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Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

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Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#211

Post by pndmnm »

Isofarro wrote: post #203
holgate wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're operating on incomplete information. The subsequent lifetime plans offered between 2004-2007 cost considerably more than $200, and most of the original VC200 paid more later on, following the Joyent-Textdrive merger/acquisition, to upgrade to larger lifetime packages and additional services. Scroll down and you'll find users whose per-month equivalent is comparable to a bottom-end Linode VPS. Judging from Twit…

"Scroll down and you'll find users whose per-month equivalent is comparable to a bottom-end Linode VPS." They are objecting to equivalently paying -- at worst -- bottom-end Linode VPS prices for web hosting. That's why I have this bemused look on my face.

Not really -- they're objecting to having invested in the early stages of a company in good faith that the company would keep its promises. If they wanted dirt-cheap shared hosting, there were plenty of other ways to get it, even at the time (1and1's three-year free deal comes to mind). Most of the people I know who still use their lifetime accounts use them for hosting small static sites, e-mail, et cetera, with the specific goal of "not having to think about hosting".

That's what they were buying. And they're getting screwed out of it.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#212

Post by michaelhoffman »

dredmorbius wrote: post #204
michaelhoffman wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True. You'd have sue and first get the arbitration clause revoked. My understanding is that courts are getting more amenable to this. Dittos restrictions on class actions. My policy is that I will generally reject arbitration / class action limitations and/or take my business elsewhere. Of course, it's always possible that the arbitrator would find for the claimant, but such clauses usually (didn't check here) disall…

Nothing here specifically disallowing a class action.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#213

Post by bradleyjg »

Isofarro wrote: post #185
drewmclellan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The law isn't unreasonable. If you have a cash-flow sustainable business but you've taken on too many obligations you can restructure in bankruptcy. Of course that'll wipe out your equity holders but they are supposed to be behind creditors.

As for laughing at lawsuits, I think you will find that most companies don't. I hate to tell you but being a hip new economy company doesn't impress judges.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#214

Post by Stratoscope »

xenophanes wrote: post #206
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…

Reminds me of Google Fiber offering free internet forever for a $300 install fee. I would trust that more if they would charge $5/month.

Except Google Fiber doesn't offer that. The $300 fee covers "at least 7 years", a much more honest proposition.

Also, this is not the 1Gb/1Gb service you get for $70/month, it's only 5Mb/1Mb. So, it's not so costly for them to provide it, and there's plenty of room for people to talk themselves into upgrading to the faster service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#216

Post by xtracto »

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…

Meh, it is nothing new and even governments do it. For example, my mother had a "lifetime visa" from the USA, which lasted maybe for 10 years. Some years ago she had to change her "lifetime" visa for a 10 year visa (standard Laser visa).

I guess "dishonoring" contracts might be a cultural thing.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#217

Post by dasil003 »

Isofarro wrote: post #185
drewmclellan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A few corrections.

Dreamhost isn't and wasn't ever cPanel. It got hot back in '01 / '02. The outages in 2004 weren't lengthy, were mostly DoS and got blown way out of proportion by people who thought $10/month was a kingly sum that entitled them to dedicated-server quality. The quality of Dreamhost's shared hosting hasn't really diminished over the years and it's still perfectly adequate for low traffic PHP or even Rails sites.

TextDrive by contrast was founded on the principle of combatting the race to the bottom by charging a fair price and offering unparalleled power and flexibility. This vision was sold to us by Dean Allen who had an enormously positive reputation as one of the very best early bloggers. Funding TextDrive with these lifetime accounts was not just us chumps buying into some bottom-feeders marketing scam. There was real intention and integrity behind this.

The problem was that they couldn't actually deliver this quality service despite charging a lot more for it. I mean there was flexibility (webmin instead of cpanel, etc), and TextDrive was the first shared host supporting Ruby on Rails (in fact it was the "official" rails host for a while), and they were always working on awesome new tech (huge Solaris boxes, ZFS, bla bla bla). But in the end, Jason Hoffman did not know how to build a stable hosting service.

Eventually after the Joyent acquisition/merger I think they figured out how to run a business, but it was our money that allowed them the time to learn how to do that. The actual experience of hosting with TextDrive was always shit, and it never cease to amaze me how many hours Jason Hoffman spent posting in the forums when there was obviously a lot of urgent work that needed to be done.

At some point in the early history, Dean Allen went dark and largely disappeared from public view. You'll notice that now Jason Hoffman is the Founder and there's no mention of Dean Allen, but if I recall, it was definitely a partnership, with Dean bringing the name recognition and web experience, and Jason providing the system architecture (business/technical co-founders if you will). I don't have any inside information about what happened there, but I do know that Jason Hoffman and Joyent burnt their bridge with me and I'll never trust anything they do.

If there's a class action lawsuit I'm in.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#218

Post by dasil003 »

Isofarro wrote: post #203
holgate wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're operating on incomplete information. The subsequent lifetime plans offered between 2004-2007 cost considerably more than $200, and most of the original VC200 paid more later on, following the Joyent-Textdrive merger/acquisition, to upgrade to larger lifetime packages and additional services. Scroll down and you'll find users whose per-month equivalent is comparable to a bottom-end Linode VPS. Judging from Twit…

"Scroll down and you'll find users whose per-month equivalent is comparable to a bottom-end Linode VPS." They are objecting to equivalently paying -- at worst -- bottom-end Linode VPS prices for web hosting. That's why I have this bemused look on my face.

You don't get it. TextDrive was founded and sold on a vision.

Imagine what will happen if in a few years Dalton decides to stick ads all over App.net and send threatening letters to developers in the name of "curating the user experience". That's where the righteous indignation is coming from.

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