# LET Q1 2014 Top Provider Poll Results



## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

Unofficial, as they voted totals for LowendTalk's Q1 2014 Top Provider Poll:

+--------+-------+--------------------+----------------+
| points | votes | name | averagevote |
+--------+-------+--------------------+----------------+
| 280 | 107 | RamNode | 2.616822429907 |
| 147 | 54 | Prometeus | 2.722222222222 |
| 70 | 32 | Iniz | 2.1875 |
| 68 | 37 | Crissic | 1.837837837838 |
| 59 | 12 | Dewlance | 4.916666666667 |
| 41 | 27 | Digital Ocean | 1.518518518519 |
| 37 | 18 | vultr | 2.055555555556 |
| 35 | 12 | drServer | 2.916666666667 |
| 30 | 21 | Backupsy | 1.428571428571 |
| 29 | 15 | BuyVM | 1.933333333333 |
| 26 | 12 | Inception Hosting | 2.166666666667 |
| 24 | 9 | WeLoveServers | 2.666666666667 |
| 21 | 10 | Fliphost | 2.1 |
| 20 | 14 | BlueVM | 1.428571428571 |
| 17 | 11 | BandwagonHost | 1.545454545455 |
| 16 | 10 | Lowendspirit | 1.6 |
| 14 | 5 | Hostigation | 2.8 |
| 14 | 7 | SecureDragon | 2 |
| 14 | 8 | CatalystHost | 1.75 |
| 13 | 8 | CloudShards | 1.625 |
| 12 | 6 | GreenValueHost | 2 |
| 11 | 6 | EDIS | 1.833333333333 |
| 10 | 4 | DelimiterVPS | 2.5 |
| 10 | 3 | DotVPS | 3.333333333333 |
| 10 | 2 | VPSDime | 5 |
| 9 | 7 | MyCustomHosting | 1.285714285714 |
| 9 | 5 | MaximumVPS | 1.8 |
| 9 | 6 | TacticalVPS | 1.5 |
| 8 | 6 | Winity | 1.333333333333 |
| 7 | 3 | QuickPacket | 2.333333333333 |
| 7 | 3 | Castlegem | 2.333333333333 |
| 7 | 2 | Ramhost | 3.5 |
| 6 | 2 | RansomIT | 3 |
| 6 | 3 | Forthcloud | 2 |
| 6 | 5 | ChicagoVPS | 1.2 |
| 5 | 4 | OpenITC | 1.25 |
| 5 | 1 | Godaddy | 5 |
| 5 | 1 | DDoSHost | 5 |
| 5 | 1 | OVH | 5 |
| 5 | 2 | SupremeBytes | 2.5 |
| 4 | 3 | OneAsiaHost | 1.333333333333 |
| 4 | 2 | Virtovo | 2 |
| 4 | 2 | BeastVM | 2 |
| 4 | 2 | Onepoundwebhosting | 2 |
| 4 | 2 | FAPVPS | 2 |
| 3 | 1 | Kimsufi | 3 |
| 3 | 3 | My Custom Hosting | 1 |
| 3 | 3 | ServerMania | 1 |
| 3 | 1 | Hudson Valley Host | 3 |
| 3 | 2 | Blackfox | 1.5 |
| 3 | 1 | HTTPZoom | 3 |
| 3 | 1 | RackBurst | 3 |
| 2 | 1 | AllSimple | 2 |
| 2 | 2 | GoodHosting | 1 |
| 2 | 1 | lunanode | 2 |
| 2 | 1 | sshVM | 2 |
| 2 | 1 | IperWeb | 2 |
| 2 | 2 | Hostnun | 1 |
| 2 | 1 | vexxhost | 2 |
| 2 | 1 | iwStack | 2 |
| 1 | 1 | ultravps | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | TurnkeyInternet | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | NodeDeploy | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Host1plus | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Reliblewebhosting | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | EndofReality | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | SSDVirt | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | HostUs | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | NodServer | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | EtheliteHosting | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Rack.sx | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Torqhost | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Ultimate Hosting | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Filemedia | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Colorhost.de | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Highspeedweb | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | IPXCore | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | vpsNodes | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Dedicated Minds | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | 123Systems | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | VaporNode | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | XLVPS | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | Crowncloud | 1 |
+--------+-------+--------------------+----------------+

83 companies voted for.


----------



## MannDude (Apr 14, 2014)

Honestly, I thought Dewlance was going to do better.

Congrats to @Nick_A, @prometeus / @Mao_Member_no_signature. @Patrick, @SkylarM and others.

EDIT: Link to LET thread for the provider polls: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/24721/2014-q1-top-providers-poll


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

They will be tinkering this time with numbers no doubt.

