestion.
It would be nice if such info were disclosed.
If a critically high number/percentage of customers (doesn't have to be a majority) asked for such info on a regular basis, I'm sure it would be provided in hosting adverts and provider home pages.
Is there an easy way to check whether the provided info is what it says? Without breaking any TOS rules.
Would CPU info full disclosure it at least narrow down the room for "manipulation" (advertising and making you think of one thing, while truly delivering something of a much lower performance)?
The way I see it now: there's not too much standardization. While things change relatively rapidly. Hardware, software, (some/many) provider owners and practises... Fast enough that a 6 month old review can sometimes be considered irrelevant.
Companies that are long in the business and have good reputation are expected to have high prices - what's the use of making and maintaining brand (reputation) if you don't charge extra for it?
Others will try to keep up and low prices are a very effective marketing tool, speed comes next, while security and stability are at the end of what customers generally "jump at" - at least in my experience. And people tend to be very creative. I'm concerned there would be a way to advertise 1 vCPU=1 thread, but offer less in reality.
English isn't my native, not sure I've explained well what I mean.
Even less sure my concerns are justified - so this is more of a question (thinking out loud) than a statement.
In theory, it would be valuable to require further disclosure of the underlying hardware specs, but it will hardly solve anything. It is very easy for a provider to "fudge the specs" on an offer and the customer would have no way of verifying. Processor info can easily be faked. It's nearly impossible to tell the difference from a VPS customer perspective between software RAID and hardware RAID, RAID 1 versus RAID 10, slabbed versus bare metal, etc. If the provider knows what they are doing, they can easily obfuscate the data about the hardware. It's also very possible that the hardware specs are accurate and the node is just horribly oversold, which would make beefy hardware specs irrelevant.
Regarding what others talking about - requiring some kind of specific "dollars for specs" restrictions, whether it is RAM, CPU, or whatever, I strongly disagree. There are way too many factors that come into play. The moderators here are volunteer and don't have the time to play traffic cop for when an offer doesn't meet a set of specifications, and as I mentioned above, it can be hard to prove intent here - it could easily be the node is just horribly oversold even if the advertised specs are correct.
It's way easier to just remove all limits on plans and pricing and let the community police itself. If an offer is weak, people won't buy it. If a provider is trying to offer something that looks good but really isn't, people will post about it. If people buy something and the provider doesn't live up to expectations, people will come here and post about it, and most people will stop buying from them.
Rather than price limits, maybe it would be better for a reputation score for providers or something. We are regularly having these provider polls - maybe there's a way to make that something that is more of an ongoing basis that people could click on and see specific reviews or a # out of 5 star rating, etc. that aggregates the data so you could see trends over time. You could replace the regular provider polls with a quarterly review of the provider's reputation score or something like that.
for Christs sake, just remove the price limit for 3 months, if LET falls apart put it back in.
people absolutely lost their SHIT about the idea of not auto sinking offers a few years back, well it happened anyway, turns out no one died.
I mean it s not like the place is already ran by known criminals that scam the user base directly and indirectly for profit at every opportunity already.... oh wait.
Half of the threads and announcements are about providers who took money and ran away. Lifting limits means they will run away with more money. Providers don't need to live up to anything, look around.
Not necessarily. They can have a cheap price but offer better deal for yearly or 3 years plans: seems to be how CC hosts do to harvest a lot of money.
These are not mutually exclusive
justify that in detail please?
There is absolutely no rule change that will give the people likely to be scammed any more common sense.
Buying a 3 years deal BECAUSE IT IS CHEAP from a brand new host out of colo crossing will not change because the rest of us can start offering 8GB plans for $10
I'm surprised this needs further explanation. Scammer hosts will exploit "no limits" to make more outlandish offers with higher profit margins and collapse as usual.
Since VPS prices are declining why we need to up the price limit? This is low end talk about low end servers. Cheap servers talk would be a different site. We have a bunch of those and I personally don't care about those (hint: they have no price limits)
ok @Yura
I don't want to fall out over it so lets just agree to disagree.
When a VPS specs displaying for example this:
"30GB SSD" <-- would you allot less than 100% of that amount ? & fake the data & cheat the user ? NO . Anything less than 30GB is CHEATING . Creating/copying few large files will reveal actual allotted drive size/capacity . And IOPS query will also reveal if its SSD or not.
"2GB RAM" <-- similar question & answer as above.
"2 CPU Cores" <-- So exactly 100% of "2 CPU Cores" should be allotted to this VPS deal, as its not-showing "Shared" . But this is not the case here . So why LET's VPS-Providers (not-all) are CHEATING ( and allowed to continue to CHEAT ) users+people , by not-disclosing the exact PERCENT of allotted/committed COMPUTING-POWER (or performance-power) from each INTEL-THREAD (or AMD-THREAD) for a VPS deal ?
