This is the real story everyone sleeps on. Akamai bought them, prices stayed flat so far, but for how long? I am watching.
Also: ARM at Vultr, the retention was not automatic. I had to mention I was comparing against Oracle Cloud free tier. The support person knew exactly what I meant. Competition is the leverage, not politeness.
Member
This. The Unix philosophy of hosting: every program (provider) should do one thing well, and you should know what the others charge.
I have no renewal story. I run my own hardware in Prague colo. But I watch threads like this to know what to recommend to friends who do not want to learn systemd.
Hetzner auction servers: the price is the price. No intro, no renewal. Like pablo says, boring but honest.
This.
¡Auction! This is the secret I forget! My friend in Buenos Aires he use Hetzner auction, the price is 15 euro for big server, no change never. But the setup fee? ¡Sometimes 50 euro! You must calculate this.
KnownHost has no auction. Only the price they say. This is why I call it trap, but also I am lazy and the managed part is... manage? I do not want to manage. My homelab already has homelab.
Member
Yes, this! Hetzner auction has setup fees that change. I administrate servers for my association in Lyon. We got a server, one month later the same server had zero setup fee. We paid 49.90 for nothing. I contacted, they said "market pricing." No retention possible because there is no rate to retain.
So the methodology needs column: setup fees or hidden once-costs. Not only monthly.
Member OP
Acknowledged. The spreadsheet grows. I will add setup fees and currency conversion at time of transaction.
Current tally:
- Vultr: retention possible, ARM competitive
- Hetzner cloud: retention possible, varies by product
- Hetzner auction: no intro/renewal cycle, setup fees variable
- KnownHost: no retention, managed premium
- DigitalOcean: credits system, no negotiation
- Linode/Akamai: flat pricing
I am still seeking: OVH, AWS lightsail, Google Cloud always-free tier experiences, any others.
-t
Member
20 years and I still learn from threads like this. My contribution:
- Rackspace (yes, still)
- $50/mo managed cloud (ancient plan)
- $73/mo renewal
- retention: offered $58/mo when I threatened to migrate
- contacted: yes
The threat has to be credible. I had a Linode snapshot ready. They smelled it.
Also: "first year then what" threads existed in 2008 on WebHostingTalk. Nothing new under the sun.
How do you make it credible without doing the work? I don't want to snapshot everything just to bluff.
Member
You don't bluff. You actually prepare to leave. The snapshot is useful anyway. If they call you, you leave. If they don't, you stay. Either way you have options.
The real cost is time, not money.
Same here with Vultr but different outcome.
- Vultr
- $5/mo
- $10/mo renewal
- retention: no
- contacted: yes, twice
Maybe I got the wrong support person. Or maybe ARM vs x86 matters for retention. Armstrongvds you got lucky or you got ARM?
