# Race to the Bottom News: 2GB RAM, 2IPs for $1.67 monthly



## DomainBop (Dec 2, 2013)

Forget 2GB/$7 monthly, the new standard to beat is 2GB RAM and 2 IP addresses for $1.67 monthly.  Forget annual payments, the new trend is paying up front for 3 years.  Yes, this is in reference to the LEB Cyber Monday special.

Comments? (suggested comments: is this profitable? is someone desparate for cash? who in their right mind would pay 3 years upfront...especially to a provider who has been hacked numerous times , etc)


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## Erawan (Dec 2, 2013)

There's a debate about the OpenVZ and KVM like this :

"If you can provider 1GB or 3GB KVM for $7/month, then come back and talk to me.

I believed someone might still remember that word


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## MannDude (Dec 2, 2013)

Haha, oh god. If they're around in three years, your data is leaked even more times and performance remains halfway decent then it's a good deal.

I'm not a betting man and that's not a set of dice I'd like to roll, though.


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## texteditor (Dec 2, 2013)

hahaha, $60/3years, god damn


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## HalfEatenPie (Dec 2, 2013)

Hey guys.

Hey guys.

The only reason why we can do this is because we have a great deal with our upstream providers!

</sarcasm>


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## tchen (Dec 2, 2013)

They were selling those for $30/yr not long ago. I had a whole set of them. Can't say I'm disappointed or anything. They work as advertised which is a lot more than I can say for some LEB providers.


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## earl (Dec 2, 2013)

From what I have noticed it's only companies that are about to go belly up that offer these type of promos.. Not implying that CVPS is closing shop, but hey you never know.. 3 years is quite the commitment!


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## MannDude (Dec 2, 2013)

Comically enough $60 is higher than the price limit allowed in LEB's rules.



> It must be under *USD $7 per month* for monthly billing, or *USD $48 per year* for yearly billing (~USD$4/month).


Well, then again, maybe it fits.


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## Epidrive (Dec 2, 2013)

How do they even......


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## MannDude (Dec 2, 2013)

I think it's more to get people talking about them than anything. Obviously offering these at a loss.


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## notFound (Dec 2, 2013)

I wonder what their incentive to do this is, there ain't much profit unless they're just trying to fill IPs and get more before there is practically none left.


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## Francisco (Dec 2, 2013)

MannDude said:


> Comically enough $60 is higher than the price limit allowed in LEB's rules.
> 
> Well, then again, maybe it fits.


*Per year* is the key. His pricing comes in at $20/year which is under the $48/year mark.

There is no limit on years committed as it was never needed. I'm not aware of any other sale that has required > 1 year commitment.

Francisco

EDIT - fixing grammar


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## Aldryic C'boas (Dec 2, 2013)

Triennial commit?  Smells like desperation to me.


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## vRozenSch00n (Dec 2, 2013)

3 years is too long for a commitment like that, especially when the economy is unstable and inflation rate increment slowly but in an unstoppable pace.


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## peterw (Dec 2, 2013)

Look to the vps offers two years ago. I would have to kill myself if I had bought a 2 year contract.


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## serverian (Dec 2, 2013)

It's a great way to sell 2GB/$20 after 3 years. You know, there will be 50GB/$10 deals then.


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## GIANT_CRAB (Dec 2, 2013)

Talk to me when your 32GB RAM KVM VPS with 10000 dedicated 1000GHz cores, 1000TB SSD disk and unlimited bandwidth 1000gbps port offer is cheaper than domain registration for ".tk".


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## drmike (Dec 2, 2013)

DomainBop said:


> Forget 2GB/$7 monthly, the new standard to beat is 2GB RAM and 2 IP addresses for $1.67 monthly.  Forget annual payments, the new trend is paying up front for 3 years.  Yes, this is in reference to the LEB Cyber Monday special.
> 
> Comments? (suggested comments: is this profitable? is someone desparate for cash? who in their right mind would pay 3 years upfront...especially to a provider who has been hacked numerous times , etc)


I saw shithead's offer on LEB.   What a damn joke.

3 year term?  Come on, companies don't last 1 year in this industry.  Just because CVPS has been around doesn't mean they are going to be.   Why?  Cause their ceiling has been hit.   They will have trouble maintaining recent subscriber numbers in light of the resources required to service customers and the neverending public failures (been hacked?).

