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An honest question.
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An honest question.

PwnerPwner Member

With all the new VPS providers that I see that are advertising at killer prices, do you think the market will ever turn into a Free VPS market similar to that of web hosting? I understand that VPS's are much more different from web hosts resource and maintenance wise, but maybe in the near future we will see something similar to free hosts? e.g. Do a survey get a free VPS (I know there's already free VPS's for posting on forums) or even just apply and get a free shared VPS?

Comments

  • Not really, because IP's does not come in free, nor the host node.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    There is no such thing as a free lunch.
    It may exist here and there but there are some important issues.
    For example, only a small fraction of the hosts are free and even fewer offer decent services, often at the price of posting ads on your site.
    There are free VPSes too, but they are mostly unstable or very low on resources, free trials for a while, some even charge your card even for a free trial if you do use more resources.
    It can work for hobbists or people which wish to remain anonymous, but not for serious stuff and I count there even gaming.
    I hope, one day, there will be some benefactor that will offer free anonymous service in support of free speech, but there are many issues with that, from abuse to governmental pressures and show trials, hardware seizure under a pretext or another, terrorist attacks to make it stop, etc.

    TL;DR It may happen but with a few catches. This will not eliminate or weight heavy on the paid market, it caters for different types of customers and different needs.

  • even when ip is almost free (e.g. ipv6) i dont think so

  • Free webhosting is paid by advertisements. This is much harder with a commodity service like a VPS as there is no guarantee the customer is using the VPS to serve websites - and you cannot inject advertisments to SSH sessions :D

    As with any commodity, the price will drop and drop until the market moves to the next commodity.

  • VPS is already cheap, 256MB for $10/yr! Also can get free like EC2, Nephoscale, Host1Free, so these offers are already available. Just like you once had to pay for email and web hosting and now it is widely available for free, there will come a day probably when IPv6 is available that VPS will be free too!

  • host1free already do that

  • @awson said:
    host1free already do that

    I already said that :-)

  • @LETsgo said: and you cannot inject advertisments to SSH sessions

    challenge accepted!

    I agree with everyone here, it is a difficult thing to offer free due to overhead alone.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    I would rather pay 10 $ a year (I pay 12 now) for a quality BlueVM VPS if I need something in US, rather than get a free one which may not be there next month and also lose time setup. Free VPS I have to setup again every month or so (Host1free) and also sign up again, being deleted without even a word a few times over is not worth that 10-12 $ a year, not to mention the BlueVM one has more resources and i can also choose the location I needed.
    Free VPS will be for kids or people which cant really afford a paid one, because the price is so low that doesnt matter anymore if you pay 1 $ a month or nothing at all. Even people living on 2 $ a day could afford that.

  • @Maounique said:
    Even people living on 2 $ a day could afford that.

    You views are correct, but someone living on $2/day probably has other priorities rather than buying a VPS :-)

    But I don't understand why people in the EU/US are so cheap, where they have plenty of money but still cry over $10. A takeaway costs more than that!

  • BrianHarrisonBrianHarrison Member, Patron Provider

    @Pwner said:
    With all the new VPS providers that I see that are advertising at killer prices, do you think the market will ever turn into a Free VPS market similar to that of web hosting? I understand that VPS's are much more different from web hosts resource and maintenance wise, but maybe in the near future we will see something similar to free hosts? e.g. Do a survey get a free VPS (I know there's already free VPS's for posting on forums) or even just apply and get a free shared VPS?

    It's possible in the future that falling costs will enable some hosts to offer free VMs. However, that host will still need to make money somehow and unlike web hosting where it's easy to force an advert on someones site, monetizing free VMs may prove more difficult.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @asterisk14 said:
    someone living on $2/day probably has other priorities rather than buying a VPS :-)

    I dont know, there are pretty viable laptops in junkyards these days, someone could get one, recharge it and go near a free wifi some place to setup an online site to get even pennies in advertising.
    I do not say it is likely, but not impossible. If you live on 2 $ a day, supplementing that with 1 more dollar from advertising is a huge step forward. You can also get your story out, inspire others to get out of absolute poverty, even learn some english or another language, read/write better, etc.
    No, teaching yourself computers, languages, setting up a VPS, those are skills that can get you off the streets and you can certainly find a friendly person which recycles computers to give you one free and teach you how to operate it and some google-fu in an hour or so. I do this with sometimes good results often for 50+ yo ppl that have no idea of English. I even buy them VPSes, but not because they cant afford the 1$ a month, but mostly to show how it is done and because they usually dont have Paypal accounts.

