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Why LEB's price criteria is limited to $7? Why not $10 or another?
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Why LEB's price criteria is limited to $7? Why not $10 or another?

tonklatonkla Member
edited October 2011 in General

Where the number "7" comes from?
IMHO, $5 for 1GB or $7 for 2GB seem like unreasonable price (even though I like it). I found some LEB providers give us a near perfect performance and reliability that aren't much different from premium boxes. I'm willing to pay more for bigger resources with performance and reliability, while the providers gain more profit. I think expansion of the limit will give a chance of win-win to both of us.

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Comments

  • Good question xD

    But I guess is LEA's decision

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    $7 was a good marker back in the day but I think with the cost of IP's going through the roof (it's starting to and it'll keep going up) LEA will have to probably:

    • raise the market to $10. Though, I don't really think he should since it just means the scum bag hosts will jack even more cash from people
    • likely open a lowendmanaged offering to track hosts that are in the higher price bracket. This one could actually be a good idea for him and he could probably make quite a bit from knownhost/etc wanting to advertise their fully managed offerings on him

    While old fart Tim will claim i'm still wrong about IP addresses, my predictions are pretty accurate :P

    Francisco

  • kiloservekiloserve Member
    edited October 2011

    I concur that a $10 price point would benefit all and probably lead to fewer providers in the dead pool. The $50/year cap is also pretty cut-throat.

    It would also allow for a better presence of Xen/KVM here. As far as I know, every 1GB <$7 Xen/KVM provider has failed here. $10 for Xen/KVM 1GB plans would be viable for a provider.

    Raising the price cap a bit would allow for better offerings, better quality as well.

    For the users, you would have less over-selling needed to make up costs.

    For the sellers, you would have a little bit more breathing room to buy better hardware, processors, etc.

    It could also be a separation point for quality. I am sure even with a higher cap, there will be providers willing to put more clients onto a server just to go lower in price. You could then have the higher quality providers provide a higher quality product for a few dollars more. Will users pay a little bit more for higher quality? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but the room will be there for it if the cap is raised to $10.

    Thanked by 1tonkla
  • LongShotLongShot Member
    edited October 2011

    How about defining "low end box" by a specification instead of price? For example, any combination of RAM, burst, vswap and swap up to 256MB. Or maybe 512MB.

    This would allow LET and LEB to continue to address the other goal of LEB owners - wringing the most performance out of minimal hardware. Another focus could be strategies for separating functions over several small servers - backup, MySQL, DNS, monitoring, redundancy, etc.

    It's a no-brainer to install LAMP, WordPress, MySQL, VPN, etc., etc. on a 2GB server. Just head on over to http://www.howtoforge.com or http://library.linode.com. The challenge is doing it all on 256MB or less.

    Is a 2GB box really "low end" regardless of price?

  • what about adding a per unit pricing criteria ?

    $10/month

    500gb bandwith = 10/500
    256mb ram = 10/256
    20gb disk = 10/20
    1ip = 10/1

    have slightly adjusted weighted formulas for

    ram priority formula

    • 1st priority ram per mb price unit
    • 2nd priority disk per gb price unity

    disk priority formula just reverses the weighting

  • Francisco said: While old fart Tim will claim i'm still wrong about IP addresses, my predictions are pretty accurate :P

    You and I have IP allocations that will never rise in cost, you can get all the IP space you want(justify) from Cogent at no cost, there is just so much unallocated space, much more then you realize. There will be an eb in price but a quick decline as IPv4 becomes irrelevant. The Internet will not end over this, when pricing gets silly for IPv4, IPv6 will become more relevant. cPanel will officially support IPv6 this year now, once that happens, DA and Plesk can't be far behind, and the migration to IPv6 will happen en-mass.

    Thanked by 1kylix
  • Still waiting on ISPs to give IPV6 support to all their customers. I still don't have IPV6 support on Comcast :/.

  • LongShot said: How about defining "low end box" by a specification instead of price?

    This was raised many months ago, and alas price is LEA deciding factor, I agree with yourself, but then again, this is not our site.

    If you step back and look at this in a bigger picture, LEA is probably correct using price as a deciding factor, and with the past 20 years as history, features/resources will constantly change for your $7, but will providers even want to bill you for an account they can only get $1/yr for at some point. 1tb ram is not that far off, and you want 64mb? Do I even want to invoice that?

    Thanked by 1tonkla
  • miTgiB said: cPanel will officially support IPv6 this year now, once that happens, DA and Plesk can't be far behind, and the migration to IPv6 will happen en-mass.

    IPv6 will happen en-mass when ISPs start supporting it en-mass. Mine still has no idea what that is >_>

  • vedran said: Mine still has no idea what that is >_>

    +1 lol

    miTgiB said: there is just so much unallocated space, much more then you realize

    Is more like the RAM memory xD Maybe all is allocated, but not all is really used =P

  • Some Datacenters are still doing IPs for 0.40$ each

    Eg BurstNET

  • I think $7,- is still a good price - maybe include Windows hosting as well with a $10,- cap.

  • ztec said: I think $7,- is still a good price - maybe include Windows hosting as well with a $10,- cap.

