First, let me flash back some years and explain how we have reached this industry with VPS/VDS/Cloud services and what this industry was before virtualized services. Before everyone started using virtualized services, most people were required either to spend a nice chunk of change on their own dedicated server, or use 'shell' accounts. Commercial shell accounts were usually used for program development, higher speed downloading (in the time of dial-up modem, most shells had T1 (1.5Mbps) or faster connections, remote irc (bouncers, irc from terminal, etc), and hosting websites (Think public_html directory reached by host.com/~username). At the time, shells were the "OpenVZ" of today, except you operated without root privileges and used a shared ip address. If you are still asking your self, "what is a shell account?" Well, this is like logging into your vps and adding a user account and selling said user account. In the earlier days of the internet, collecting shell accounts was as trendy as VPS servers have become today. In fact, the first time I used an OpenVZ VPS, I was actually looking for just a shell account and ran into the virtualized services. When I first came to LEB, it was about the time shell account providers started disappearing and these virtualized services were becoming more popular. Still today I like to collect accounts as it has always been a hobby, but instead of just single user accounts, I have come to collect small vps servers from various providers. In this case, and with the case of shell accounts, to me it has always been about a low cost service I can use to test a network in a certain area, or vpn from, or run some type of bouncer when needed. For these types of things, most of the time I do not need more than 64-128mb of ram and only a small amount of resources. So for me, the attractiveness of the large memory options that have been coming out and the whole idea of large amounts of resources for 'less' falls on deaf ears with me as it is all completely overboard for my general use. For me I am more likely to spend the small amount of money on the lowend vps that has enough resources to allow me to do these things, rather than spending upwards of even $7 for the extra resources. So for me, the $7.00 limit was a plus as it allowed me to come by services that fit what I needed without spending a lot of money on it.
However, for others, this may completely different and by being able to get away from the necessity of a low price, I think this will help separate which services are only for the "shell users" like me and the groups which can also provide a higher level of services, more geared towards production use. Some providers that are not quite there yet because they have limited them self to the lowend market, should be able to make it slightly more profitable here and by proxy more stable offers to serious commercial users by not having to follow the $7.00 limitation which is required by LEB/LET. My hope though, is that those who strive to get into the higher end market do not forget about us people who are still looking for true "Low End" services or their 'roots' where they started out in this industry. As long as this doesn't become a place solely for higher end services, eliminating the low end market all together, I can see how not having a price limit can be more viable overall for both the providers and the customers.
TL;DR:
Not having a limit and allowing other types of advertising here besides solely low end VPS can be a good thing, allowing providers to expand and for us to provide a place to find reputable providers for all the separate industries (Shared Hosting, VPS, Dedicated servers, etc). However, I just hope that in allowing this, that the providers do not forget about the 'Low End' users that still exist, that is, the people who do not need all the extra bells and whistles and just wish to have a small reliable server. Though overall it has become a race over at LEB/LET for most resources for the buck, I hope there are still providers out there that can appreciate that some of us from the "shell account" era and the like, really do not need all those extra resources and continue to provide "Low End" options.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
