LES max offer price limit change?

bikegremlin

When you die, you don't know you're dead, and you don't suffer.
The others suffer.
It's the same when you're stupid.

Follow me for more promotion speech ideas.

...Wait... that was for Linkedin... now where are my notes?!

Anyway, I've been checking out shared, and reseller hosting offers over the past few months. Not an expert in VPS-s, so take this all with a grain of salt - thinking out loud.

There is worldwide inflation. The current LES price limits seem to put many decent-quality, affordable offers out of reach. To double-check that, I took a look at what the current LET limits are. They're roughly 50% higher than LES.

Would it make sense to literally double our current limits?

A practical example:
I could see Veerotech and MDDHosting offering something for 2x the current LES limit prices.
And I'd consider that beneficial to both LES members and the providers.

Those are just two companies I've had a good experience with (short time still for MDDHosting though, but Veerotech's been very solid for well over a year I've used the service).
And I'd be happy to bother them to offer a good deal on LES (and wouldn't be too surprised if they agreed, nor too surprised if they ghosted me for that matter ).

Good experience (for providers and members) could see offers and (hopefully, high-quality) members rolling in. Helping LES grow.

My concerns:
Wouldn't like to see another WHT, nor any LET-like drama (we've got those places for such thrills).

What do you think?

LES offer limits

LET offer limits

bikegremlin

LES offer limits

LET offer limits

MichaelCee

Don't really know about a general increase but I'd be happy to see shared hosts posting up to $5/m offers to match the email rules. In my personal case they are exactly the same thing, except the one with the higher limit has "less" (more focused) functionalities.

bikegremlin

@MichaelCee said:
Don't really know about a general increase but I'd be happy to see shared hosts posting up to $5/m offers to match the email rules. In my personal case they are exactly the same thing, except the one with the higher limit has "less" (more focused) functionalities.

Your email price limit comment in the thread about the new service/offer is one of the things that got me thinking (not that I'm exceptionally good at it ).

deank

Just make sure to tip your grimreaper.

Tell it that you've seen me, and he will be kinder to your soul.

bikegremlin

@deank said:

and he will be kinder to your soul.

That would beat the point of all my life choices to a great degree.

havoc

Maybe up it by like a buck or two. Inflation and all that

PureVoltage

Not being so low priced for everything I say yay. However, it really depends.

webcraft

Because you mentioned the OGF so many times and this place shouldn't be one that's reacting to the OGF, I think it'd be good to not adopt to their behavior in any form.

vyas

As long as the “$” sign is clearly mentioned to refer to US $, we should be good for now.

Otherwise Zimbaabwe dollars 7 is a perfectly fair pricing limit. Or CAD or SGD or HKD even AUD

ReliableSite_Radic

Our best deals are over the limit. Under the current prices, it's the same 10 generation old garbage that most consider loss leaders.

The limits in general are dumb, there are high end configurations that can be an amazing deal. You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

Mason

@ReliableSite_Radic said:
You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

I mean... that's the entire point of LE*. Otherwise we'd just be WebHostingSpirit instead of LowEndSpirit

cybertech

slight increases in line with inflation i can agree with, OTOH my (low) income remains pretty much the same, hence LE*

Neoon

@ReliableSite_Radic said:
Our best deals are over the limit. Under the current prices, it's the same 10 generation old garbage that most consider loss leaders.

The limits in general are dumb, there are high end configurations that can be an amazing deal. You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

Sir, Quadranet still sells Core2Quad dedis.

bikegremlin

@cybertech said:
slight increases in line with inflation i can agree with, OTOH my (low) income remains pretty much the same, hence LE*

Incomes didn’t rise over the past few years for most folks in my country.

People usually look for a bike at up to €200.

And I try to recommend the best for the given budget (often used / 2nd hand).

However, the quality at that budget has drastically decreased since before “the flu.”

It is tough.

cybertech

@bikegremlin said:

@cybertech said:
slight increases in line with inflation i can agree with, OTOH my (low) income remains pretty much the same, hence LE*

Incomes didn’t rise over the past few years for most folks in my country.

