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Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

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Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#131

Post by phearlez »

blndcat wrote: post #50
hemancuso wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joyent will keep supporting their Strongspace customers [which we, ExpanDrive, provide the service for - Joyent provides the hardware for their lifetimers]

Thanks Jeff for clearing this up

I suspect this cuts right to the core of "why" Joyent would dump pretty low-overhead services and catch the flack over it. The hardware requirements to provide this shared hosting environment has plunged over the years; it's part of why I disagree with the "why did you EXPECT a lifetime deal" folks - because I always assumed that such a level of service would get cheaper and easier.

Except the one thing that doesn't get cheaper is the human power needed to administer the stuff and deal with the people. And as Joyent moves away from that sort of thing it becomes an unusual task and a drain on core business.

Which doesn't mean I think this is okay; the smart thing would have been to hand all of us lifetimers a lifetime bottom-tier slice. But I see why they'd want to be out of shared hosting.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#133

Post by phearlez »

buntar wrote: post #115

Dear Joyent You got me: "We've been analyzing customer usage of Joyent’s systems and noticed that you are one of the few customers that are still on our early products and have not migrated to our new platform, the Joyent Cloud." So sorry about not appreciating enough your new platform because " Everyone that’s moved to our new cloud infrastructure has been pleased with the results". About the whole "lifetime" ("As l…

Two and a half months, actually. Which is still a lot less than the lifetime we were promised (unless you're a fruitfly or something, I guess) but you have a little longer to migrate your stuff.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#134

Post by philgyford »

howradical wrote: post #29
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.

I paid $1399 for my TextDrive/Joyent "Three Martini Lunch" hosting, about six years ago. Which works out around $20/month. In retrospect, paying that amount up front doesn't seem "too good to be true", unfortunately.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#135

Post by adrr »

cletus wrote: post #109

It never ceases to amaze me how many people "fall" for this "lifetime" pricing model. In fact I said the exact same thing three months ago [1]. The fact that the service provider is not getting any future revenue from you, even if they've fairly discounted your lifetime value, gives them the incentive to get rid of you. Additionally it gives the wrong incentives to users to "abuse" their "unlimited" service. You saw…

Lots of companies including government do lifetime memberships and they aren't scams. I cat get lifetime fishing license with the state of california instead of paying $50 a year. I can get a lifetime pass to legoland here in california. REI has lifetime membership model, restaurants in my area offer lifetime drinks if you by a glass from them. These aren't charades and why do we always blame the victim?

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#136

Post by colinshark »

brokentone wrote: post #116
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.

Is this a promise, or a contract? It seems that if they want to renege on a contract that they ought to refund the entire amount.

It's pretty easy for a promise + money exchanged to become a contract.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#137

Post by Dylan16807 »

TomGullen wrote: post #52

Had a similar experience with an old host, promised "lifetime price freeze". A couple of years later they started charging me more as they had 'moved me to a new server' which I fiercely contested. In the end we settled for a compromise.

Ridiculous, since the reason to get a new server is that it's cheaper per cycle/byte/watt.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#138

Post by port_rhombus »

Seriously though, the printout I have from March 29, 2006 of their Mixed Grill offer says "One-time payment of $499" and "How long is it good for? As long as we exist."

That constitutes a contract which they are clearly trying very hard to ignore. It seems so petty given their success, available resources, and the very manageable limited bandwidth and quota'd storage space us lifetime customers are allocated.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#139

Post by mikeash »

wpietri wrote: post #127
mikeash wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the comments seem to be filled with people saying that it's not practical to provide "lifetime", and people buying it should have known they didn't mean it anyway. I look at this the same way I look at "unlimited" internet service. Unlike a lot of the tech crowd, I have no problem whatsoever with metered bandwidth. My only quibble is that if you advertise "unlimited" you had better actually provide unlimited. I…

Yeah, the comments seem to be filled with people saying that it's not practical to provide "lifetime", and people buying it should have known they didn't mean it anyway. And that fascinates me. There's a clear information asymmetry here, and therefore a clear power differential. But so many people are instantly willing to blame the weaker party for being trusting, rather than blaming the stronger party for abusing th…

It's an interesting question. If I make a promise I know I can't fulfill, and you know I can't fulfill, is it still a promise? Is there a breach of trust when I end up not being able to fulfill it?

I'd say that yes, it's still a promise and a breach of trust even if everybody knows I don't really mean it. But I don't think there's a single obvious answer.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#140

Post by jkubicek »

resplin wrote: post #71
pmb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 really like working with Bluehost ( http://www.bluehost.com/ ). They are amazingly cheap shared hosting plans targeted at non-administrators, but if you are willing to provide a copy of your government ID (as insurance against naughtiness) they will provide shell access. Their admins are very accommodating about letting me run my own stuff as long as it won't impact other users of the server.

Seconded. I've been using blue host for years with no troubles. Only downside is they keep lowering their rates, so I've got to call them every year or so to switch to the cheaper plan.
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