  • There are many providers offering free virtual machines, but most of them are cloud providers, DigitalOcean, Atlantic, Nephoscale, Amazon, CloudSigma, etc and the list can continue. Indeed they require a credit card / sms verification, and they offer the free stuff as "free credit", it's still a free virtual machine for usually 1 to 3 months or even 1 year (nephoscale+amazon), with nice specs, except in some cases bandwidth, but you can get 1TB/month from Atlantic and DigitalOcean for 2 months. Talking about free VPS providers only, there is EduVPS, but I do not know how long they will be around because of the abuse. (verification is too easily passed for now)

    The survey part, yeah, that can happen because I saw a lot of $1/month stuff OVZ, some times surveys pay more than that for the one running them, so basically if a person does 10 surveys, the VPS provider receives $5 and he gives the VPS away for "free", or he can sell it for $1 on this forum, what option is more profitable? The only downside of offering "free" stuff is the abuse, and that is why I think there are not many free offers out there.

    As I see it, the prices are going lower and lower, because also the dedicated servers are now much lower than before, there are many people offering them for $15-$20 in France, or well there are others that make use of old hardware and offer a lot of discounts. I do not know where the market is going, but I see it is harder and harder to make a profit.

  • @Maounique said:
    I dont know, there are pretty viable laptops in junkyards these days, someone could get one, recharge it and go near a free wifi

    My point was that in countries where people earn $2/day will be unlikely to have scrap laptops lying around. They will probably be worth something in those countries and so will not be available in scrapyards and I strongly doubt that free wifi will be available in these countries either. Only us people in countries where our needs for food, shelter, healthcare, education (check out maslows hierarcy of needs) are taken care of can we pursue these types of hobbies.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    And my point is that, while here it is a hobby, in a country where a dollar a day is a lot of income, as was in romania 20 years ago, that is no longer a hobby, it is already a job.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited September 2013

    I think that free shared hosting is the free equivalent to all of this. A free VPS still needs an IP. If it's resources offered for free, then yes, shared hosting offers those resources in a bit of an elastic way. I think what we often over look is that outside of the hobbyist market, most public facing VPS and dedicated servers that are being actively marketed are intended for website hosting. This can be done for free in some models that are running "fine" (relative to expectation) today.

  • asterisk14asterisk14 Member
    edited September 2013

    @Maounique said:
    And my point is that, while here it is a hobby, in a country where a dollar a day is a lot of income, as was in romania 20 years ago, that is no longer a hobby, it is already a job.

    Maybe, but in general I still disagree, maybe possible in those chinese pay per click youtube sweatshops, but those were run by some people with money, not by people earning $2/day. I still think that those earning $2 have too many other problems to deal with in their daily lives than play about with a VPS, for example, where am I going to find food for today, my child is sick/needs an operation, where am I going to find $10,000 for that etc.

  • I just want to say, thank you all for the kind and quick replies. I understand that VPS's are high resources and IPs and all that, I just was curious to know what else I am missing. I personally don't believe that free VPS's will make money through advertisements, unless you consider selling the client's email to companies as advertising, but that's a whole 'nother story. Thank you all again for your awesome replies!

  • Back in the late 90s there were many free hosting services such as geocities, even free dial-up internet Juno, none of them worked out because service was horrible not to mention no real revenue stream through ads. In the end paid services prevailed because they could offer better service. Also the biggest problem with free VPS would be root access, which can be used maliciously.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited September 2013

    Anything can be used maliciously.
    And free services did work, just not as they were originally thought. There are plenty of free hosts today, some of them for many years in business, but, yes, of course, a paid service has much more chances to be stable than a free one.
    A few years ago my time became too expensive to be used to setup and admin free hosting sites (before, as a romanian, a few $ were important for my budget), i'd better pay a few pennies for a paid one, the only situation when free hosting is required is for anonymous hosting, when your opinions are likely to create you problems IRL. Even so, there are hosts that accept bitcoin or paysafe, for instance, so that issue is also solved.

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    @maounique wait, a dollar a gay un Romanía is a job? Men, do the women there are beautiful? May get a wife there xD

  • @LETsgo said:
    Free webhosting is paid by advertisements. This is much harder with a commodity service like a VPS as there is no guarantee the customer is using the VPS to serve websites - and you cannot inject advertisments to SSH sessions :D

    As with any commodity, the price will drop and drop until the market moves to the next commodity.

    I object. A large number of webhosting no longer has advertisements in any capacity whatsoever. That being said, a large number of free webhosting options suck.

  • @netomx

    Google knows it! :))

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    @vladorz pick me up in the airport! Hahaha

  • prometeusprometeus Member, Host Rep

    @netomx said:
    maounique wait, a dollar a gay un Romanía is a job? Men, do the women there are beautiful? May get a wife there xD

    Mexico is full of beautiful women, why are you always after foreign girls ? Do you managed to upset all the female over there? :-)

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    @prometeus sort of :( hahaha jk

    Well, we all love women, don't you? ;)

    Besides, it is to bring some joy to this forum :)

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