I expect to see the Buffalo "hosts" go the multi year route to attempt to sell anything.   I mean look at the depths these folks have sunk to this year?  1 company with upwards of what 15 offers on LEB?  Then you have multiple other CC owned or CC invested in companies machine gunning ads up.

Go ahead tell me this is some record setting year and everything is wonderful.

As Pie said, these deals are only doable where the provider has some extra special relationship / low low operating costs / is part of the "datacenter" operation.


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## dano (Dec 2, 2013)

I just chuckled when I saw the cvps offer on leb today - I wanted to read the comments, as that is always the best part of a cvps offer


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## InertiaNetworks-John (Dec 2, 2013)

Wow. Just wow.


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## drmike (Dec 2, 2013)

> adrian:
> 
> Terrible provider.. they should be banned from lowendtalk.
> 
> ...


'nuff said.


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## WebSearchingPro (Dec 2, 2013)

Did anyone here happen to grab one? ... to test the oversold-ness.


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## devonblzx (Dec 2, 2013)

I'm sure it will perform fine at first.   Most people don't actually use their VPS for the first few weeks anyways, unless they migrate over an active web site right away which is a small percentage.

2GB of RAM is one thing, but they don't say how much CPU.  Considering $1.67/month and the standard E3 with RAID costing ~$150 (with profit) then are we to assume that you'll only have 1/23 of a processor guaranteed to you?  Because good luck using 2GB of RAM if you are sharing a processor with 23 other users.


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## devonblzx (Dec 2, 2013)

I should add, this could be a way for CVPS to cook their books in an attempt to get investments but will be an utter failure in a long term business plan.

If their bank (or investors) are only looking for cash-basis accounting statements, then receiving these $60 prepayments at the end of the year will make their company look extra profitable.  However, if the banks were smart and asking for accrual statements then I'm assuming their books would look downright ugly.

For those not familiar with accounting terms, cash basis means recording revenue when you receive it, accrual basis means recording revenue when you earn it.  The difference would be them recording $60 right now for cash basis and only $1.67 per month for accrual basis.


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## DomainBop (Dec 2, 2013)

devonblzx said:


> I'm sure it will perform fine at first.   Most people don't actually use their VPS for the first few weeks anyways, unless they migrate over an active web site right away which is a small percentage.
> 
> 2GB of RAM is one thing, but they don't say how much CPU.  Considering $1.67/month and the standard E3 with RAID costing ~$150 (with profit) then are we to assume that you'll only have 1/23 of a processor guaranteed to you?  Because good luck using 2GB of RAM if you are sharing a processor with 23 other users.


23 users?  You're vastly underestimating the overselling that goes on with many low end OpenVZ providers.  When ChicagoVPS's database was hacked and posted on the Internet in June it was revealed that they regularly sell 200GB-300GB worth of RAM per 32GB E3 node.



> Talk to me when your 32GB RAM KVM VPS with 10000 dedicated 1000GHz cores, 1000TB SSD disk and unlimited bandwidth 1000gbps port offer is cheaper than domain registration for ".tk".



Today's gold is tomorrow's shit in serverland, and that is one of the reasons I wouldn't make a 3 year commit to a package with a fixed amount of resources from any provider.  The other reason I wouldn't make a 3 year comitment is I can't estimate what my needs will be in year 2 or year 3.



> Go ahead tell me this is some record setting year and everything is wonderful.



Offers like this rarely mean everything is wonderful.  It usually means a company is having trouble meeting its short term cash flow needs, operating expenses.  That was my first though when I saw this offer, and it was my first thought when I saw WeLoveServers CyberMonday deal today.


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## raindog308 (Dec 2, 2013)

I'll go to 99 cents a month with a 40-year commitment.


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## professionalxen (Dec 2, 2013)

Or you can just go with eduvps which offers free vpses with decent hardware


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## Francisco (Dec 2, 2013)

professionalxen said:


> Or you can just go with eduvps which offers free vpses with decent hardware


But their setup is for learning isn't it? It isn't supposed to be treated as 'a VPS provider because im too cheap'.