People usually look for a bike at up to €200.

And I try to recommend the best for the given budget (often used / 2nd hand).

However, the quality at that budget has drastically decreased since before “the flu.”

It is tough.

stagflation has found its way into many countries and it's real tough for everybody. those who joined in "the great resignation" are gonna suffer real soon...

Advin

Honestly, I feel like LES should allow providers to post offers for ranges of products which might include something that isn't in the price range but must include something that is within the price range.

For example, let's say we had the following plans (this is just an example):
1GB for $2/month
2GB for $4/month
3GB for $6/month
4GB for $8/month
5GB for $10/month
etc

Under the existing LES rules, I believe we would only be allowed to advertise 1GB, 2GB, 3GB plans on LES. However, it would probably be beneficial to us to also advertise the bigger plans along with the smaller plans for those who require more resources (so making an offer thread & advertising 1GB, 2GB, 3GB but also advertising 4GB, 5GB, etc since it's part of the same lineup/range of products).

But yes, the current limits are quite limiting for us since we generally specialize in bulk resources for cheap. For example, our recent LES Exclusive thread generated some major interest from the community but it had to be LES exclusive since it doesn't fall into the pricing limits for the normal offers.

Nyr

This is "Low End Spirit" and as such I will go with the conservative view of doing more with less, saying that $7 is fair for a low end VPS.

Also, I see no need to imitate what other places are doing in this regard.

ralf

@Advin said:
Honestly, I feel like LES should allow providers to post offers for ranges of products which might include something that isn't in the price range but must include something that is within the price range.

Most providers seem to solve this by highlighting the ones in the price limit but having a link to all their offers.

I think if the pricing barrier increased much, a lot of providers would focus on their best offering under the limit, which would overall increase the value of the offering, but push out the real low-end stuff and soon there'd be no place for that any more.

Personally, I appreciate the real low-end deals, and I've probably got about 10 different low-end packages mostly so I can test out different processors for my use case. I do also keep an eye out on bigger VPS or dedi offerings, because at some point soon I hope I'll need to expand, and want to have an idea of what's available. It's also a good way to check out on a small scale things like their networking and uptime, without investing too much if they turn out to have problems.

A counter argument is that there seem to be a lot of providers lurking around who never post offers (presumably they're over the thresholds) who only pop up in response to request threads on LET where there's no limit. Maybe some of them are just avoiding the fee, but I also suspect that many of them are targeting mid-end now.

bikegremlin

@webcraft said:
Because you mentioned the OGF so many times and this place shouldn't be one that's reacting to the OGF, I think it'd be good to not adopt to their behavior in any form.

That's a bit black-and-white point of view.
I'm sure they ban (at least some) spammers and trolls - should we stop doing so?

My reference to their price limit was in terms of "another budget / low-end forum" comparison.
Likewise, my suggestion is to go even higher, not to copy them.
And, again - primarily from the shard/reseller hosting offers point of view (as a customer at that).
I can't really tell if the VPS offer limit is high enough.

Having said that - setting the bar too high would beat the point of LES - and I don't claim my opinion is the right one. It's just an opinion, from my point of view.

Related to what @ralf wrote above - it is a strategic decision, not to be taken lightly, for the reasons nicely explained in his post (nothing to add there).

vyas

Many input costs will come down in the coming months thanks to the upcoming recession, while one or more of the elements (electricity and insurance/ Payment processor fees?? for e.g.) will likely stay high.

• Labour
• Hardware (new and offloading of existing inventory)

At the end of the day, the market demand v/s supply dynamics will kick in: and BFCM/ Christmas Sales will be a good indicator.

Jan/ Feb might be a good time to revive this discussion IMO

ReliableSite_Radic

@Mason said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:
You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

I mean... that's the entire point of LE*. Otherwise we'd just be WebHostingSpirit instead of LowEndSpirit

I disagree here. These old configurations offer a terrible $/performance ratio and don't have much lower to go. It's below colo cost, and are treated as nothing more than a loss leader to convert to higher paying servers.

