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Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

ramgrid.com

51–60 of 99 posts

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#51
post #47
post #17

Marketing page copy: "Unlimited 1GB servers" FAQ when signed in: "Each plan has a maximum capacity for the amount of servers its allowed to create. Due to the significant amount of dedicated resources we provide, we can't literally give you unlimited servers. However, you could upgrade your plan whenever you'd like." So your marketing page is LITERALLY a lie. Good job.

It's a carbon copy of this template: http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing Even the pricing area and the footer text are 100% just a copy. There is certainly not functional hosting service behind that, but maybe it a vehicle to test the water and collect emails of potential customers...

Yikes. Yeah, stay away.

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#52
post #48
post #17

Marketing page copy: "Unlimited 1GB servers" FAQ when signed in: "Each plan has a maximum capacity for the amount of servers its allowed to create. Due to the significant amount of dedicated resources we provide, we can't literally give you unlimited servers. However, you could upgrade your plan whenever you'd like." So your marketing page is LITERALLY a lie. Good job.

I don't think it is a lie I think it is poor wording. He mentions it is aimed at dev teams to easily allocate resources. I think the packages are you pay for a certain amount of RAM (i.e. 1GB, 12 GB, 100 GB, etc) and you can divide that on to an unlimited number of servers. So lets say I have a team of 6 people and I buy the 12 GB I can create 12 1GB servers, or I can create 6 2GB servers, or I can create 4 2GB serve…

But if there is a minimum of 1GB RAM per server, and the plan allows for up to 2GB total, then you can literally only create two 1GB servers. I'm not sure how a limit of two equates to unlimited. I was really confused by that on the pricing page.

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#53

What differentiates this from AWS or other known providers and why should companies choose to trust a new service over the incumbents?

I think it's trying to play in the same space as http://wable.com

That is to say, you pay for a bundle of resources (x cpu cores, x gb memory, x gb disk, x ipv4) at a fixed price. Then, you can subdivide that into however many VPS instances as you want (well, within reason).

As for trusting it, well...it looks like there might not be much of actual service behind the front page. It's possible it's just a tweaked version of this bootstrap theme: http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing

That said, the Wable business model seems to be popular, and they don't appear to have much competition using the "resource bundle" model.

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#55
post #48
post #17

Marketing page copy: "Unlimited 1GB servers" FAQ when signed in: "Each plan has a maximum capacity for the amount of servers its allowed to create. Due to the significant amount of dedicated resources we provide, we can't literally give you unlimited servers. However, you could upgrade your plan whenever you'd like." So your marketing page is LITERALLY a lie. Good job.

I don't think it is a lie I think it is poor wording. He mentions it is aimed at dev teams to easily allocate resources. I think the packages are you pay for a certain amount of RAM (i.e. 1GB, 12 GB, 100 GB, etc) and you can divide that on to an unlimited number of servers. So lets say I have a team of 6 people and I buy the 12 GB I can create 12 1GB servers, or I can create 6 2GB servers, or I can create 4 2GB serve…

Nope. I signed up (there's $9 I'm not seeing again) and you can only make 1GB servers. After you make two on the "Personal" plan, you get a message that you can't create any more:

    Stop right there!

    You have created all of the servers your Personal tier
    allows you to create. If you would like to upgrade your
    plan, please create a support ticket under the Billing
    section or send an e-mail anytime you're ready to
    business@ramgrid.com.

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#56
post #16

Good to see that there's room for some competition in this space! You are loading two HTTP assets on your landing page, resulting in security warnings for mixed content. The pricing model is interesting but the wording isn't very clear: what does "monthly RAM kick-start " mean? How does it relate with "Unlimited 1GB or 2GB RAM servers" ?

There really isn't much room at all. If anything, the room is a race to the bottom.

There's room in niche hosting services, like WordPress or Magento, and you can make a pretty penny off it. But your typical shared, VPS, or dedicated? Yeah, good luck competing.

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#57

Can someone explain how this differs from just server hosting?

It looks like they are trying to use the same model as http://wable.com/.

They sell you a monthly subscription to a resource bundle (some # of cpus, ram, disk space, ipv4s) that you can then run as 1 large VPS, or 3 medium ones, or 4 smalls + 1 medium, etc.