Dewlance is a hot little issue.   The usual "I run 5 brand" combo voting... Tossing out Jack's voting for his peeps.  Tossing the votes of folks who are LET newbs and ineligible to vote... yeah...

1-5 should be solid.  There onward, well, vote comboing is going to put Oktay north of 40 votes - roughly 6-7th.

CloudShards/QueryFoundry should come in 8-10th.

Sure would be nice if LET/Kossen were transparent and said which votes were tossed and why.


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

Inception should come in around 42 votes (minus any deductions). Roughly 6-7th and near Oktay.


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

There were 31 new providers voted for this time.


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## Virtovo (Apr 14, 2014)

Good stuff.  You keep a running total then finalise or add up at the end?


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

There were 146 new voters in this contest (i.e. hadn't voted in Q4 2013).


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

Virtovo said:


> Good stuff.  You keep a running total then finalise or add up at the end?


I run totals when a full page of votes is done... I started after the first 3 pages were complete and did those.  Then remaining pages were done a day or two after complete.  Final pages 5-6 were done tonight at the same time.

Tool created to input these last time and the report.  So it's easy and quicker than ever.   But since unstructured data, requires human input.


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## Virtovo (Apr 14, 2014)

drmike said:


> I run totals when a full page of votes is done... I started after the first 3 pages were complete and did those.  Then remaining pages were done a day or two after complete.  Final pages 5-6 were done tonight at the same time.
> 
> Tool created to input these last time and the report.  So it's easy and quicker than ever.   But since unstructured data, requires human input.


Makes sense.  It's how I would do it.  Would make publishing results a lot quicker for the LET/LEB team.

I lost track of what happened, were private votes still kept in?


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

There were 557 votes cast for Q12014.

Those votes were cast by 244 different voters.


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

Virtovo said:


> Makes sense.  It's how I would do it.  Would make publishing results a lot quicker for the LET/LEB team.
> 
> I lost track of what happened, were private votes still kept in?


Kossen back peddled on the private voting and said folks had to place those in public.

So aside from newb users without time on the site to vote being tossed and those double voting and those fraud voting, the numbers should be rather solid.


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## Hxxx (Apr 14, 2014)

Impressive to see  GVH on top of other known providers. 

Congrats to Nick_A as always, #1.

Vultr escalated quickly.

BuyVM should be second. Stallion panel is the next big thing.


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## DomainBop (Apr 14, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Congrats to @Nick_A, @prometeus / @Mao_Member_no_signature. @Patrick, @SkylarM and others.


...and condolences to some of the great providers who provide great service and products but who aren't popular LET posters or don't have a lot of friends on IRC and therefore don't stand a chance in the LET poll

A couple of examples of quality providers who received practically no votes:

Bradler & Krantz (ProviderService, UltraVPS) - only 1 vote in the LET poll and yet they're miles ahead of any of the "safe top 10 providers" in terms of reliability and stability of their nodes

SeFlow - low end offerings (under $7 VPS CloudOne and under $7 Cloud CloudFlow, under $49 dedicated servers)  - 0 votes in the LET poll.  Customer support is amazing and network is now among the best.  Their new CloudFlow cloud (128MB and 384 MB are low end priced) featurewise is miles ahead of any of the popular LET cloud offerings (they're the only low end provider to automatically replicate all data to multiple data centers (2) and hypervisors (4) in real time, and the only low end provider to offer autoscaling where you can set rules and your cloud instance will automatically scale up or down depending on traffic/time of day/etc).

tl;dr if I had voted, I would have voted Dewlance +5 in protest because the LET poll is a f**king joke.


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## Damian (Apr 14, 2014)

It's kinda interesting at how pop-con it tends to be. When I participated in That Forum, IPXcore was around 6th place. When I stopped participating, IPXcore drops to the last place with single-votes.


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## serverian (Apr 14, 2014)

PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!

Got time and interest to count votes only from people who have more than 30-40 posts?


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## Virtovo (Apr 14, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> ...and condolences to some of the great providers who provide great service and products but who aren't popular LET posters or don't have a lot of friends on IRC and therefore don't stand a chance in the LET poll
> 
> A couple of examples of quality providers who received practically no votes:
> 
> ...


Do you use SeFlow cloud?  I was worried as it appears to be using OnApp + OnApp Storage which I've read multiple problems about as a platform.  Any experience with it would be welcomed.


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## mud (Apr 14, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> tl;dr if I had voted, I would have voted Dewlance +5 in protest because the LET poll is a f**king joke.


Interesting, I decided not to vote because all those people voting for Dewlance made it a f**king joke. Is that the joke you are referring to?


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## Steven F (Apr 14, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Honestly, I thought Dewlance was going to do better.


