ZAP-Hosting Lifetime Servers - Discussion, Updates

root · July 25

@webhostingservers said:
I've vps from Zap
how about their web hosting terms? anything specific about termination?

The trick with Zap is the termination for not logging in. You have to login into the client area and visit your lifetime service every 3 months; if not, the service will get disabled. This is not a normal lifetime service, in a sense that you pay, setup your service, and forget about it, while it is executing its services; you are not allowed to forget about it, instead you must login into Zap website and check your service page.

Personally I do not have any lifetime service from them. In general I love any automation, even automatic payments, because they allow me to forget and enjoy life while the configured services run. I can't see a way to automate this with Zap, so it is not a lifetime in my humble opinion, because it is paid with extra time and to-do calendars, besides money.

Ympker · July 25

@webhostingservers said:
I've vps from Zap
how about their web hosting terms? anything specific about termination?

Same inactivity rule as for other lifetime products. Open product in dashboard every x days (60, I think). But they also send reminders per email.

@root said:

@webhostingservers said:
I've vps from Zap
how about their web hosting terms? anything specific about termination?

The trick with Zap is the termination for not logging in. You have to login into the client area and visit your lifetime service every 3 months; if not, the service will get disabled. This is not a normal lifetime service, in a sense that you pay, setup your service, and forget about it, while it is executing its services; you are not allowed to forget about it, instead you must login into Zap website and check your service page.

Personally I do not have any lifetime service from them. In general I love any automation, even automatic payments, because they allow me to forget and enjoy life while the configured services run. I can't see a way to automate this with Zap, so it is not a lifetime in my humble opinion, because it is paid with extra time and to-do calendars, besides money.

To be fair, they are sending email reminders, and I just have a Google Calender event set to recurring to remind me every 60ish days to open all my products in the dashboard once. Doesn't take me long. The email reminder they send to you even includes a direct link to the product you need to open in dashboard iirc. Even if your product gets deactivated you have 4 weeks to contact them to re-activate it.

Ympker · August 17

Really enjoying the fact, that they allow you to install their in-house gameserver panel on your vps/dedi and install basically all the games for which they also offer gameservers, which comes to about nearly 600 games (but I think mods are also counted as games, so..). The gameserver panel is only accessible from your ZAP dashboard (so secured and not public-facing), and you can install/manage multiple gameservers respective to your vps/dedis specs. Once you install a gameserver via the panel, it then appears in the gameservers-tab in your dashboard and you can configure/manage it from there, just as if you had rented a gameserver. Pretty happy with this, as I've also used LGSM, Pterodactyl, and Pufferpanel in the past, but very happy with this solution, really.

BruhGamer12 · August 20

@Ympker said:
Really enjoying the fact, that they allow you to install their in-house gameserver panel on your vps/dedi and install basically all the games for which they also offer gameservers, which comes to about nearly 600 games (but I think mods are also counted as games, so..). The gameserver panel is only accessible from your ZAP dashboard (so secured and not public-facing), and you can install/manage multiple gameservers respective to your vps/dedis specs. Once you install a gameserver via the panel, it then appears in the gameservers-tab in your dashboard and you can configure/manage it from there, just as if you had rented a gameserver. Pretty happy with this, as I've also used LGSM, Pterodactyl, and Pufferpanel in the past, but very happy with this solution, really.

Nice this is a cool feature!

Ympker · August 21

@BruhGamer12 said:

@Ympker said:
Really enjoying the fact, that they allow you to install their in-house gameserver panel on your vps/dedi and install basically all the games for which they also offer gameservers, which comes to about nearly 600 games (but I think mods are also counted as games, so..). The gameserver panel is only accessible from your ZAP dashboard (so secured and not public-facing), and you can install/manage multiple gameservers respective to your vps/dedis specs. Once you install a gameserver via the panel, it then appears in the gameservers-tab in your dashboard and you can configure/manage it from there, just as if you had rented a gameserver. Pretty happy with this, as I've also used LGSM, Pterodactyl, and Pufferpanel in the past, but very happy with this solution, really.

Nice this is a cool feature!

It is Used it to setup CS:CZ for me and the boys for reviving some glorious memories I also asked whether you can "overprovision" the gameservers, since e.g. my vps has 8GB of RAM, but in a scenario where I'd like to setup multiple gameservers, I want to allow them using enough ram, however, they likely won't need it all of the time. Luckily, the gs panel doesn't count the RAM limits you provide to the gameservers against the vps RAM.
So I can have 3 CSCZ servers, assigning 3GB RAM to each of them, although my vps has only 8GB RAM. No idea why I thought over provisioning may be restricted, but I'm just glad it isn't.

