Renewal price shock—my $12→$48 annual saga

Three years with RackNerd. Started 2022 at $12/year for their 1GB plan. 2023 renewal bumped to $24. Fine, inflation whatever. 2024 they "deprecated" the plan and auto-migrated me to their next tier at $36. Just got the 2025 invoice: $48.

Same specs. 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 20GB SSD. Nothing changed but the name and the price.

Tried to downgrade, no options. Tried to cancel, they offered $42 "loyalty discount." Loyalty to what, being squeezed?

Which providers take XMR at decent rates? Looking at OVHcloud but their privacy policy is vague.

Anyone else tracking this trajectory? Feels like classic low-end hosting playbook now.

For what it's worth, the pricing trajectory isn't unusual—customer acquisition cost subsidies expiring is standard SaaS economics. What concerns me more is your deliverability footprint.

If you're hosting any mail on that RackNerd IP, check its reputation before migrating. Hot take: budget hosts rotate IPs through previously burned ranges. I've seen SPF records pointing to entire /24s on blacklists.

Run your current IP through Spamhaus and MultiRBL. If you're considering OVHcloud, their London range had a bad spell in Q1 2024 that still lingers in some filters. Not all low-end hosting is equal for mail.

Add $20/month colo and you're at $240/year with actual hardware.

Your RackNerd "deal":
- 1 vCPU (unknown generation)
- 1GB RAM
- 20GB SSD (unknown endurance, unknown overcommit)

For $48/year you could self-host on something you own. Or grab a GreenCloudVPS storage box—2TB HDD, 4GB RAM, $36/year last I checked. Different use case but the value gap is absurd.