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What do you use for tracking price history across hosts?

Deals & Offers by dave39 28 replies 4.1K views
dave39

Member OP

#1

So I got this spreadsheet right,,,,, Twelve providers all lined up,,,,, Contabo OVHcloud Vultr Hetzner InterServer Hostinger KnownHost RackNerd GreenCloudVPS HostHatch CloudCone Leaseweb,,,,, Been scraping prices for six weeks now,,,,, The scrap gods demand sacrifice but they give good data in return,,,,, Problem is some of these hosts change prices more often than I change socks,,,,, Anyone got a cleaner way to track history than my janky curl cron jobs,,,,, ~~dave

MA

Member

#2

Right then Dave, twelve hosts and you're scraping us too? Fair play. Your cron jobs probably see our price changes before I do. We just update a JSON file when the boss remembers, no API, no drama.

pablowild

Member

#3

¡¿you know what is very crazy?! I make script for HostHatch and the price change four times in one day,,,,, Jajaja I think this is joke but no,,,,, Then I check with VPN from Madrid and price is different,,,,, Jajaja again but is not funny,,,,, They use location for price,,,,, I delete my long post about ethics and repost shorter: this is very bad practice

SP

Member

#4

Network okay. Location-based pricing worse. Perkele. Wrote scraper. Shared in thread. Use or do not use. No opinion given.

quinnbizz

Member

#5

I have used a mix of PriceAPI and custom scrapers, IMO the hosted solutions are not worth the cost for personal tracking. YMMV depending on scale. For the location issue @pablowild found — that is worth documenting carefully, but take it with a grain of salt until replicated across multiple days and IP ranges. I would not accuse without solid data.

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CR

Member

#6

Contabo changes prices that fast? I'd need to see proof

dave39

Member OP

#7
creek29 said:
Contabo changes prices that fast?

Their Storage VPS line,,,,, The 400GB and 800GB ones specifically,,,,, Nuremberg vs St. Louis pricing drifts even without currency move,,,,, I have it in my sheet if you want I can paste later,,,,, Right now I am more interested in if anyone has a tool that handles this without me babysitting cron on a Pi in my basement

Bruno22

Member

7 #8
pablowild said:
They use location for price

I tested this from SP with VPN to US East and US West. HostHatch showed same USD price both ways for their standard KVM plans. Maybe it is specific plan or specific time? I would not generalize without more data. But if true, this is annoying for comparison sites.

ping so high I wave back
pablowild

Member

8 #9
Bruno22 said:
I would not generalize

Jajaja I am not generalize I am report what I see,,,,, Four times in one day from Buenos Aires IP,,,,, Then Madrid VPN stable price,,,,, This is not theory this is my log file,,,,, Maybe they fix now or maybe only some plan,,,,, But you cannot say I generalize when I give specific data

quinnbizz

Member

#10
pablowild said:
Four times in one day

That frequency is the part I find hard to explain by A/B testing or inventory adjustment. Could be a buggy CMS cache. Have you checked if the HTML itself changes or if it is just displayed price? Worth looking at raw response before render.

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