Why they are not-disclosing the CPU resource allotment/share/throttle strategies ( thread scheduler strategies , throttling strategies , minimum guaranteed & committed percent from each allotted thread/vCPU/vCore , burst/boost/turbo allotment ).
this type of cheat/practice must stop & need to change.
they must use "vCore" or "vCPU" or "thread" , not "Core" or "CPU".
and when provider is not allotting a fixed hardware-"thread" or when alloting only a fraction of a hardware-thread , then they should use "vThread" . they need to show/clarify if its "Shared" or "Dedicated", etc, & when its "shared" then they also need to show exact percent of thread performance (or percent of computing-power) which is actually allotted to the VPS deal.
LET's Policies must also include a policy/rule for VPS-Provider to clarify+disclose CPU RESOURCE allotment/commit PERCENT/strategies, otherwise its cheating customers/consumers.
Hardware CPU OPS (Operations Per Second) benchmarks (for different categories) are published/available in many websites, which can be compared with benchmark of VPS's vCPU performance, to find out the actual (or find out the close to actual) vCPU/vThread allotment/commitment . VPS-Provider need-to & must & should disclose it.
Hardware price per capacity-unit(GB/$, TB/$, Gbps/$, CPU OPS/$, CPU Threads/$) is now lesser/reduced than before, it will continue to be lesser as no-one is sitting down & looking only at how grass grows !! they are working+competing to pack more & more tiny-materials/bits into tinier spaces , and semiconductor materials at nano/pico scale spaces use/need lesser electrical power , etc etc, so capacity & efficiency will increase , & price will decrease . 7+ billion people & more+ devices.
So VPS must include better hardware/specs when price is same as before,
OR, VPS price should be lesser than before, when specs are same as before.
LowEndTalk/LET can + need to provide LowEnd (aka, LowPower or LowBudget) TRUSTWORTHY/TRUTHFUL/RELIABLE info+services,
that are below $3 or $4/month (as of 2019 Jun-18).
Please do not loose your own reputation or destroy LET's credibility with overCommit , overCrowd , overSharing , unfairSharing, lying, cheating.
EXTRA NOTES:
Well played sir. Well played.
Plot twist: LET does not allow any offers from now on, instead it becomes a community who talks openly about technology and low-end offers, without advertising actual offers, because
CC requestedcommunity voted.You're trying to disrupt industry standard practices that have been in use over 15 years. Good luck.
Truth is, pretty much nobody cares, you have maybe 1 customer out of 1000 who does care. In which case they're free to ask and the provider will likely have an acceptable answer.
Not really. I would suggest trying to benchmark "Azure Premium SSD", you'll find some providers here who have spinning rust with higher performance than that.
Again, literally nobody cares.
That's not how that works. You don't set "minimum CPU percentage" per VM. The CPU is a shared medium - as well as basically everything in the information world. What you get depends on system load.
And as a foot note, "lying" or "cheating" are pretty strong words, and most of the stuff you mentioned is simply not true or highly inaccurate.
@Erik2 How many accounts have you made now? I think you should consider doing away with your extra notes because they are unnecessary.
Anyway, benchmarks don't mean anything unless you do them over a long period of time, which may get you suspended.
That guy will soon have more alternate accounts and bans than @WSS.
Maybe time to close this thread and to just keep things as they are?
Maybe this is where the reputation thing I mentioned comes into play. Ultimately, limit or not, there will always be providers out there that find a way to scam people out of money. I don't see how setting price limits does anything to stop them from scamming people.
Edit: Removed meme of crying girl with text "Leave LET alone!". See Ant's comment below.
That meme is literally the opposite of my post.
Sorry, I'm not very good at memes!
Higher profit margins, hmm, there is an approach that might actually keep them in business rather than having to race to the bottom for no profit margin just trying to compete. But, what do I know?
Such a subtle shift in subject matter... Putting blame on LET for bankrupting summer hosts. Scammer hosts, which is the point of thr message you are quoting, are running away with money because that's exactly what they set up to do.
But I will entertain your business insight. So, honest poor upstarts are participating in race to bottom because of this silly limit? You have been in or around this industry to know what type of market this is. This is called a commodity market and it is by definition the race to bottom. Anyone who gets in it and complains later has not done their homework and has not checked their business plan. This is basic and this will be true as long as economics work.
y r u always angry and talking down on people like your a sensei like calm down bro sheesh
Is it okay that in my mind I refer to as you @SirSexy and @SexyFoxy?
100% okay my fellow pussy