For example, I can get you a bare bones E3 (8G RAM, HDD or SSD) in the high $20 range, or a fully loaded Ryzen 5600X (128G RAM, 1T PCIe 4.0 NVMe) in the high $80s range. The E3 in this case is a terrible deal.

Plenty of providers don't want to deal in the $20 - $30 range, there's 0 profit there, but they can offer aggressive deals in the profitable range. As software, data center space, and hardware continues to increase in price, this will be the ongoing trend and will eventually kill off or force those super low end providers to deadpool.

So the choice really is here, have the same providers peddling the same hardware for years and years serving a super niche audience, or remove the limits and figure out a way to really create a marketplace where you can get uber aggressive deals without becoming WHT.

bikegremlin

@ReliableSite_Radic said:

@Mason said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:
You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

I mean... that's the entire point of LE*. Otherwise we'd just be WebHostingSpirit instead of LowEndSpirit

I disagree here. These old configurations offer a terrible $/performance ratio and don't have much lower to go. It's below colo cost, and are treated as nothing more than a loss leader to convert to higher paying servers.

For example, I can get you a bare bones E3 (8G RAM, HDD or SSD) in the high $20 range, or a fully loaded Ryzen 5600X (128G RAM, 1T PCIe 4.0 NVMe) in the high $80s range. The E3 in this case is a terrible deal.

Plenty of providers don't want to deal in the $20 - $30 range, there's 0 profit there, but they can offer aggressive deals in the profitable range. As software, data center space, and hardware continues to increase in price, this will be the ongoing trend and will eventually kill off or force those super low end providers to deadpool.

So the choice really is here, have the same providers peddling the same hardware for years and years serving a super niche audience, or remove the limits and figure out a way to really create a marketplace where you can get uber aggressive deals without becoming WHT.

Or something in between the two extremes - by adjusting the max. limits, without removing them?

corbpie

Maybe set one day a week where there is no limit. I do agree that deals can be had outside the limits however it also opens it up to normal priced posts.

vyas

@corbpie said:
Maybe set one day a week where there is no limit. I do agree that deals can be had outside the limits however it also opens it up to normal priced posts.

Or first Friday of the month or something

LES exclusive will be a plus

tetech

I did not understand the original post, but I voted.

cybertech

@corbpie said:
Maybe set one day a week where there is no limit. I do agree that deals can be had outside the limits however it also opens it up to normal priced posts.

sounds good actually, LESaturday or something

ReliableSite_Radic

@bikegremlin said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:

@Mason said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:
You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

I mean... that's the entire point of LE*. Otherwise we'd just be WebHostingSpirit instead of LowEndSpirit

I disagree here. These old configurations offer a terrible $/performance ratio and don't have much lower to go. It's below colo cost, and are treated as nothing more than a loss leader to convert to higher paying servers.

For example, I can get you a bare bones E3 (8G RAM, HDD or SSD) in the high $20 range, or a fully loaded Ryzen 5600X (128G RAM, 1T PCIe 4.0 NVMe) in the high $80s range. The E3 in this case is a terrible deal.

Plenty of providers don't want to deal in the $20 - $30 range, there's 0 profit there, but they can offer aggressive deals in the profitable range. As software, data center space, and hardware continues to increase in price, this will be the ongoing trend and will eventually kill off or force those super low end providers to deadpool.

So the choice really is here, have the same providers peddling the same hardware for years and years serving a super niche audience, or remove the limits and figure out a way to really create a marketplace where you can get uber aggressive deals without becoming WHT.

Or something in between the two extremes - by adjusting the max. limits, without removing them?

Maybe, I think the issue is there's not much of a disparity between LES and LET.