I stopped peddling votes for them, because some people took it *way* too seriously. It's funny, because it's the same winners as Q4 '13. I am not saying that they are providers that don't deserve to win, but rather that it's just a stupid system. It doesn't really promote anything other than whoever is "in" this week.


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## coreyman (Apr 14, 2014)

Virtuol said:


> I stopped peddling votes for them, because some people took it *way* too seriously. It's funny, because it's the same winners as Q4 '13. I am not saying that they are providers that don't deserve to win, but rather that it's just a stupid system. It doesn't really promote anything other than whoever is "in" this week.



I feel the same way - but maybe because we didn't receive a single vote


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## XLvps (Apr 14, 2014)

Sweet, we got a vote.


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## Hxxx (Apr 14, 2014)

XLvps said:


> Sweet, we got a vote.


Yeah I noticed, congrats.


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## DomainBop (Apr 14, 2014)

Virtovo said:


> Do you use SeFlow cloud?  I was worried as it appears to be using OnApp + OnApp Storage which I've read multiple problems about as a platform.  Any experience with it would be welcomed.


I've been testing it for about a week and haven't encountered any problems yet but one week isn't really enough time to know whether the problems earlier versions had have been fixed...I like to test for a couple of months before putting something in production.


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## Amitz (Apr 14, 2014)

Indeed. Bradler & Krantz are great. I completely forgot them because everything works flawless since months... :-/


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## switsys (Apr 14, 2014)

serverian said:


> PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!
> 
> Got time and interest to count votes only from people who have more than 30-40 posts?


Being 'verbal' as a customer doesn't necessarily mean anything.


I've been a member of LET for years, but I have only five or six posts.


Yet I have/have had accounts with around 60 different providers.


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## drmike (Apr 14, 2014)

serverian said:


> PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!
> 
> Got time and interest to count votes only from people who have more than 30-40 posts?


Well, in order to see profile details one needs a LET account.  Since they like to power ban mine, I refuse to play along and refuse to blow up their viewership numbers when I reappear.

Feel free to toss me a pre-setup account and I'll run through the profiles.


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## Shoaib_A (Apr 14, 2014)

Congrats to Ramnode, Prometeus & Iniz.


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## maounique (Apr 15, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> who aren't popular LET posters or don't have a lot of friends on IRC and therefore don't stand a chance in the LET poll


I never did IRC and god knows how impopular my posts are (I get attacked left and right not as bad as here, though).

I do believe the poll is a community , not an industry one, therefore people hanging around have services from providers popular there and are voting for providers popular there. That is absolutely normal, here BuyVM would win hands down any day and night, but it is worth noting that none of the CC brands managed top 3 in LET. At least since CC took over.


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## HN-Matt (Apr 15, 2014)

drmike said:


> Unofficial, as they voted totals for LowendTalk's Q1 2014 Top Provider Poll:


Here's the official one: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/24781/2014-q1-top-providers-community-pool-take-two-without-jokes-and-private-voting


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## drmike (Apr 16, 2014)

Mao_Member_no_signature said:


> I do believe the poll is a community , not an industry one, therefore people hanging around have services from providers popular there and are voting for providers popular there. That is absolutely normal, here BuyVM would win hands down any day and night, but it is worth noting that none of the CC brands managed top 3 in LET. At least since CC took over.


The poll is a ton of shilling.   Not run of the mill vote for me petitioning either.  Seen folks in the past asking their IRC homies for votes, heard of freebies for votes, I know cheating is going on.

To my point, anyone with large enough votes cast and average vote value of 2.0 or above smells of vote abnormalities.

Not pointing fingers at anyone, but some brands have clear cheerleaders  who show up in 5 minutes of anything anywhere.  Their brands aren't that big to justify the pattern.

A poll like LET's just isn't big enough participation wise to say much for real.  It's whoever is fashionable in the community.  But even calling it a community poll is really lying.  Why?  Cause LET and LEB have all these massive viewer counts, right?   Like 100's of thousands of people a month, at least, right?  But yet when it comes time to vote, 

There were 557 votes cast for Q12014 by 244 different voters.

Do the math: 100k viewers a month (really low estimate) compared to 244 voters...

244 / 100,000 = 0.00244.

That 2/100ths of a percent of viewers deciding who is the "best" VPS provider in current 3 month quarterly.

Even if we slash the unique viewers a month to 50k:

244 / 50,000 =  0.00488

That's 4/100ths of a percent.

If we slash uniques to 25k a month:

244/25,000 = 0.00976 --- almost to 1% 

Unsure how a poll would work around here.   It would be equally as skewed/weird though since here most folks are providers (similar high density over on LET).  

Doubt BuyVM would be the top.  Definitely would have a strong showing.  But so would RamNode, Prometeus and DigitalOcean.