Wable is fairly popular because of this approach, and they are relatively unique in doing it that way.

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#58
Christ, this is a total shitshow.

Enjoy the free $9. Your service is unusable, so I'll never really be using it. It'll be the only $9 you ever get from me.

My first step with any VPS is to run "sudo apt-get update". This generates a ton of checksum errors.

I figured I would get around to that later, so I updated what I could. Then I tried to install Asterisk, but it appears that you stripped all the default repositories out of apt, because that package isn't available.

Oh well, I guess I'll compile it from source. Nevermind, make and gcc aren't installed! I was able to install make using apt-get, but not gcc!

I shouldn't have to go through this many hoops. The OS shouldn't come broken like it is. Just push out server-core like you should have to begin with!

It's like you tried to make this service as intentionally bad as you possibly could.

EDIT:

This is so stupid I can't even begin to understand why you would do this:

"If the emergency is completely life threatening and our instant messaging support isn't appearing right now, do not hesitate to call us at: [redacted]. However, you will only weaken relations if you called and the problem is something that literally wasn't life threatening. Like, you actually seriously need to be dying in order to call us."

Don't EVER suggest that someone should call you in a life-threatening situation. I understand you're exaggerating, but you could be sued for millions if anyone ever called that number and they were in an actual life-or-death situation. The only acceptable number to call in a life-threatening situation is 911 (or 999, or whatever you call in your home country).

If you don't want people to call you, don't give out your phone number. It's very simple.

Your site isn't just bad. You could ruin your life with serious legal issues over all of this stuff.

Please, for the love of God, tell me you established an LLC and aren't the sole-proprietor of this monstrosity...

EDIT2:

I just spoke to the founder over support chat, and he's being very humble and apologetic over the problems. He's disabled all recurring billing so that he can end this experiment gracefully and continue working out the kinks before the actual launch. We overwhelmed him a little.

I'll give him credit where credit is due: Half-baked or not, he's taking this seriously and trying to right wrongs. I look forward to seeing what the next four weeks have in store, and I am going to work with him to be the best beta-tester I can.

It isn't a scam, so don't worry. I wouldn't suggest signing up for this for any reason other than to experiment and help him beta-test. It's not stable enough for use with production servers. Hopefully he'll clarify that to potential customers before they sign up, because unlike me, some people may have intended to do real-world things with this service.

EDIT3:

Oh nevermind. Founder is clueless. He stopped responding to me when I told him that I had completely lost control over my services, and when I tried to open a support ticket, this happened:

https://i.imgur.com/G7yAlAc.png

I cannot stress enough that there is nothing on Earth that you handle this way. I am putting 3/1/16 on my calendar, because I'm almost certain I'm going to need to dispute a credit card charge on that day. I don't think I can take his word when he says he disabled recurring payments...

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#59
post #58

Christ, this is a total shitshow. Enjoy the free $9. Your service is unusable, so I'll never really be using it. It'll be the only $9 you ever get from me. My first step with any VPS is to run "sudo apt-get update". This generates a ton of checksum errors. I figured I would get around to that later, so I updated what I could. Then I tried to install Asterisk, but it appears that you stripped all the default repositor…

Morbid curiosity: you want to install and run Asterisk, the PBX software, on a $9 VPS from a provider that just announced with a Bootstrap template today?

Re: Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company

#60
I'm a little leery when the "refunds" link is dead and there is no "contact" page for a business. Hard to vet the legitimacy of a company without that information in my opinion. A lot of the site seems very cut-and-paste as well with several "coming soon" features and very little descriptive information. I would have thought this to have been worked out given this has been in the works "for a couple years" per the owner(s).

I also don't see how this stands out from the thousands of other companies out there offering "cloud hosting" of some sorts - do you own your own facilities? Lease them? Use other providers? What type of equipment is this and where are you located? etc. Not nearly enough information to determine a unique competitive advantage from what I can see.

What type of security measures do you use? The only "description" I see is "top notch" which doesn't tell me anything. Any compliance info you can share? Security audit results? Something? Anything?

Just my first instinctual opinion here, trying to offer some constructive feedback.

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