What is a sustainable minimum for a low end yearly service?
As Black Friday approaches, I know that many of us are deal hunting, watching for things to get discounted, and hoping to score some amazing services at cheap prices. But especially in the low end arena, we've all experienced those times when a provider raises the prices ridiculously on renewal, alters the deal pray that I don't alter it further by changing TOS/AUP in shitty ways, shrugs off complaints/support tickets because a service was stupid cheap, goes out of business because they offered too many unsustainable prices, or just straight up deadpools. Nobody enjoys that part, not the providers nor the customers.
So, at the end of 2024, what is a minimum reasonable price for a yearly service that you would normally expect to renew at the same price, potentially for many years? Obviously hardware prices, electricity rates, colocation costs for leased equipment, etc. shift all the time, but what is the point at which you go "that's gonna be a no from me, dawg" when you see a deal because it's unrealistically low? I'm talking for the low end, minimal services, with minimal ram, low-ish bandwidth for the location, just enough storage to run a few services, and an IPv4 address (since that has a cost outside the direct control of the provider). Like, nobody is out there offering $2/year for 1GB ram/2TB bandwidth/IPv4/50GB ssd. But for $25/year, there are tons and tons of options for those same specs (or better).
For you, what is the point of suspiciously-cheap? Would love to hear providers and client perspectives on this.
Comments
First of all, bf deals (also known as bfd’s) are part of provider marketing campaign. For this reason new providers try to invest as much as they can. Throwing 5 - 10 nodes for mere IP price only. So expect insane discounts.
Now for red lights:
) new providers (younger than 1 year in business);
) providers with rented ip space, no personal asn, rented hardware;
) certain countries which loves to scam gulible persons: romania, turkey, india;
) your gut feeling says “noooo”. Listen to it;
In general, plan your budget, pre-target some premium, well known providers. And only as a desert go for unknown, probably super shady deals. Just a few of them… maybe three or at best 7 dealz…
Adding to what Legendary said above:
Also to answer your question, for myself my logical sustainable minimum is about $2.50 / month on a low power high density node.
Broken down to:
Larger scales, different levels of over provision, etc etc could get that cost pretty low. You'll note there's no line item for "money that goes to me" - and that's why my plan on the site is $3, but your question was minimal sustainable non-bankrupt so that's my answer.
$7/year
$7/year
$6/year, but requires chess or USA PROMOTION ONLY
HostBrr aff best VPS; VirmAche aff worst VPS.
Unable to push-up due to shoulder injury 😣
How many push-ups are needed for $5/yr?
4~6 USD/Year for global link.
30~50USD/year for optimize link.
IPv6-only => $1/month
Add:
Total: $2/month
HostBrr aff best VPS; VirmAche aff worst VPS.
Unable to push-up due to shoulder injury 😣
If it's under $1/1GB RAM, like $0.50/GB, and you're on newer hardware like Ryzen, the provider is just selling it to break even as marketing material. IP cost, bandwidth cost, upfront hardware cost ($$$), transaction fees, software licensing fees, all of these add up.
If you're getting a VPS for $12/y, we all know how most of those end up after a year or two. At least at $24/y providers can break even.
ExtraVM
We are feeling risky: only one server is deemed sustainable with your formula.
HostBrr aff best VPS; VirmAche aff worst VPS.
Unable to push-up due to shoulder injury 😣
Those are larger plans, I was mostly talking about like 1-2 GB RAM servers that you usualy see going for like $10/y. Selling larger plans like 8GB RAM is much less risky, plus some of those guys use 512GB-1TB RAM systems. I'm just talking about stuff like Ryzen really or lower density / higher performance. Selling many less bigger plans is better than tons of small plans.
The GreenCloud and other plans that are $0.25-0.35/GB are probably on dense servers. I'm sure they're breaking even since they're larger plans.
The Advin plan is clearly a huge loss, even he would admit that. I think I remember talking about your plan on LET in the past and it was extremely limited and only given to a couple people, probably more predominant ones.
Edit: Please report to the pushup authority for confirmation
ExtraVM
I've still got the HostHatch "YOLO" bundles from their Black Friday 2020 flash sales which were effectively $7/year/VPS. One of the bundles was 10 locations for $70/year. 1GB RAM, 10GB NVMe, 1 vcore E5-2680, IPv4 and IPv6. HostHatch has moved towards larger VPSes in the past year or two but they're still honoring these old 2020 prices at renewal (I just paid for another year).
Daniel15 | https://d.sb/. List of all my VPSes: https://d.sb/servers
dnstools.ws - DNS lookups, pings, and traceroutes from 30 locations worldwide.
Hard to say, IP cost can variate a lot, especially if you own a bunch of subnets.
Too many factors at this point to say what VPS in which location would be sustainable.
Some providers said their IP cost would be 0.25$/m, others charge you 4€/m per IP.
Maybe even less.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC | Bobr
ITS WEDNESDAY MY DUDES
Our vps1, recently sold to @Wonder_Woman , is 1920 MB for $8.88/year by VirmAche, on Ryzen processor.
It's been renewed for multiple years.
Not deadpooled, but no support whatsoever.
They are E5v4 or EPYC, as dense as a chunk of metal!
Advin $6/year is sold to 20 customers only.
We are not "predominant people", but simply won the chess game.
HostBrr aff best VPS; VirmAche aff worst VPS.
Unable to push-up due to shoulder injury 😣