I've seen some of the horror stories those guys post of all the little shits running BTC miners and such.

Francisco


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## nunim (Dec 2, 2013)

3 Year terms aren't uncommon in the shared hosting world, can't say I've ever seen it on for a VPS though.  I used ChicagoVPS once when they had the 512/$2 "Birthday" deal, what a mistake... The VPS was crap and I got to have my personal information leaked


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## professionalxen (Dec 2, 2013)

Francisco said:


> But their setup is for learning isn't it? It isn't supposed to be treated as 'a VPS provider because im too cheap'.
> 
> 
> I've seen some of the horror stories those guys post of all the little shits running BTC miners and such.
> ...


Yes, i agree with you on this one.

However, they've done many improvements and there is very little amount of abusers left.

But in all honesty,a VPS from them should be good for some minor hosting people are running.


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## drmike (Dec 2, 2013)

nunim said:


> I used ChicagoVPS once when they had the 512/$2 "Birthday" deal, what a mistake... The VPS was crap and I got to have my personal information leaked


Yeppers... CVPS has leaked at least twice, officially.  No cleanup, no government declaration of the snafu, nada.

Surely, CVPS would argue that nothing of importance was leaked thus no reason to report the break-in, twice.  I disagree.

One of these days, someone is going to take proper legal actions, until then the circus continues.


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## Francisco (Dec 2, 2013)

nunim said:


> 3 Year terms aren't uncommon in the shared hosting world, can't say I've ever seen it on for a VPS though.  I used ChicagoVPS once when they had the 512/$2 "Birthday" deal, what a mistake... The VPS was crap and I got to have my personal information leaked


True but normally those are hostgator unlimited everything plans.

Really, you can't offer more than unlimited can you? 

Francisco


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## Francisco (Dec 2, 2013)

professionalxen said:


> Yes, i agree with you on this one.
> 
> However, they've done many improvements and there is very little amount of abusers left.
> 
> But in all honesty,a VPS from them should be good for some minor hosting people are running.


Which is good but still.

Hats off to Incero for supporting them.

Francisco


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## scv (Dec 2, 2013)

Surprised Chris hasn't poked his head into here yet.


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## DomainBop (Dec 2, 2013)

drmike said:


> Yeppers... *CVPS has leaked at least twice, officially*.  No cleanup, no government declaration of the snafu, nada.
> 
> Surely, CVPS would argue that nothing of importance was leaked thus no reason to report the break-in, twice.  I disagree.
> 
> One of these days, someone is going to take proper legal actions, until then the circus continues.


They've been hacked 3 times in the past year: SolusVM 11/12 and 6/13, and WHMCS in October (they claimed that the hacker in Oct. was "only" able to download 3% of their customers data).  They accept credit cards directly and store the info so the WHMCS breach should have been treated much more seriously than it was, i.e. they should have followed proper notification procedures and notified state agencies and their merchant account provider.

Chris is posting his usual "it's all Solus'' fault, none of it was our fault" BS on their offer today.  If you put a script with a history of security problems into production on your site without understanding the code that you're putting on your site then you share part of the blame if your site is hacked.


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## Erawan (Dec 2, 2013)

Did anyone managed to get the CVPS leaked database? Some of them still running, and using the same root password


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## Francisco (Dec 2, 2013)

Erawan said:


> Did anyone managed to get the CVPS leaked database? Some of them still running, and using the same root password


The encryption key got leaked too?

I thought only the DB did.

Francisco


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## texteditor (Dec 2, 2013)

scv said:


> Surprised Chris hasn't poked his head into here yet.


You can only be an asshole in so many places at the same time


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## GVH-Jon (Dec 2, 2013)

Are they a ColoCrossing host?


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## Amitz (Dec 2, 2013)

GVH-Jon said:


> Are they a ColoCrossing host?


Thank you, I lol'ed.


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## Erawan (Dec 2, 2013)

Francisco said:


> The encryption key got leaked too?
> 
> 
> I thought only the DB did.
> ...


yes Fran, SolusVM key showed there, included the email of the user, password, and other content that I don't know


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## GVH-Jon (Dec 2, 2013)

Alright ChicagoVPS, you wanna race to the bottom? It's on!

.

.

.

.