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## Francisco (Apr 16, 2014)

hrr1963 said:


> Impressive to see  GVH on top of other known providers.
> 
> Congrats to Nick_A as always, #1.
> 
> ...


Freebies always win the hearts of the LE people. Vultr gave free 2x credit and people stocked up on it.

Is the product worth it? I don't know, i've not tried it.  

As I said somewhere else, Mr. Clarke gave a 50% discount on IP's, services, etc, and suddenly he had a multi page sales thread on LET even though he was banned and is on record trying to exploit multiple providers,

including us.



Damian said:


> It's kinda interesting at how pop-con it tends to be. When I participated in That Forum, IPXcore was around 6th place. When I stopped participating, IPXcore drops to the last place with single-votes.


Well, that's how it goes. If you push a lot of discounts (be it constant or otherwise), have sales posts on a reasonable basis, etc, you can pull a lot of votes. This and the last few votes have had people pleading for votes on twitter, mass emails, etc, so it skews things.

I'd love to see us top 3 again and it wouldn't be hard. Ask some people on twitter and I'd end up with 200 - 300 votes easily enough. I'd then be driving traffic to a community that I don't give a single fuck about, though.

It's also easy to win with nice DD's. The DD's are gamed, though, due to tunings in cards. I won't go into this much since that's for everyone else to debug, but I ran into a lot of it in recent weeks. 

Francisco


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## drmike (Apr 16, 2014)

^--- I am 100% on what Fran said.  The SSD DD games... haha I call what is going on FRAUD.  Some folks  have setups where DD speeds exceed the spec/capability of the underlying SSDs.  Figure that out.

Also 100% on Damian's experience about being forgotten since not hanging out over there playing with the kids on LET.


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## Awmusic12635 (Apr 16, 2014)

drmike said:


> ^--- I am 100% on what Fran said.  The SSD DD games... haha I call what is going on FRAUD.  Some folks  have setups where DD speeds exceed the spec/capability of the underlying SSDs.  Figure that out.


Not sure I consider that fraud, just people who have HW RAID cache.


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## Francisco (Apr 16, 2014)

Fliphost said:


> Not sure I consider that fraud, just people who have HW RAID cache.


Not fraud, but purchasing certain parts because of specific features to tune DD's 

Anyway, this is fine. There's people that buy simply on the fact of certain benchmarks.

They had a bad past with providers due to reason X, so they want to make sure X is never

a concern. That's fine.

This is going off topic so I'll end this now 

Francisco


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## Awmusic12635 (Apr 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> Not fraud, but purchasing certain parts because of specific features to tune DD's
> 
> 
> Anyway, this is fine. There's people that buy simply on the fact of certain benchmarks.
> ...


Oh well, give the people what they want I guess. Yeah we have gotten off topic haven't we lol


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## drmike (Apr 16, 2014)

In coming months, I'll likely be putting the crazy disk RAID / SSD lust group to test with a real workload.  Still perfecting the entire job, but I've rolled it out before and it's brutal and that's just merely me moving in.  I'll even nice things and cap CPU.  So we'll see how slow CPUs are + how laggy drives really are and how long something real takes, if they even let it complete.

I am pretty sure, there are going to be salty providers with unhappy drives when reality plays out in their containers.

Goal is to show numbers for what they are with generic benchmarks - useless shit indicator that is being gamed in mass.

HW cache is just one layer of aiding and abetting wonky / fraud numbers.  There are others.


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## WelltodoInformalCattle (Apr 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> It's also easy to win with nice DD's. The DD's are gamed, though, due to tunings in cards. I won't go into this much since that's for everyone else to debug, but I ran into a lot of it in recent weeks.


You can't mention something like this without elaborating.


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## MannDude (Apr 16, 2014)

Has the 'official' results still not been made yet at LET? Regardless of privating voting, I don't think it's going to impact the top 10 in anyway. They should just copy Dr. Mike's results at this point.


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## SkylarM (Apr 16, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Has the 'official' results still not been made yet at LET? Regardless of privating voting, I don't think it's going to impact the top 10 in anyway. They should just copy Dr. Mike's results at this point.


They took a few WEEKS last time didn't they?


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## DomainBop (Apr 17, 2014)

> a ton of shilling.



Shilling?  Didn't you wet your bed at one stage?



> HW cache is just one layer of aiding and abetting wonky / fraud numbers.  There are others.



Software RAID 0 can also put up some nice numbers. I have a development server with 2 x Corsair Force GS in RAID0 that gets 763 MB/s dd test results under a full load...with my dd scores maybe I should buy that provider in a box kit and start my summer host RaidZeroVPS.  Guaranteed top 10 showing in the Q2 poll.


