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Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

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Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#21

Post by eropple »

pmb wrote: post #20
pmb wrote: post #17

I paid the extra $$ for lifetime (and did it back when I was a grad student and had basically zero money) because I didn't want to have to think about hosting any more. Now I have to think about hosting again. Ugh. Broken promises leave a bad taste in my mouth.

On a related note: where is good for hosting two small websites? I'd like to be able to log in with SSH and get an actual Unix shell (and not have to pay too much, as the websites are neither large nor popular).

If all you need is a shell plus LAMP, Dreamhost is pretty decent shared hosting. (Their Rails support apparently works, but Rails-using customers seem to have a tendency to suck up a lot of resources that other people could be using more moderately.)

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#22

Post by blndcat »

In the end shared hosting with Joyent wasn't very good. It was slow, it was clunky and had an air of neglect. I have one site remaining on it I think. Most of my sites are on Linode.

What was worse was that Joyent changed directions, decided its then current customers weren't profitable enough (my guess shared hosting = higher per head tech support costs) and basically stagnated the service while it introduced new services. I think they did this a couple of times, and it has always made me relunctant to recommend them to friends (even ones looking for cloud services).

Sigh I hope StrongSpace will still honour the lifetime part.

BTW for readers who think lifetime account holders are being greedy, the point of the accounts was that when TextDrive/Joyent needed extra capital to expand, they offered lifetime accounts in return for quite a bit of cash up front. In part, they are where they are due to this clever bit of fund raising.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#23

Post by slig »

pmb wrote: post #20
pmb wrote: post #17

I paid the extra $$ for lifetime (and did it back when I was a grad student and had basically zero money) because I didn't want to have to think about hosting any more. Now I have to think about hosting again. Ugh. Broken promises leave a bad taste in my mouth.

On a related note: where is good for hosting two small websites? I'd like to be able to log in with SSH and get an actual Unix shell (and not have to pay too much, as the websites are neither large nor popular).

I've been very happy with WebFaction for a couple of small websites.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#24

Post by mikeash »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #18

This actually seems fairly typical for most free or lifetime plans for things. Are there counterexamples of site/services that offered lifetime access that are still doing so 5 years later?

American Airlines started selling a lifetime pass in 1981, and is still honoring them today, although they're starting to crack down on certain abuses of the system.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#25

Post by debacle »

pmb wrote: post #20
pmb wrote: post #17

I paid the extra $$ for lifetime (and did it back when I was a grad student and had basically zero money) because I didn't want to have to think about hosting any more. Now I have to think about hosting again. Ugh. Broken promises leave a bad taste in my mouth.

On a related note: where is good for hosting two small websites? I'd like to be able to log in with SSH and get an actual Unix shell (and not have to pay too much, as the websites are neither large nor popular).

MediaLayer is good, but I've never seen a reason not to shell out the extra $10 a month for a VPS.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#27

Post by evanwalsh »

pmb wrote: post #20
pmb wrote: post #17

I paid the extra $$ for lifetime (and did it back when I was a grad student and had basically zero money) because I didn't want to have to think about hosting any more. Now I have to think about hosting again. Ugh. Broken promises leave a bad taste in my mouth.

On a related note: where is good for hosting two small websites? I'd like to be able to log in with SSH and get an actual Unix shell (and not have to pay too much, as the websites are neither large nor popular).

If you're comfortable getting dirty, I'd check out http://prgmr.com/xen/

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#28

Post by thirdhaf »

pmb wrote: post #20
pmb wrote: post #17

I paid the extra $$ for lifetime (and did it back when I was a grad student and had basically zero money) because I didn't want to have to think about hosting any more. Now I have to think about hosting again. Ugh. Broken promises leave a bad taste in my mouth.

On a related note: where is good for hosting two small websites? I'd like to be able to log in with SSH and get an actual Unix shell (and not have to pay too much, as the websites are neither large nor popular).

As long as it's not terribly mission critical I'd suggest a VPS. Since you have a virtualized server you get everything you mentioned (and the responsibility of keeping the damn thin up to date). Take a look at http://lowendbox.com You're likely to find deals in the $20/yr range for small instances with ~128MB RAM. Expect 99% uptime and you'll be pleasantly surprised with the third nine.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#29

Post by howradical »

patio11 wrote: post #11

For folks who are headscratching here, back in about 2007 (I remember it because I was getting into Rails) Joyent's precursor company TextDrive bootstrapped some hardware purchases by selling a (barely capable of running Rails, fairly rare for the time) shared hosting account. The kicker was that you'd pay about ~18 months upfront and it would be Lifetime. I don't trust my memory for numbers but somewhere between $15…

I am Matt from Slicehost. And yes, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
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