[/troll]

In all honesty though they probably profit a lot from that. You guys would be surprised about bulk pricing @ CC


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## Mun (Dec 2, 2013)

I want one, to just try it XD


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## WebSearchingPro (Dec 2, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Really, you can't offer more than unlimited can you?



I think you are on to something ... "Unlimited+1GB RAM" ...

Edit: On-Topic, realistically they can likely provision ~100VPS comfortably per node based on how many frivolous purchases are made for that plan, I'd say a good 50% of them will remain unused for the next three years. Its likely they are just doing this to make a ton of noise about the company as well as get the capital for a few new nodes.

That's an easy $6000 per node node that can be used to purchase ~6 new nodes and the cycle continues, you also have to keep in mind that these aren't their only servers, they make enough money in monthly VPS payments to pay the colo costs for all the new servers they are purchasing.

I could see the concern for a smaller company, but for them it likely makes sense. Its almost an instant injection of money into the company without the need to take out any loans for new equipment of wait for trickle sales.


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## vRozenSch00n (Dec 2, 2013)

The thing is when I was still their customer before the data leak, CVPS always answered my tickets in a timely manner and the $7 VPS was good until I lost all my data when the server crash.

Then Chris starts to show "wise" attitude in the forums. The leak and that, worries me.  

So I left


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## vRozenSch00n (Dec 2, 2013)

WebSearchingPro said:


> That's an easy $6000 per node node that can be used to purchase ~6 new nodes and the cycle continues, you also have to keep in mind that these aren't their only servers, they make enough money in monthly VPS payments to pay the colo costs for all the new servers they are purchasing.


So, they need to have 2 groups of customers at least.

The first group will not bring income for the next 3 years, the second group are those who pay on a monthly and quarterly basis to cover the monthly cost and income.

Hypothetically, when all customers converted to the 3 years plan, then there is no monthly income to cover the cost.


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## concerto49 (Dec 2, 2013)

GVH-Jon said:


> Alright ChicagoVPS, you wanna race to the bottom? It's on!
> 
> 
> .
> ...


Bulk pricing from cc? Why would they need that?


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## Francisco (Dec 2, 2013)

vRozenSch00n said:


> So, they need to have 2 groups of customers at least.
> 
> The first group will not bring income for the next 3 years, the second group are those who pay on a monthly and quarterly basis to cover the monthly cost and income.
> 
> Hypothetically, when all customers converted to the 3 years plan, then there is no monthly income to cover the cost.


I think you're looking at it wrong. The problem with a provider like CVPS is their only competition is...themselves. They had their ton of slickdeals users paying in at $40/y for a ~2G and seemed reasonably happy minus the hacks. Now, those $40/y payments ($120/3y) are now paying $60/3y if they start paying renewals. Sure, that's a surge of upfront cash but come 1 1/2 years in you're at a loss.

But, who knows, it might be a strong idea, especially if they're able to predict where the market is going (2G|$10/y) and see it as actually getting more out of the users now than down the road.

It's all interesting but I think it just ends up in the same problem that OVH had. Their cheaper deals didn't do a ton to bring in new, constant, capital. Sure, they sold the equipment but it was to their own users.

Francisco


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## texteditor (Dec 2, 2013)

Hey you guys actually don't have to give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming long-term planning went into this and all...


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## WebSearchingPro (Dec 2, 2013)

vRozenSch00n said:


> So, they need to have 2 groups of customers at least.
> 
> The first group will not bring income for the next 3 years, the second group are those who pay on a monthly and quarterly basis to cover the monthly cost and income.
> 
> Hypothetically, when all customers converted to the 3 years plan, then there is no monthly income to cover the cost.


That's assuming people are aware of the new deals, typically only a handful of people care enough to ticket for a discount, and its not like they are going to get a refund anyways, it will just be a discount on the next renewal if at all on a previous yearly.


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## vRozenSch00n (Dec 2, 2013)

GVH-Jon said:


> In all honesty though they probably profit a lot from that. You guys would be surprised about bulk pricing @ CC


Not really surprising, I bought a VPS from one of CC retailer, and I got blacklisted IP. It seems they dump all the bad IPs cheap too.

I'm not telling who the provider is because he is my friend, and used to be @Francisco's friend too and he has a family.


