GoDaddy Enters The Hourly Billing Cloud Market

[DomainBop]

CLOUD SERVERS


FOR DEVELOPERS. BY DEVELOPERS. FREE FOR 30 DAYS.


Build, test, clone and destroy virtual instances with GoDaddy Cloud Servers. Configure them however you want. Scalability doesn’t get any easier.


99.9% uptime guarantee


US datacenter only

ALL PLANS INCLUDE
Utility billing 
Powerful yet simple API & control panel 
SSD high performance 
54 second provisioning 
OpenStack powered KVM virtualization 
Snapshots 
Backups 
Private networking 
Permanent IP assignment 

GoDaddy has launched an hourly billing cloud platform targeted to developers to compete with AWS, DO, et al.  Pricing and plans are similar to Digital Ocean (20 GB, No more than $5.00 /month ($0.0074 /hour) ,512MB Memory, 1 CORE Processor, 20GB SSD Disk, 1TB Transfer).  KVM virtualization, OpenStack.


They're offering a 30-day free trial.


https://www.godaddy.com/pro/cloud-servers


GoDaddy is also offering 1-click cloud apps (powered by Bitnami) on the new platform.


TechCrunch article: http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/21/godaddy-debuts-aws-style-servers-and-apps-to-build-test-and-scale-cloud-services/

TechCrunch: It’s important to note that while these features are “Amazon-style”, GoDaddy believes it’s filling a niche that AWS is not actually serving that well right now: smaller businesses that need cloud services that complement a wider business that may not be in the cloud."

GoDaddy has 14 million small business customers so they have a sizable existing customer base to market this new cloud service to.

 

[DomainBop]

Currently available DCs: Phoenix, AZ and Ashburn, VA .  Coming soon: Singapore and Amsterdam


OS choices ArchLinux, CentOS (6.7, 7.2), CoreOS, Debian (7,8), Fedora 23, FreeBSD 10.2, and Ubuntu 14.04


Obligatory bench.sh (Ashburn, VA location):

System Info
-----------
Processor    : Intel Xeon E312xx (Sandy Bridge)
CPU Cores    : 1
Frequency    : 2399.998 MHz
Memory        : 494 MB
Swap        : 512 MB
Uptime        : 12 min,


OS        : Debian GNU/Linux 8
Arch        : x86_64 (64 Bit)
Kernel        : 3.16.0-4-amd64
Hostname    : xxxxxx



Speedtest (IPv4 only)
---------------------
Your public IPv4 is xxxx


Location        Provider    Speed
CDN            Cachefly    100MB/s


Atlanta, GA, US        Coloat        76.4MB/s 
Dallas, TX, US        Softlayer    48.9MB/s 
Seattle, WA, US        Softlayer    5.73MB/s 
San Jose, CA, US    Softlayer    25.9MB/s 
Washington, DC, US    Softlayer     73.9MB/s 


Tokyo, Japan        Linode        14.8MB/s 
Singapore         Softlayer    2.30MB/s 


Rotterdam, Netherlands    id3.net        12.1MB/s
Haarlem, Netherlands    Leaseweb    3.84MB/s 



Disk Speed
----------
I/O (1st run)    : 853 MB/s
I/O (2nd run)    : 816 MB/s
I/O (3rd run)    : 942 MB/s
Average I/O    : 870.333 MB/s

Control Panel notes:


Backups are automated and done every few days


Standard cloud panel management features: SSH keys, snapshots


Private Network:  1 private non-public  IP address


Console


API (I haven't explored it yet but https://cloud.godaddy.com/docs )


Negatives:


No firewall management/rules


No IPv6


No ISO uploads


No object storage (something which most other OpenStack providers offer)


No extra storage volumes


Setting rDNS for an IP seems to only be possible if the domain is registered through the same GoDaddy account and uses GoDaddy DNS.


It's OpenStack but dumbed down for the average GD target customer so many of the features you'd expect with other providers are unavailable


--------------


note: the free 30 day trial is apparently for 1 server only.  Additional servers are being billed standard rates.