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## eva2000 (Apr 17, 2014)

Congrats to Nick !

I now have more RamNode VPS in play than BuyVM VPSes


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## mpkossen (Apr 18, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Has the 'official' results still not been made yet at LET? Regardless of privating voting, I don't think it's going to impact the top 10 in anyway. They should just copy Dr. Mike's results at this point.


If "DrMike" (nothing personal, you're just not the real one) would get the count right, I could have  Don't get me wrong, he got it fairly right, though he miscounted on some votes.

I've made disqualified votes public while counting by putting a remark in them with the reason.



SkylarM said:


> They took a few WEEKS last time didn't they?


Skylar, please stop saying things like this. I've told you before, you could regret some of these things later. It may make you feel "cool" right now, but really, it isn't.

It took 11 days from the votes before I published it. It wasn't weeks and you _know_ it because I contacted you for an offer.

What people need to realize is that the votes need to be counted after voting has finished (and checked by other staff), providers need to be contacted for special offers, and the post has to be scheduled and written. These things take time and I have a day job to pay my morgage. Don't me to hard on us. It's supposed to be a fun thing. No hostility


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## SkylarM (Apr 18, 2014)

mpkossen said:


> Skylar, please stop saying things like this. I've told you before, you could regret some of these things later. It may make you feel "cool" right now, but really, it isn't.


Woah woah slow down there. "Feel cool"? That's a joke right? I had just commented on the fact that it took a while last time, I wasn't trying to be hostile or act "cool" or whatever you seem to think my intent was. Was just an observation that it took quite a while last time around (this time it was considerably faster, so kudos to you for keeping up with it).

Don't take the comment the wrong way, as it wasn't intended to be taken as such. At any rate, 11 days is almost 2 *weeks* so my comment was off by a few days to count as *weeks* so I'm sorry for not double checking the facts and stating it exactly how long it took.

If my intent was harsh criticism against you or the staff at LET, it most certainly wouldn't be about how long a provider poll took to get tallied up. So please don't take it like I was taking a jab at you.


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## drmike (Apr 18, 2014)

mpkossen said:


> If "DrMike" (nothing personal, you're just not the real one) would get the count right, I could have  Don't get me wrong, he got it fairly right, though he miscounted on some votes.


Yeah, my team may have fat fingered a vote or two.  Not like we have a Top 3 accounting firm guaranteeing the results in sunny Buffalo.

As far as being the "real one", it's the internet cousin.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22dr.+mike%22 

900k like matches there alone.

http://www.google.com/search?q=dr.+mike&hl=en&gbv=2&oq=dr.+mike

459 million matches that way.

Not like I claim to be some Kevin Hillstrand character and lie for years across multiple websites to circumvent bans on industry sites.  Funny how you slap people about commenting this week about CVPS_Adam = Kevin and tell people to grow up, but here you are going derp derp derp...  You Easter peep.



mpkossen said:


> I've made disqualified votes public while counting by putting a remark in them with the reason.


Are these remarks on the original LET thread now?  I don't EVER recall this being public and documented prior.   I am interested in seeing who and what got tossed.  If you intend or have made such public, CON-FUCKING-GRATULATIONS.   You win a bottle of Windex to help you increase LET/LEB transparency.



> Skylar, please stop saying things like this. I've told you before, you could regret some of these things later. It may make you feel "cool" right now, but really, it isn't.


Yeah Skylar, don't bust Kossen's chops.  They don't pay him enough to be prompt.  He works on union time, when he feels like it, after 3 months of Euro vacation.

WTF is this "REGRET" stuff?  I'd hate to think you'd swing your limp pole and pull to punish people making true and harmless comments.   Let's pretend like that comment never happened about "regret" before I fill in the blanks and slap a stamp on a love letter that can make you "regret" some of these things.



> It took 11 days from the votes before I published it. It wasn't weeks and you _know_ it because I contacted you for an offer.


All seriousness, 11 days... Meh.  Better than last time.  Whole thing should be automated/developed.   This shoe-horning crap into a forum is el retardo.  But hey, just my opinion and I am professional asshole.



> What people need to realize is that the votes need to be counted after voting has finished (and checked by other staff), providers need to be contacted for special offers, and the post has to be scheduled and written. These things take time and I have a day job to pay my morgage. Don't me to hard on us. It's supposed to be a fun thing. No hostility


Checked by what other staff?   Does checking involve people manually pulling all the votes together and tabulating them a second or third time?   Sorry but I've been a committee person in LEGAL voting processes.   Whole process and WAY WAY WAY more votes happens within hours of voting.

As far as your day job and all, meh, that's nice.  Cut you slack because you draw double income and slack at the later?  No chance pal.  Pull the cart you lazy ox. FASTER!

