Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 274 posts

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#181

Post by teach »

freehunter wrote: post #76
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 host three sites on Linode, lowest plan at $20/mo. They're excellent, as just about everyone can tell you. It's a full install of a Linux distro of your choosing, any software you want. It's as good as having a Linux machine sitting in your office. However, $20/mo might not be the lowest price you can find for two low-traffic sites. edit - I should point out, I host three low traffic sites on one low-end Linode ins…

I use Linode for several low-traffic sites as well, and I'd recommend them.

However, there's one crucial aspect in which they're different than having a Linux machine sitting in your office (which I also have): for $100 I can put a 2TB drive in the local server. The equivalent space at Linode would cost $1000 a year.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#182

Post by cpher »

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).

Just to chime in with everyone else...I'm in the same boat. VC2/3 since Sept/2005. I started with them because they were the only host to offer Rails support. Now, my most pressing need is email support--transferring the main accounts, so that gmail can POP them off the accounts.

Edit: Obviously, any serious application would have been migrated off of Joyent long ago, but many of us have several small apps (Rails, Wordpress, etc) along with email accounts. I think it's more of an issue of migrating many small apps rather than a single large app.

I've used Slicehost (now Rackspace) successfully for a couple of years, but my pricing is probably terrible now. 256MB slice for $20/mth. I have a feeling I need to re-visit this...

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#183

Post by opendomain »

opendomain wrote: post #42

I do not want to be a jerk here, but the only reason I joined was the promise of "lifetime" - they can NOT just cancel our accounts does it does not suit them. Please contact me webmaster @ opendomain ORG if you would like to join the class action lawsuit.

Wow! I have received over a dozen emails in the first hours that want to join in the lawsuit. We have enough to form an offical class and will be able to get Joyent to abide by the original terms. Please contact me soon if you want to participate!

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#184

Post by graue »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #100

This was the same service that had an outage last year which took over two days to recover from, for which their answer was basically "what did you expect, we're neglecting that server"? Sad thing is, putting the bottom line before responsibility is probably an effective strategy because the market does not penalize it sufficiently.

Funny you mention that. My server with them (shared hosting, lifetime account) just had a two-day outage Monday through Wednesday and still isn't totally recovered.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#185

Post by Isofarro »

drewmclellan wrote: post #164
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…

I was one of the original 200 to back TextDrive in with the VC200 accounts. The risk, of course, was that the venture wouldn't be successful and we'd be laying out $200 for less than $200 worth of hosting. If they were successful, $200 would buy a reasonable shared hosting account for life. Far from being naive and "falling" for the pricing model, my assessment was that 1) 200 shared hosting accounts (one server?) is…

I'm guessing from http://textusers.com/wiki/VC200 this $200 hosting offer was in 2004, eight years ago. $200 up-front comes to a bit above $2 a month.

In 2004, shared hosting with PHP/MySQL was the standard hosting package. A good quality Cpanel account at that time was about $15-$20 per month. So you've gotten an exceptionally good deal.

Around that time Dreamhost became the place to be. quickly followed by a series of lengthy outages that utterly destroyed it's reputation. Other Cpanel-powered hosts popped up, went under, merged, acquired, disappeared, reappeared, went down, never came back out.

Fast-forward to today, shared hosting is just a race-to-the-bottom barrel scraping. Margins are practically non-existent. Every kid with a bedroom computer has their own Reseller account and pretend they have their own hosting company. Pricing on that seems to be about $4 a year, but the quality is absolutely dire, and that's when the server is actually online.

Shared hosting is largely a dead industry today, it bottom-feeds because their top-end audience grew into dedicated servers, and their average and above average end customers are comfortable running their own cheap VPS. Safe in the knowledge that it's very much harder for another customer to take down everyone's website.

Shared hosting is no longer a sustainable business model. You got a great ride for your money, you got a very good deal. Now it's time to move on.

Grab yourself a VPS, and take a step up to the next curve on the online hosting technology stack. It's well past time. Good quality shared hosting, with great support is getting more and more expensive, because the market for it is dwindling down to people who can't or won't take the step up towards VPS/Dedicated servers - that means the support cost per customer rises. And that isn't a sustainable process.

If the average monthly price you paid for good quality hosting on TextDrive/Joyent is under $10 because of these packages, well done, you got a tremendously good deal. How would you have rated the service you received before you received the email/message? Think about that - consider if the support/service you received related to the per month price you've paid.

Now go out and find a web hosting offer that will give you the same quality of service, for the same monthly price - and switch to that. I get a feeling, apart from special offers that will surface because of this, you'll be hard-pressed to find an equivalent.

But seriously people, "lifetime" and "unlimited" are the two emptiest words in the language of web resource offers. You know that. I'd feel sad for you if you only got 1 years hosting for your $200 for such features.

But if you got 8 years for your initial outlay, and you still feel you deserve more... that's a text-book example of bottom-feeding. Quite the sort of customer a web hosting company wouldn't miss.

A class action? That would be amusing.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#186

Post by velcrovan »

gaoshan wrote: post #157

Joyent just offered me 50% of my original investment back as a payout. Anyone else hearing this? Might be more lucrative than whatever a class-action lawsuit would return to each of us. Might take them up on it as it's better than the hosting deal they are offering (given that i want nothing to do with them, anyway... dollar for dollar it seems about equal).

VC here...How did you get this? Did it come in response to a support ticket? Did you ask them for a full refund? Is half of your original investment $100 or more like $1000?

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#187

Post by michaelhoffman »

phsr wrote: post #141
adrr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

With REI, I think you need to re-buy the lifetime membership if you do not purchase anything at an REI store for an extended period of time (IIRC, it was a year)

You cease being an "active member" if you don't spend $10 for a year, but you don't have to pay the membership fee again to become an active member again. Just spend at REI.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#189

Post by michaelhoffman »

obiefernandez wrote: post #163

Here's the answer you'll get if you write to their support complaining about the change: Hi Obie, As often happens in the software business, vendors “end of life” older platforms and migrate customers to new versions or platforms. The service you purchased a “lifetime subscription” to will no longer be supported or available from Joyent. On the other hand, we appreciate and value your business as an early customer. A…

In that situation I might write back:

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your "message." I find your breach of contract totally "unacceptable" and I will see you in "court."

Michael

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#190

Post by michaelhoffman »

dredmorbius wrote: post #178
xiaoma wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was $500. Here's an archive of their site: http://web.archive.org/web/20060203030930/http://www.textdri... >One-time payment of $499 >We're pleased to announce a special offer that combines three great products in our family — TextDrive, Strongspace and Joyent — available for a one-time payment of just $499. > What do you get? >TextDrive's spectacularly feature-rich web, mail and data hosting; oceans of backup roo…

From the TOU (also at archive.org, linked from the above document): dispute is to be resolved by arbitration. More suckage.

First, arbitration clauses aren't always enforceable. Suing for the $250 allowed would still be a nuisance.
Post reply on HN