Considering creating a VPS price comparison tool [Looking for Suggestions]

flan_friday

A couple of months ago, we built https://www.domcomp.com - price comparison site for domains. It's been tremendously well-received and we've had requests for expansion into webhosting.

Now, we realize that webhosting is a completely different beast to domains. To initially narrow the scope, we'd limit ourselves to VPS (as opposed to shared/dedicated). I guess you could call this "market research" - but we wanted to see whether people think about this idea. If there's not much interest then we'll move on to other ideas.

From https://www.domcomp.com , you'll see that our 'style' is to be as simple/no-bullshit as possible. We'd try do the same, in this space. We'd likely initially simplify the experience as much as possible and only limit to searching/comparing by setting a few fields, such as cores/ram/hdd/price.

So, if you have time, some questions:

1) what existing tools do you use to find/compare VPS deals

1.1) are these tools good? What more would you want from them?

2) what problems do you think there would be

3) what parameters do you usually think are most important, when you look for VPS deals? e.g. cores/ram/hd size/price - what else?

4) In general, would you be interested in seeing this?

5) do you tend to go with large providers or small niche ones?

6) Any other suggestions/ tips / something you're interested in?

Thanks

Traffic

http://list.lowendserv.net/

http://lowendstock.com/

Main problem on several: nor properly ordered. The tables are not setup properly so when you order things on different magnitudes, you get strange results.

Frecyboy

Finish domcomp first

rm_

Traffic said: nor properly ordered. The tables are not setup properly

Frecyboy said: Finish domcomp first

This and this.

I want to find the cheapest domain possible, no matter which TLD and which registrar. Pretty obvious task and such requests often come up here on LET. But... currently impossible at domcomp, without scrolling through the inane dynamically-loading enormous table, also for some reason even simple scrolling is slow like molasses (1-2 second lag after any attempt to scroll, Firefox 24.8). Would it kill you to add a "sort by price" option? Nope, instead you prefer to churn out more and more useless unusable websites, guess the profit from all the affiliates is higher that way.

Lee

flan_friday said: 5) do you tend to go with large providers or small niche ones?

Aside from what others have said the main issue you will have is that most offers you will find here on LET are not on the providers website, that is part of the reason we have LET/LEB. How would you capture relevant plans and pricing that this market wants? I suspect you will in the main want to fill your list with affiliated offers? Not saying it would not be beneficial just not to the majority here.

flan_friday

@Frecyboy said:
Finish domcomp first

Domcomp is indeed on-going. I don't think we'll ever call it "finished" but we will and are indeed continuing with it.

@rm_ said:
I want to find the cheapest domain possible, no matter which TLD and which registrar. Would it kill you to add a "sort by price" option?

Thanks for the suggestion. If we find that this is a common use-case from our users then of course we'll look into the feature. Part of the reason why we try engage with users is to get additional feedback for improvement. So, yours is appreciated.

@rm_ said:
Nope, instead you prefer to churn out more and more useless unusable websites

I'm sorry you feel that way but our feedback has, overwhelmingly, been to the contrary. However, we note your feedback. Thank you.

@rm_ said:
guess the profit from all the affiliates is higher that way.

We do indeed have affiliate partnerships where we can. The revenue is welcome but it's not our primary motivation. Of course, we wouldn't turn down opportunity for some extra $, who wouldn't, but we've never let that compromised domcomp's unbiased nature. For instance, we are happy to list popular registrars (and more are coming), whether they have affiliate schemes or not. In fact, more than half of the registrars do not have affiliate partnerships. To give you a wider picture, affiliate commission actually accounts for less than 10% of our earnings - so, again, whilst it is a factor, it is by no means a major one that influences our decisions.

We appreciate the feedback.

Neoon

@Traffic What is not sorting correctly? i will fix dat.

Jonchun

I hate to be that guy... But honestly domcomp needs to be either banned or moderated on this forum. At this point they're just posting spam about their website from different users, posting random stories for attention, and consistently hyperlinking their website multiple times in each post for no reason without actually improving their tool...