Verdict: platform will appeal to many of those 14 million existing GoDaddy small business owners who are mostly tech clueless and have outgrown GoDaddy's shared hosting.  There probably won't be many existing AWS customers (or AWS wannabe clone DO and Vultr customers) or people using OpenStack with other providers switching to GD's platform.

 

[HN-Matt]

GoDaddy has launched an hourly billing cloud platform targeted to developers to compete with AWS, DO, et al.  Pricing and plans are similar to Digital Ocean (20 GB, No more than $5.00 /month ($0.0074 /hour)

Untrue in the Canadian version:





$7.99 CAD = $6.12 USD at this juncture.

The '14 million small business customers' is definitely a lie too (comedic, at least), but it's a @DomainBop post so yeah, can't really expect much when it comes to numbers. I mean, really, imagine a universe where 'Godaddy' had more than even 100,000 'small business customers'. The suggestion is laughably absurd. I'm pretty sure such a scenario goes against all known cybernetic variables/outcomes, at least in terms of a cosmology that had not yet been overrun by

 

[DomainBop]

The '14 million small business customers' is definitely a lie too (comedic, at least), but it's a @DomainBop post so yeah, can't really expect much when it comes to numbers. I mean, really, imagine a universe where 'Godaddy' had more than even 100,000 'small business customers'. The suggestion is laughably absurd. I'm pretty sure such a scenario goes against all known cybernetic variables/outcomes, at least in terms of a cosmology that had not yet been overrun by

The 14 million figure came from the TechCrunch article I linked to:

GoDaddy, the web hosting and domain registration company that went public last year, is adding new cloud services to grow the revenues it makes from the 14 million small businesses that make up the majority of its customer base.

TechCrunch got the numbers from GoDaddy's latest 10-K filing with the SEC (i.e. their annual report for 2015) and rounded up slightly (GD listed 13.8 million in their latest filings and said its number of customers increased by 1.1 million in 2015)


GD operates in 37 countries, so the 14 million claimed is just a small portion of the total number of small businesses in the world (the SBA estimated in 2012 there are 28 million small businesses in the US and the ILO estimated there are 200 million self-employed outside the US).


The number of small businesses claimed isn't that hard to believe when you consider that the legion of clowns who rent a couple of cheap servers from OVH/CC and then post offers on forums without knowing their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to either servers or business are counted by the government as "businesses". 


Quote from GD's 10-k filing:

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there were approximately 28 million small businesses in 2012 
. Based on data from the 2012 U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Small Business Administration, over  85% of small businesses have fewer than five employees and approximately 23 million , or over 75% of, small businesses were non-employer firms. Furthermore, according to the International Labor Organization Statistics Database there were more than 200 million  people outside the United States identified as self-employed in 2012 

 

 

[fm7]

From GD's home page:





Although not 100% SMBs, 13+ million customers to cross-sell and upsell

 

[HN-Matt]

Yeah man, precisely 14 million of the 13+ million happy customers are small business customers, duh.

Also lol re: 62 million domains (i.e. precisely the current age of Hulk Hogan divided by one million).

 

[drmike]

14 million is all customers and that's across all products and likely customers who ever have signed up.  Meaning I am pretty sure they are siloing data in a big ugly heap.  Hopefully not in their billing and related on public site waiting to be hacked.


Easy to have big numbers when that old, promoing crazy over the years and building brand awareness with normal folks (instead of industry know-better nerds).

 

[drmike]

Also lol re: 62 million domains (i.e. precisely the current age of Hulk Hogan divided by one million).

But less than half of that Hogan smack down award in dollars on Gawker.    Some $125+ million.

 

[fm7]

14 million is all customers and that's across all products and likely customers who ever have signed up.

Not all customers as GD is counting just happy customers.

 

[DomainBop]

Also lol re: 62 million domains 

According to Verisign there were 299 million active domain names registered globally at the end of Q3 2015 and they state GoDaddy accounts for about 20% of those registrations...20% of 299 is in the range of the 62 million domains under management that GoDaddy listed in its Q4 SEC filings.