Budget dedicated price increases — the slow squeeze is real

Teh whole dedi market is for suckers now im sorry

Vps with 4core 8gb 200gb nvme for $6.99 at nodeharbor or whatever
Dedicated e3 with 16gb and rusty spinners for $49
Do teh math

I recieve maybe 3 emails a week about "price adjustment" and I just move
Alot of work? Definately. But im not paying someones ip mortgage

My current cheapest live box: $8.50/year NAT with 256mb. Runs wireguard and a static site. Beats $49

Practical assessment of migration options from legacy dedicated:

• Stay and negotiate. Target: 15-25% reduction or loyalty rate qualification. Success rate approximately 40% based on my past 12 tickets across 4 providers.
• Downgrade within same provider. KVM VPS 4 vCPU/8GB/200GB NVMe at $7-9 often outperforms E3 v5 for web workloads. Verify: CPU passmark, disk fio 4k random read should exceed 300MB/s.
• Colocate owned hardware. Break-even at 18-24 months for R630/R730 class. Requirements: stable power pricing agreement, remote hands SLA under 4 hours, spare parts inventory (PSU, RAID battery, NIC).
• Multi-VPS architecture. Database on one, app on second, static assets on third. Complexity cost: 3-5 hours initial setup, ongoing orchestration overhead.

Recommendation: Option 2 for most, Option 3 only if you enjoy hardware logistics. Document everything before migration. I mainta

$15 a month and I thought I was living large. They don't make them like that anymore, and I don't just mean the hardware. The whole attitude was different. You got a server, you ran Debian Lenny on it, you compiled nginx from source because packages were ancient, and you kept that box for four years because moving meant reconfiguring everything by hand. No ansible, no terraform, no "infrastructure as code" except a text file called "server_stuff.txt" that lived in your home directory. The price went up to $17 in 2011 and I remember being actually angry about it. Now I read Harold's $35 to $49 and I think, well, that's inflation, that's progress, that's the world. But some part of me still misses the Atom 330. It was terrible and it was mine.

Simple is better, but
The $49 box was never the problem
Wanting it to stay $49 forever was

But how much RAM tho

Seriously my home box is 512GB DDR4 and I'm still swapping on chrome tabs

These budget dedis with 16GB are basically raspberry pis with extra steps. My current project needs 128GB minimum just to compile without OOM killer showing up

If you're running actual workloads the price per GB RAM is what matters and dedicated still wins at scale. But for your "fun little project" sure, whatever

The LoyaltyRate is someoneelsesProblem until it isnt[1]

I opened three tickets last month at three different Providers and got three different answers: one grandfathered me at 2019 pricing[2], one offered a tenpercent discount with twelvemonth lockin, one literally told me to go read someoneelsesTermsOfService

The whole market has become a RentSeeking operation where your Infrastructure cost is now secondary to their IPPortfolio appreciation[3]

[1] footnote one: this is not investment advice
[2] footnote two: RackNerd, specifically, though your mileage may vary
[3] footnote three: see ARIN 2024 transfer report, page 47, the chart that made me cry

Negotiation is a skill. Not a guarantee. Providers hold all cards now. The IP block is the product. Compute is just packaging. I've seen contracts where the IPv4 lease is 60% of line item. Remove it. Watch the "server" cost drop to nothing. But then you need NAT. Or IPv6. Or both. Neither works for legacy apps. The squeeze isn't slow anymore. It's structural;

Lol I know that cutoff, been there

My fun little project this month: 3 NAT VPS from Hostinger + WireGuard mesh = pseudo-dedicated for $24/year total

It actually works

# /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf on "node-a"
[Interface]
PrivateKey = <redacted>
Address = 10.200.200.1/24
ListenPort = 51820

[Peer]
PublicKey = <node-b-pubkey>
AllowedIPs = 10.200.200.2/32
Endpoint = 203.0.113.44:51820
PersistentKeepalive = 25

Not for production obviously but my plex + arr stack doesn't know the difference

Dancore here 2day 4ever

Larryjeong gets it vps gang rise up

I had a dedi at InterServer for 3years $35 then $49 then $69 then they wanted $89 lol no

Switched to 2day to OVHcloud kvm with 8gb and 4tb storage for €8.50 and honestly cant tell difference for my use case https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/vps/

The whole ip thing is a scam anyway I run everything behind cloudflare who needs ipv4 in 2026

Exactly!

I just checked my latest invoice from Contabo! €127 for a single /24! Thats more than the server itself! No lowercase needed for this outrage!

Switched to HostHatch last month! They still include a /29! Free! Well not free but bundled! Same thing!

My advice: burn the dedis! Go colocate! Own the hardware! Own the IPs! Wait no thats worse! Forget I said anything!