This fun part....  Where did that come from?  I never saw the memo about LET's for-fucks-and-giggles-sake provider voting.   Last time I checked, people are running businesses.  Most are working long to endless hours.   This isn't hobby hosting.  You make it sound like a FreeVPS competition or something.


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## mpkossen (Apr 19, 2014)

drmike said:


> Yeah, my team may have fat fingered a vote or two.  Not like we have a Top 3 accounting firm guaranteeing the results in sunny Buffalo.
> 
> ...
> 
> Are these remarks on the original LET thread now?  I don't EVER recall this being public and documented prior.   I am interested in seeing who and what got tossed.  If you intend or have made such public, CON-FUCKING-GRATULATIONS.   You win a bottle of Windex to help you increase LET/LEB transparency.


I've done it this time to see how it suited me. I'll do it again next time. There is no reason not to do this other than it's extra work, I guess. I have no secrets when it comes to why we disqualify someone or some votes. We do remove some posts when people don't have enough posts to vote. That still means the thread as it is now should be good enough to get back to my count (or your count for that matter).



drmike said:


> Yeah Skylar, don't bust Kossen's chops.  They don't pay him enough to be prompt.  He works on union time, when he feels like it, after 3 months of Euro vacation.
> 
> WTF is this "REGRET" stuff?  I'd hate to think you'd swing your limp pole and pull to punish people making true and harmless comments.   Let's pretend like that comment never happened about "regret" before I fill in the blanks and slap a stamp on a love letter that can make you "regret" some of these things.


A while back he was sending me a dozen PMs to get his offer posted. Meanwhile, he was saying in here what a bunch of crap LEB was (probably just because others said so). I confronted him with that and he apologized for his behavior. This is a nice flash-back to that. He's saying WEEKS while he very well _knows_ it's not weeks and he _knows_ that the results are going to be out soon, because I PM'd him for an offer.

I just don't like people smooth-talking me on one end saying how nice everything is, how much someone benefits from being posted on LEB, only to find some verbal diarrhea from that same person here.



drmike said:


> Checked by what other staff?   Does checking involve people manually pulling all the votes together and tabulating them a second or third time?   Sorry but I've been a committee person in LEGAL voting processes.   Whole process and WAY WAY WAY more votes happens within hours of voting.
> 
> As far as your day job and all, meh, that's nice.  Cut you slack because you draw double income and slack at the later?  No chance pal.  Pull the cart you lazy ox. FASTER!
> 
> This fun part....  Where did that come from?  I never saw the memo about LET's for-fucks-and-giggles-sake provider voting.   Last time I checked, people are running businesses.  Most are working long to endless hours.   This isn't hobby hosting.  You make it sound like a FreeVPS competition or something.


No, there's not a full second count. Not yet, at least. May do that next time, but it seems overkill. The list is checked for discrepancies, double hosts, stuff like that.

It's not like the poll _must_ counted directly after voting has closed. It's not an actual election. Like I said, it's a fun event (or it's supposed to be) where we show appreciation to those providers we consider top of the bill! I have to admit that due to being very busy, I wasn't able to start counting votes during the poll. This is something I am going to do next time. This will considerably speed up the process.

In this case it wouldn't have mattered, though, because I had to move a lot of things around to schedule the post in the queue. We've switched from a 48-hour to a 36-hour cycle (where possible) and we've had some offers being moved last-minute (because providers weren't ready), so the first slot I had was tomorrow. And that's still squeezing it in.


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## bizzard (Apr 19, 2014)

@mpkossen So, are the official results out? I can't find it on LEB homepage.


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## mpkossen (Apr 20, 2014)

bizzard said:


> @mpkossen So, are the official results out? I can't find it on LEB homepage.


They will be out at 7:30PM Eastern. HostHatch is up now and they deserve their air-time as well


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## SkylarM (Apr 20, 2014)

mpkossen said:


> They will be out at 7:30PM Eastern. HostHatch is up now and they deserve their air-time as well


I do believe it's actually auto-posting at 7:30am central not eastern (my post went up at 7:30am central). I'd suspect due to DST. Got all confused because the footer says times are UTC . Dropped a feedback post, forgot about it until you mentioned Eastern. Was scratching my head when our post went up and had no idea what timezone it was actually posted in (always aim to be awake for the listing so got up at 7:30AM UTC to no good fortune )


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## MannDude (Apr 20, 2014)

http://lowendbox.com/blog/top-provider-poll-2014-q1-the-results/

Looks like the 'official' results are in. Curious how the count differed from the one Dr. Mike post here.


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## DomainBop (Apr 20, 2014)

> Curious how the count differed from the one Dr. Mike post here.