More info on GS panel: https://zap-hosting.com/guides/docs/vserver-linux-gs-interface/

Apparently you can also create users within ZAP panel and provide them with access to Gameserver management or even vps: https://zap-hosting.com/guides/docs/account-usermanagement/

This seems to also work for Gameservers created on VPS with ZAP panel. The gameservers appear as "individual" gameservers (like if you rented one) in your dashboard, but show that they're linked to a specific vps. Pretty cool

Ympker · September 20

Last year, ZAP announed BF discounts for lifetime products to be published around:

Lifetime vServer:
25.11.2023: 20:00 - 21:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 11:00 - 12:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 20:00 - 21:00 Uhr MEZ

Lifetime Rootserver:
25.11.2023: 16:00 - 17:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 04:00 - 05:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 16:00 - 17:00 MEZ
27.11.2023: 04:00 - 05:00 MEZ

Maybe keep that in mind

Someone from another forum started creating a script to keep lifetimes alive, but never tested it:

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-extra');
const RecaptchaPlugin = require('puppeteer-extra-plugin-recaptcha');


const USER_NAME = 'username';
const PASSWORD = 'pass';
const CAPTCHA_API_KEY = '2captcha_api_key';
const VSERVER_URL = 'https://zap-hosting.com/en/customer/vserver/show/123456789/overview/';


const delay = ms => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
puppeteer.use(
  RecaptchaPlugin({
    provider: {
      id: '2captcha',
      token: CAPTCHA_API_KEY
    },
    visualFeedback: true
  })
);

(async () => {
        const browser = await puppeteer.launch({args: ['--no-sandbox', '--disable-setuid-sandbox']});
        const page = await browser.newPage();

        await page.setUserAgent('Mozilla/5.0');

        await page.setViewport({width: 1920, height: 1080});
        await page.goto('https://zap-hosting.com/en/');

        const userNameField = await page.waitForSelector('[name="username"]');
        const passwordField = await page.waitForSelector('[name="password"]');
        await delay(3000);


        await page.type('[name="username"]', USER_NAME);
        await page.type('[name="password"]', PASSWORD);


        await page.click('#login-buttons > .btn-login');

        await delay(3000);

        console.log("Solving captcha...");
        await page.solveRecaptchas();


        await page.click('#recaptcha-login-form button[type="submit"]');
        await delay(2000);

        await page.goto(VSERVER_URL);
        await delay(2000);
        console.log("Saving screenshost...");
        await page.screenshot({
                path: 'screenshot.jpg'
        });
        await browser.close();
})();

Josu · September 21

I don't think it's for forgetful, busy people to buy lifetime service. You will lose it after 60 days

Ympker · September 21

@Josu said:
I don't think it's for forgetful, busy people to buy lifetime service. You will lose it after 60 days

They send you email reminders to keep your product activated and even after suspension you have 4 weeks to contact them. If it's of any importance to you at all to keep the service, you'll have ample opportunity to do so.

rootnet · September 25

@root said:
On selecting the OS it seems they have very old operating systems. Do they allow uploading some ISO or netboot.xyz in the client area?

Just dropping in to say Zap has finally added the latest OS options for their vservers and rootservers. You can now choose to re/install Debian 11/12 or Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 directly from the settings page.

Took them over 2 years... but it finally happened. Now I don't have to worry about spending time on netbooting every time you want to reinstall your server.

Ympker · September 25

@rootnet said:

@root said:
On selecting the OS it seems they have very old operating systems. Do they allow uploading some ISO or netboot.xyz in the client area?

Just dropping in to say Zap has finally added the latest OS options for their vservers and rootservers. You can now choose to re/install Debian 11/12 or Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 directly from the settings page.

Took them over 2 years... but it finally happened. Now I don't have to worry about spending time on netbooting every time you want to reinstall your server.

Finally this is great news! Will probably get new rootserver in BF this year

Your tutorial was quite useful though, thanks! Ultimately I switched from my beloved Ubuntu to Debian to just Update Debian 10 to 11 with a few cmds.

rootnet · September 25

@Ympker said:

@rootnet said:

@root said:
On selecting the OS it seems they have very old operating systems. Do they allow uploading some ISO or netboot.xyz in the client area?

Just dropping in to say Zap has finally added the latest OS options for their vservers and rootservers. You can now choose to re/install Debian 11/12 or Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 directly from the settings page.

Took them over 2 years... but it finally happened. Now I don't have to worry about spending time on netbooting every time you want to reinstall your server.

