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Are Black Friday deals actually worse than summer sales?

Deals & Offers by srelet 26 replies 3.1K views
srelet

Member OP

#1

I maintain infrastructure cost spreadsheets with the obsessive energy of someone who has done too many blameless postmortems. Here is three years of personal data.

2023:
- July: Time4VPS 2GB KVM €18/year
- Black Friday: Same plan, "50% off" at $24/year (base price inflated to $48)

2024:
- July: RackNerd 4GB VPS $29/year
- Black Friday: "doorbuster" 2GB plan at $22/year (worse specs, marketed harder)

2025:
- July: Hostinger 1GB at $12/year (I needed something small)
- Black Friday preview: Same plan "locked at $15/year"

Pattern: July pricing is transparent. No countdown timers. No "only 50 left" fake scarcity. The error budget for my trust in BF marketing is exhausted.

I have receipts. All from example.com promo pages, archived.

Transparency: I have no affiliate links. I gain nothing from this.

tallinnying

Member

Night Shift

10 #2

Anyway I scraped CloudCone pricing daily in 2024 with a script running at 3am because idk why I do this

Python
# cron job from my insomnia era
Import requests, json, datetime
#... you dont want the rest

July baseline: $16
Bf "sale": $19 with "free" domain that auto-renewed at $15
The domain was a.store nobody wanted

Idk why I do this

builds at 3AM, sleeps at noon
MA

Member

#3

I run everything on bare metal at home. No containers, no cloud, no deals. systemd handles my services. Þe old ways are best. Þese "sales" are þe real containers: they package your money and isolate it from your wallet.

WH

Member

#4

I very cheap hos in july 2024 ạ the same hos very expensive in november ạ black friday is trick for people not know ạ my friend buy in july always ạ he teach me this ạ the bf tax is real very much ạ

StuSpock

Member

NTP fundamentalist

#5

Sweet as mate, been telling people this for years? Yeah nah the bf hype is all marketing mate. Chur to @srelet for the actual numbers though? I got a KnownHost box in july 2022, $14/year, still running sweet as. Their bf deal that year was $18 for worse specs mate. Rising prices written as deals? Classic.

CR

Member

#6

What spec was the Hostinger plan in July 2025

kasiaxus

Member

#7

What happened to Hostinger's price in july 2025? Cut off mid-word

POLISH SERVERS. LOUD FANS. GOOD PRICE.
haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

#8

Same pattern with KnownHost in 2022. Marketing beats math every time.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
srelet

Member OP

#9

Cut off because I have character limits too apparently. Hostinger July 2025 was 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 20GB SSD, 1TB bandwidth at $12/year. The "Black Friday preview" email last week: same spec, $15/year, "best price of the year." I replied to their marketing with a screenshot from July. No response yet.

kasiaxus

Member

#10
srelet said:
I replied to their marketing with a screenshot from July. No response yet.

This is beautiful. I do same with Hetzner once, they send "summer sale" for cloud VPS, I send them January invoice for 20% less. They answer with template about "dynamic market conditions." In Germany this is very dynamic, yes.

POLISH SERVERS. LOUD FANS. GOOD PRICE.

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