LET count vs DRMike (w/brand consolidation)

1. RamNode 282 vs 280

2. Prometeus 147 vs 151 (prometeus 147 + iperweb 2 + iwStack 2)

3. Iniz 67 vs 70

4. Crissic 62 vs 68

5. Dewlance 59 vs 59

5. Backupsy 59 vs 58 (30 backupsy + 10 vpsdime + 8 winity +10 dotvps)

7. Inception 47 vs 42 (26 inception + 16 lowendspirit)

8. DigitalOcean 41 vs 41

9. Vultr 37 vs 37

10 DrServer 35 vs 35


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## mpkossen (Apr 21, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> I do believe it's actually auto-posting at 7:30am central not eastern (my post went up at 7:30am central). I'd suspect due to DST. Got all confused because the footer says times are UTC . Dropped a feedback post, forgot about it until you mentioned Eastern. Was scratching my head when our post went up and had no idea what timezone it was actually posted in (always aim to be awake for the listing so got up at 7:30AM UTC to no good fortune )


It's auto-posted, that is correct. It could be that the time is off, which would explain why the auto-posted tweet is live before the offer. I'll investigate.


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## coreyman (Apr 21, 2014)

Wow Dewlance actually got #5 on the list.... jesus...


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## MannDude (Apr 21, 2014)

coreyman said:


> Wow Dewlance actually got #5 on the list.... jesus...



Apparently it's because of the 'competing forum' (vpsBoard) promoting Dewlance to 'troll the poll'. At least according to: http://lowendbox.com/blog/top-provider-poll-2014-q1-the-results/#comment-154942 and http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/546049/#Comment_546049


I welcome everyone to go through and find where vpsBoard promoted this. While I thought it was somewhat comical I do not recall asking or encouraging anyone to vote for Dewlance. I would never do that, because I'd hate for someone to realistically think Dewlance was worth signing up for.


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## coreyman (Apr 21, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Apparently it's because of the 'competing forum' (vpsBoard) promoting Dewlance to 'troll the poll'. At least according to: http://lowendbox.com/blog/top-provider-poll-2014-q1-the-results/#comment-154942 and http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/546049/#Comment_546049
> 
> 
> I welcome everyone to go through and find where vpsBoard promoted this. While I thought it was somewhat comical I do not recall asking or encouraging anyone to vote for Dewlance. I would never do that, because I'd hate for someone to realistically think Dewlance was worth signing up for.


Yea I just read that and thought the comment wasn't thought out very well.


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## DomainBop (Apr 21, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Apparently it's because of the 'competing forum' (vpsBoard) promoting Dewlance to 'troll the poll'. At least according to: http://lowendbox.com/blog/top-provider-poll-2014-q1-the-results/#comment-154942 and http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/546049/#Comment_546049
> 
> 
> I welcome everyone to go through and find where vpsBoard promoted this. While I thought it was somewhat comical I do not recall asking or encouraging anyone to vote for Dewlance. I would never do that, because I'd hate for someone to realistically think Dewlance was worth signing up for.


Steven F, a WHT community liason, was the main promoter of the 'Vote for Dewlance' movement on IRC. 

http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/527265/#Comment_527265


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## mikho (Apr 21, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> Steven F, a WHT community liason, was the main promoter of the 'Vote for Dewlance' movement on IRC.
> 
> http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/527265/#Comment_527265


Does that actually make vpsboard and let better then wht?


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## Amitz (Apr 21, 2014)

At least it sheds light on the WHT staff and their "professionalism".


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## MartinD (Apr 21, 2014)

Why is this even a topic on here? This place isn't LET/LEB. It's VPSBoard. People would do well to remember that sometimes.


If you want LET go over there.


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## mikho (Apr 21, 2014)

MartinD said:


> Why is this even a topic on here?


Because someone has an obsessive mind about what happens "over there"?


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## DomainBop (Apr 21, 2014)

> Why is this even a topic on here?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Kqbt96Ctka4


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## drmike (Apr 22, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> LET count vs DRMike (w/brand consolidation)
> 
> 1. RamNode 282 vs 280
> 
> ...


Thank you for this 

I'd like to know how in the fnck:

1. Backupsy gets to 59... maybe I failed to count something, by the I doubt it... If anything, Backupsy was look at a points loss (see Jack's 3 points to Oktay's brands).   Mind you nothing against them,  next go round let's all vote for ourselves, employers, interested companies, etc.  If they allow it, we shall.

2. Inception was 42, but LET totaled 47. Meh gap is kind of big and well like the above, I am kind of surprised no votes were pruned for voting abnormalities.  

3. Crissic got gut punched 6 points.   Big gap since their votes were mainly a 1-2 pointer.   Could have been a few votes tossed, maybe more.