    But its LowEndBox, not HighEndRipOffBox

  • i dont think there is an issue with the price, as the majority of clients from leb i find only want one thing anyway vpn. Maybe have a category section for other offers, such as vps's for cpanel, storage and other things that might be upwards of $7.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    daimonb said: i dont think there is an issue with the price, as the majority of clients from leb i find only want one thing anyway vpn. Maybe have a category section for other offers, such as vps's for cpanel, storage and other things that might be upwards of $7.

    knownhost/etc wouldn't want to be affiliated with a name like 'lowend' on their stuff, hence why i figured another market all together for LEA :)

    Francisco

  • daimonbdaimonb Member
    edited October 2011

    @Francisco while i appreciate what your saying why would you change the whole ethos of the site to allow for the bigger companies, surely it undermines the whole point of the site?
    just my $0.02

    p.s hurry up with stallion solus is doing my head in. :)

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    The idea would be to make a 2nd site all together, not just bolt it onto this one ;)

    What's solus breaking for you now?

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited October 2011

    I concur that a $10 price point would benefit all and probably lead to fewer providers in the dead pool.

    A change to $10 would make the site less interesting.

    If I wanted an expensive VPS I know where to go (Linode, Gandi). And IMO the sweetest spot of affordable yet non-oversold offer is around $4-$5 for 256-512MB, so LEB is perfectly right with its upper bound.

    So dear hosts, if your greed pushes you to jump into the craze to chase the ones providing 2GB for $7 but you just can't pull it off while staying within $7, then how about YOU JUST FUCKING DON'T, and instead provide however much you can (1GB? fine) while staying within the LEB price.

    Stop whining and asking to have LEB changed to better suit your 'business'.

    Thanked by 4drmike daimonb tux Basil2
  • @rm_ for $10 I'll probably get 1GB RAM box from cool providers like BuyVM, Hostigation, KiloServe etc. I don't want $20 512MB box from Linode or Gandi at the same level of performance and reliability.

    As a consumer, I'll whine and ask to have LEB changed for my own benefit.

  • fanfan Veteran

    tonkla said: @rm_ for $10 I'll probably get 1GB RAM box from cool providers like BuyVM, Hostigation, KiloServe etc. I don't want $20 512MB box from Linode or Gandi at the same level of performance and reliability.

    But ATM both BuyVM and Hostigation's $10 packages are all 512mb box, so let's see what the drop in hardware cost can bring to us. :)

  • tonkla said: I'm willing to pay more for bigger resources with performance and reliability

    Go to WHT then! I am pretty sure that you will find there daily deals regarding your "bigger resources with performance" needs. This what you want and what we have there is main difference between WHT and LEB offers.

    I prefer 7$ because it's about low end boxes after all. And beside that I as customer prefer to see some hosts to be forced into special 7$ frame deal rather than being forced into special 10$ frame deal.

    But it's not hard to imagine that some 15/y hosts would prefer less competative monthly pricing LEB standars.... (and find 101 argument why this would be "better" - which I am not buying!)

    Lets keep LEB (low end box) standards!

  • I honestly can't remember why $7 was set. Probably because I was using some $6.99/month shared hosting at the time and thought it would be a good price point for those who prefer root and shell, rather than cPanel?

    However, like what @mitgib has said, the cut-off stays at $7/month as you get more resources as technology advances and CPU/RAM/HDD/bandwidth got cheaper. It also presents itself as a good alternative to shared hosting.

    Why not $10/month?

    Back in 2008 there were actually quite a few VPS providers selling at $10/month, mostly with 128MB of memory. I didn't want the site to be crowded with providers hence $7. Little did I know that these days, many providers explicitly set the price to be $7/month to squeeze in the threshold.

    Yes there might be less dead-poolers. However, (1) those providers are just going to squeeze more resource for $10/month to make them competitive here (2) providers died because of their bad business sense (and bad luck sometimes), and it's silly to blame on LowEndBox's pricing policy.

    Why not limited by resources (RAM/disk space/etc)?

    Because they change all the time, and different applications also require different resources. At the end of the day, $7/month is just easier for me. Might not work for everyone else -- well too bad if that's the case.

    Thanked by 3tonkla TigersWay Basil2
  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited October 2011

    rm_ said: Stop whining and asking to have LEB changed to better suit your 'business'.

    Exactly!

    (or to deal with competition because own low 15/y prices)

  • LEB/LEA: killing VPS providers since 2008.

    Thanked by 1drmike
  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited October 2011

    @vedran cut the b/s. Tens and maybe even hundreds of providers listed at LEB operate more than fine. And if a provider is fraudulent in the first place, or just way too retarded to make a workable business plan, that's not LEB's fault, kthxbye.

    Thanked by 1drmike
  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited October 2011

    vedran said: LEB/LEA: killing VPS providers since 2008.

    Right opposite - LEB/LEA is (ab)used since 2008. Taking shortcuts kills them.

  • Sorry, I forgot to use sarcasm tags.

  • drmikedrmike Member
    edited October 2011

    Never mind....

  • miTgiB said: If you step back and look at this in a bigger picture, LEA is probably correct using price as a deciding factor, and with the past 20 years as history, features/resources will constantly change for your $7, but will providers even want to bill you for an account they can only get $1/yr for at some point. 1tb ram is not that far off, and you want 64mb? Do I even want to invoice that?

    I think there's two end-user markets: (1) the cheapskates, (2) the minimalists.

    The cheapskates want as much as possible for as little as possible.

    The minimalists enjoy working with scarce resources. Forty years ago we were building crystal radios :)

    Unfortunately (IMO) the cheapskates drive the market.

    Thanked by 1LongShot
  • sleddog said: I think there's two end-user markets: (1) the cheapskates, (2) the minimalists.

    Some users are both. I use the one of the $7/month 2GB OVZ VPSs for Minecraft and nothing else has more than 128mb ram (excluding burst/swap)

This discussion has been closed.