Mason

@ReliableSite_Radic said:

@bikegremlin said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:

@Mason said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:
You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

I mean... that's the entire point of LE*. Otherwise we'd just be WebHostingSpirit instead of LowEndSpirit

I disagree here. These old configurations offer a terrible $/performance ratio and don't have much lower to go. It's below colo cost, and are treated as nothing more than a loss leader to convert to higher paying servers.

For example, I can get you a bare bones E3 (8G RAM, HDD or SSD) in the high $20 range, or a fully loaded Ryzen 5600X (128G RAM, 1T PCIe 4.0 NVMe) in the high $80s range. The E3 in this case is a terrible deal.

Plenty of providers don't want to deal in the $20 - $30 range, there's 0 profit there, but they can offer aggressive deals in the profitable range. As software, data center space, and hardware continues to increase in price, this will be the ongoing trend and will eventually kill off or force those super low end providers to deadpool.

So the choice really is here, have the same providers peddling the same hardware for years and years serving a super niche audience, or remove the limits and figure out a way to really create a marketplace where you can get uber aggressive deals without becoming WHT.

Or something in between the two extremes - by adjusting the max. limits, without removing them?

Maybe, I think the issue is there's not much of a disparity between LES and LET.

That is very intentional. The current iteration of LES was a fork or clone or whatever you want to call it of LET. Designed to be very similar with essentially the same rules, same forum software, same target audience, but without all the ColoCrossing/Biloh-endorsed scams and cash grabs.

I get that opening the door to higher priced offers really gives more bang for the buck and the resources per $ ratio increases, but doing so would go against the "doing more with less" philosophy that is ingrained in this place. And I can't really see how we could ever raise the price limits substantially or remove them entirely without becoming WHT where there's just way too much fluff and overpriced garbage to sort through.

vyas

@Mason said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:

@bikegremlin said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:

@Mason said:

@ReliableSite_Radic said:
You're doing nothing but limiting target audiences with artificial limits.

I mean... that's the entire point of LE*. Otherwise we'd just be WebHostingSpirit instead of LowEndSpirit

I disagree here. These old configurations offer a terrible $/performance ratio and don't have much lower to go. It's below colo cost, and are treated as nothing more than a loss leader to convert to higher paying servers.

For example, I can get you a bare bones E3 (8G RAM, HDD or SSD) in the high $20 range, or a fully loaded Ryzen 5600X (128G RAM, 1T PCIe 4.0 NVMe) in the high $80s range. The E3 in this case is a terrible deal.

Plenty of providers don't want to deal in the $20 - $30 range, there's 0 profit there, but they can offer aggressive deals in the profitable range. As software, data center space, and hardware continues to increase in price, this will be the ongoing trend and will eventually kill off or force those super low end providers to deadpool.

So the choice really is here, have the same providers peddling the same hardware for years and years serving a super niche audience, or remove the limits and figure out a way to really create a marketplace where you can get uber aggressive deals without becoming WHT.

Or something in between the two extremes - by adjusting the max. limits, without removing them?

Maybe, I think the issue is there's not much of a disparity between LES and LET.

That is very intentional. The current iteration of LES was a fork or clone or whatever you want to call it of LET. Designed to be very similar with essentially the same rules, same forum software, same target audience, but without all the ColoCrossing/Biloh-endorsed scams and cash grabs.

I get that opening the door to higher priced offers really gives more bang for the buck and the resources per $ ratio increases, but doing so would go against the "doing more with less" philosophy that is ingrained in this place. And I can't really see how we could ever raise the price limits substantially or remove them entirely without becoming WHT where there's just way too much fluff and overpriced garbage to sort through.

But... but I **want ** overpriced low spec deals from Name your favourite shitty overpriced provider here

yoursunny

$7/month is $84/year.
It's already too much.

I have Ryzen or Xeon Gold + 1GB RAM + ≥10GB NVMe for $8.40/year in Dallas and €12/year in Munich and $16/year in Seattle and $20/year in Singapore.
I expect new offers to match these prices.

Shared hosting and dedicated server may be increased to $1000/month.
I don't use them anyway.