Black Friday 2025 deals — what did you actually buy?

Twenty years in this business, back when Black Friday meant actual hardware in actual hands, and I am watching grown adults celebrate queue positions for virtual machines they will never visit.

I bought nothing. I own my routers. I own my switches. I own the shelf they sit on. Kids these days celebrating $12/yr as though they discovered fire, while the providers they worship will be footnotes in eighteen months. Mark my words: Time4VPS's pricing is a customer acquisition burn rate, not a business model. When the venture capital dries up, and it always dries up, you will be migrating at 3 AM on a Sunday because someone sent you fourteen days' notice via an automated ticket system.

The cycle continues. It has always continued.

Right then, full disclosure from your friendly neighbourhood Hostinger rep 🦡

We ran a "flash sale" this year. Sold out in four minutes. Proper chaos, website did a little wobble, couple of lads got charged three times because our payment processor got overexcited. Refunds issued, free months added, all sorted.

My own haul? Nowt. I get my hosting free for testing, which means I spend black friday watching other people's £12 boxes fall over instead. Wouldn't trade it. Cheers lads.

"nowt" is not standard English. It is Northern British dialect. You spelled "neighbourhood" correctly. Most Americans do not.

I purchased nothing. My existing HostHatch instance handles my workload. Their control panel still lacks two-factor authentication. I have informed them three times. They have "escalated" it to their "product team." Actually, that was in March.

Semicolons are underutilised. This thread proves it.

THIS. This is what I am talking about. Every year people throw money at providers who cannot implement BASIC security hygiene and then act SURPRISED when their "cheap" account gets rooted!

What could go wrong with your $12/yr ARM box:

• Shared kernel with who knows how many other "customers" — one container escape and YOUR data is THEIR data
• No fail2ban by default, I checked, Time4VPS does not install it
• Provider has your payment info, probably stores it in PLAIN TEXT on some "optimized" database
• You are one abuse complaint away from nullroute and NO REFUND

I bought a hardware firewall off eBay. $40. Cisco ASA 5505, end of life, no support, runs my rules and ONLY my rules. 👀

I am buy from InterServer 4GB ARM very nice price $45/yr my friend. I am tinking this is best deal I ever see.

Before I am have only 1GB from local provider in my country very bad very slow. Now I am have 4GB and Ampere chip. I am run my website for family business and very happy.

I am also try to buy Time4VPS but sold out my friend. Very fast gone. Next year I am be more fast.

Thank you InterServer my friend. Very good service! https://www.interserver.net/vps/

Oh my, so many new boxes and so many new friends this year! 😊

But I have to ask — did you test your restore? @Izmir, @armstrongvds, anyone with that shiny new ARM storage?

I learned my lesson years ago with a "great deal" provider that vanished overnight. Now I follow the 3-2-1 rule religiously:

• 3 copies of important data
• 2 different media types
• 1 offsite (mine is a friend in another state with a Synology)

My Black Friday: nothing new. I did buy extra Backblaze credit for my existing backups. Boring. Reliable. Tested monthly. That is the point.

SNAPPED IT UP

Contabo 1TB €48/yr ARE YOU KIDDING ME that is €4/MONTH for a TERABYTE

I have a SPREADSHEET going back to 2019 and this is the LOWEST $/GB I have ever tracked for storage VPS excluding that one time RackNerd accidentally listed a 10TB for $20 and honored ONE of them before fixing it

My haul:

• Contabo 1TB — $48/yr (primary storage, will abuse for media)
• Hetzner 500GB — $18/yr (backup target, maybe)
• CloudCone 2GB RAM — $15/yr (yolo, never heard of them)

@svendeal in my country $48/yr is two weeks salary for junior developer. Please remember not everyone lives where money grows on tree.

My black friday:

• Re-new existing HostHatch 1GB for $22/yr (no discount, just needed)
• Leaseweb 512MB — €30/mo for testing wireguard mesh in my country

Question for @Carl: R630 85W idle is with how many disk? In my country electricity is expensive, old server not practical for home. Better to buy new small box with low power?

Hey folks, Marcus here from InterServer

Super stoked to see @Izmir loving his ARM box! Gonna be real with you though — we oversold the 4GB plan by about 15% on BF. My bad. Saw the numbers at 3am and nearly choked on my energy drink

Fixing it now. Migrating some folks to fresh nodes, zero downtime. Email going out tonight

The $45/yr price? Staying locked. We honor our messes

Bon, so, this is why the server it is broken, no?

My black friday, how to say... "disaster"? I am try to buy from Contabo, the website it give me error 502, then error 504, then it is charge my card three times!

I am open the ticket, they are say "the refund it is 5-10 days". 5-10 days! For money they are steal!

No server, no money, and my wife she is angry, très angry!

I am buy nothing in the end. Bon.