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## devonblzx (Dec 3, 2013)

DomainBop said:


> 23 users?  You're vastly underestimating the overselling that goes on with many low end OpenVZ providers.  When ChicagoVPS's database was hacked and posted on the Internet in June it was revealed that they regularly sell 200GB-300GB worth of RAM per 32GB E3 node.


I said 23 users per processor, which for an E3 would have been 92 users, ~184GB.  So 200 sounds about right with slim margins.  Still I stand with my point, 23 users on a processor means you won't ever realistically get to use that 2GB or the amount of CPU you should be able to with a 2GB VPS.

As for bulk pricing at CC, I doubt CC gets any better pricing than any other dedicated server provider.   Even with bulk pricing, there are still power costs and the standard hardware costs.  Intel and the big hardware suppliers don't cut that great of breaks in bulk.  I would only expect them to be paying about 10-15% less than what you'd pay on Newegg or a similar site.  Then CC has to have mark up, don't they?


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## wlanboy (Dec 3, 2013)

devonblzx said:


> I would only expect them to be paying about 10-15% less than what you'd pay on Newegg or a similar site.  Then CC has to have mark up, don't they?


I think it is more about "we do have hardware sitting around" and "want to gain more users/more ips".


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## Coastercraze (Dec 3, 2013)

What's even crazier? Asking for a price match!


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## Francisco (Dec 3, 2013)

wlanboy said:


> I think it is more about "we do have hardware sitting around" and "want to gain more users/more ips".


 Well, you have Urpad leaving (30+ rentals?), & shardhost leaving (probably same or more), & a few other smaller people going bust. They've had to terminate a lot (10 some odd) of large contracts for IP space as well due to spam problems. It's possible they actually fixed things with spamhaus, but the majority of the RDNS entries are gone.

Last time there was a rumoured large fish leaving, there was a large (pretty much 0 -> 5 - 10) increase in SSD offers, all using Intel 520 drives. To date the only provider continuing with them is pretty much Chris and servermania for now.

It's also possible SM's just selling inventory that didn't move yet.



Coastercraze said:


> What's even crazier? Asking for a price match!


You've been asked? Christ.


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## Epidrive (Dec 3, 2013)

I think they run on an assumption that you'd abandon the server by the 2nd year.. So they're looking at it like its 60 /yr. Just imo


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## Francisco (Dec 3, 2013)

FrapHost said:


> I think they run on an assumption that you'd abandon the server by the 2nd year.. So they're looking at it like its 60 /yr. Just imo


I'd hope not.

He defends his brands like no other so I can't see him booking on a crap shoot of cancellations.

Francisco


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## peterw (Dec 3, 2013)

wlanboy said:


> I think it is more about "we do have hardware sitting around" and "want to gain more users/more ips".


Good point.



Francisco said:


> Well, you have Urpad leaving (30+ rentals?), & shardhost leaving (probably same or more), & a few other smaller people going bust. They've had to terminate a lot (10 some odd) of large contracts for IP space as well due to spam problems. It's possible they actually fixed things with spamhaus, but the majority of the RDNS entries are gone.


It is better that they sell their stuff themselfs than creating a new company to do that.


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## wlanboy (Dec 3, 2013)

Francisco said:


> I'd hope not.
> 
> 
> He defends his brands like no other so I can't see him booking on a crap shoot of cancellations.
> ...


Maybe not to cancle the vps but to abandon it.

Don't think that a lot of people use them for something important. So manly dev boxes with a lot of idle time.


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## blergh (Dec 3, 2013)

Fuck learning from older offers & history in general, shitty underpriced offers ohoy! Let's sell more imaginary resources for less!


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## earl (Dec 3, 2013)

Funny how much exposure they give their own brand compared to others.. Was hoping to find a new offer but seems stuck on CVPS for past couple of days..


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## drmike (Dec 4, 2013)

earl said:


> Funny how much exposure they give their own brand compared to others.. Was hoping to find a new offer but seems stuck on CVPS for past couple of days..


Yeah it's time for me to tabulate the last few months of offers over there


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## earl (Dec 4, 2013)

drmike said:


> Yeah it's time for me to tabulate the last few months of offers over there


They finally have a new offer..


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