Overall, these results are heads above prior contests on disclosure - once the private voting was put to bed.   Something I laughed about and never was discussed on vpsBoard or endorsed herein.

See Maarten, being transparent or moving in said direction isn't so terrible.


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## Shoaib_A (Apr 22, 2014)

It is really sad that a single guy can influence the outcome of votes!


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## MannDude (Apr 23, 2014)

K2Bytes said:


> It is really sad that a single guy can influence the outcome of votes!


Not really. I don't think it's unfair to ask your customers to vote for you. If the poll was created here, the results would likely be similar with the same brands in the top 10, minus the obvious and order may differ slightly. If ranking high is important to you in these polls, then ask your customers to vote for you. Otherwise just provide solid services. It's simple.


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## DomainBop (Apr 23, 2014)

MannDude said:


> If the poll was created here, the results would likely be similar with the same brands in the top 10


I'll disagree that the results would be similar because vpsboard doesn't have an artificial $7 price limit. If you take away the price limit some of the clown outfits that received votes in that poll would receive 0 votes.


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## MannDude (Apr 23, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> I'll disagree that the results would be similar because vpsboard doesn't have an artificial $7 price limit. If you take away the price limit some of the clown outfits that received votes in that poll would receive 0 votes.


Well, you're actually probably right.

I was more referring to the thought that regardless of the platform, companies like RamNode and Prometeus would still probably hold top spots here as they did on LET as they have reps here and there. Some of the others in the top 10 there may not appear in the top 10 here as they don't have reps here that are _active_.

Luckily though we'd possibly have other good contenders in the mix due to the fact, as you mentioned, no price limit.


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## mpkossen (Apr 23, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Apparently it's because of the 'competing forum' (vpsBoard) promoting Dewlance to 'troll the poll'. At least according to: http://lowendbox.com/blog/top-provider-poll-2014-q1-the-results/#comment-154942 and http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/546049/#Comment_546049
> 
> 
> I welcome everyone to go through and find where vpsBoard promoted this. While I thought it was somewhat comical I do not recall asking or encouraging anyone to vote for Dewlance. I would never do that, because I'd hate for someone to realistically think Dewlance was worth signing up for.


I know this is not the case and I've stated that. I've seen it happen and I've spoken to some people that did vote for Dewlance. They have learned their lesson, let's keep it at that.



MartinD said:


> Why is this even a topic on here? This place isn't LET/LEB. It's VPSBoard. People would do well to remember that sometimes.
> 
> 
> If you want LET go over there.


For once, I agree with you ;-)

It's been a topic because I'm "slow" with counting the votes and posting the results. I'm going to try and speed it up next time, so you don't have to worry about this anymore!



drmike said:


> See Maarten, being transparent or moving in said direction isn't so terrible.


I'm not a bad guy  I'm foolish at times, definitely. I believe we all are. But I honestly wouldn't know why I would need to hide anything in votes like this.

As for the votes: did you accumulate Inception and LowEndSpirit? I did count Jack's votes because he only works for DotVPS. I may do this differently in the future, but I'd have to discuss it with the others and clearly state it in the rules. It's a grey area for now, so they "win". I don't know about the gap with Crissic. I don't remember anything strange with them. Feel free to do a recount in the thread and notify me if I'm wrong.


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## SkylarM (Apr 23, 2014)

mpkossen said:


> As for the votes: did you accumulate Inception and LowEndSpirit? I did count Jack's votes because he only works for DotVPS. I may do this differently in the future, but I'd have to discuss it with the others and clearly state it in the rules. It's a grey area for now, so they "win". I don't know about the gap with Crissic. I don't remember anything strange with them. Feel free to do a recount in the thread and notify me if I'm wrong.


I know for sure someone had voted 5 points for us but had JUST registered that day, so likely tossed out for that reason. I remember talking to the guy in IRC about it.


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## DomainBop (Apr 23, 2014)

mpkossen said:


> I know this is not the case and I've stated that. I've seen it happen and I've spoken to some people that did vote for Dewlance. They have learned their lesson, let's keep it at that.


Dewlance doesn't have any credibility, but then again neither do many of the providers who you zealously defend and who received votes (like GVH, CVPS, etc), and Dewlance's reputation really isn't much worse than that of LET/LEB (read the comments on places like WHT where LET/LEB is thought of as a  place where people get ripped off by amateur kiddie hosts who provide subpar service). 

Truthfully, in my eyes, based on some of the comments you've made in defense of CC house brands and your attempts to publicly damage the reputation of what are seen as competing providers (example: your insinuation today that BuyVM uses a nulled Solus , or Alex Vial's attempts to damage the rep of his ex-customers on the "basement" thread), I don't have any more respect for the administrators or owners of LET/LEB than I do for Dewlance.


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