Finally this is great news! Will probably get new rootserver in BF this year

Your tutorial was quite useful though, thanks! Ultimately I switched from my beloved Ubuntu to Debian to just Update Debian 10 to 11 with a few cmds.

All good. Happy to help and thanks for the shout.

And same.. I might get a second rootserver. The first one is still going strong. I use it to experiment, stress, break, fix and learn different apps and scripts. I've got no major complaints with them and neither did I get any complaints from them to moderate my usage. Well worth the one-time payment.

Janevski · September 25

@Ympker said: ZAP-Hosting, in the light of extending their lifetime server product line, seems to have updated their Terms of Service now requiring ALL their customers who purchased any kind of lifetime product (Minecraft Server/Webspace/vServer/Rootserver/Dedicated Server and future offerings) to log into their ZAP-Hosting Dashboard AND open up the respective product's control panel (e.g. if you have a vps with them, open the vps control panel; if you have a Minecraft Server..) once every 3 months to avoid suspension due to inactivity. If you service/product has been suspended due to inactivity you will apparently receive an email stating that you have 4 weeks to contact them, before your service/product gets cancelled permanently and any right to refund is waived.

This is bullshit, because, let's say i want a 5 or 10 or a couple of years best effort set & forget hosting plan, for a modest HTML website, paid upfront so i can dissapear... How do i even... No seriously, this is bullshit. They just want to take the money upfront and then look for any reason to kick you out.

Ympker · September 25

@Janevski said:

@Ympker said: ZAP-Hosting, in the light of extending their lifetime server product line, seems to have updated their Terms of Service now requiring ALL their customers who purchased any kind of lifetime product (Minecraft Server/Webspace/vServer/Rootserver/Dedicated Server and future offerings) to log into their ZAP-Hosting Dashboard AND open up the respective product's control panel (e.g. if you have a vps with them, open the vps control panel; if you have a Minecraft Server..) once every 3 months to avoid suspension due to inactivity. If you service/product has been suspended due to inactivity you will apparently receive an email stating that you have 4 weeks to contact them, before your service/product gets cancelled permanently and any right to refund is waived.

This is bullshit, because, let's say i want a 5 or 10 year best effort set & forget hosting plan, for a modest HTML website, paid upfront so i can dissapear... How do i even... No seriously, this is bullshit. They just want to take the money upfront and then look for any reason to kick you out.

Nobody is forced to order with them. It's terms I am fine with. If they at some point adjust those terms to get unreasonably worse (or even as is), and your service got suspended, you could probably sue against unilateral contract terms that put the consumer at a significant disadvantage: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treatment/unfair-contract-terms/index_en.htm#:~:text=considered as unfair.-,If you find unfair terms in your contract,the unfair term)%20remains%20valid .

I don't assume I'll need to do that, but possibly even their 3 month renewal kinda condition is void as what is written in the terms is not always in line with law. It's what the provider wishes the terms to be like. Terms that go against the law are void though. So if you buy a house and it says you need to sacrifice your first-born, they can put that in their terms, but if they really requested it, it would be considered void.

hanshenrik · September 25

@root said:
I can't see a way to automate this with Zap

@Ympker said:
Last year, ZAP announed BF discounts for lifetime products to be published around:

Lifetime vServer:
25.11.2023: 20:00 - 21:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 11:00 - 12:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 20:00 - 21:00 Uhr MEZ

Lifetime Rootserver:
25.11.2023: 16:00 - 17:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 04:00 - 05:00 MEZ
26.11.2023: 16:00 - 17:00 MEZ
27.11.2023: 04:00 - 05:00 MEZ

Maybe keep that in mind

Someone from another forum started creating a script to keep lifetimes alive, but never tested it:

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-extra');
const RecaptchaPlugin = require('puppeteer-extra-plugin-recaptcha');


const USER_NAME = 'username';
const PASSWORD = 'pass';
const CAPTCHA_API_KEY = '2captcha_api_key';
const VSERVER_URL = 'https://zap-hosting.com/en/customer/vserver/show/123456789/overview/';


const delay = ms => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
puppeteer.use(
  RecaptchaPlugin({
    provider: {
      id: '2captcha',
      token: CAPTCHA_API_KEY
    },
    visualFeedback: true
  })
);

(async () => {
        const browser = await puppeteer.launch({args: ['--no-sandbox', '--disable-setuid-sandbox']});
        const page = await browser.newPage();

        await page.setUserAgent('Mozilla/5.0');

        await page.setViewport({width: 1920, height: 1080});
        await page.goto('https://zap-hosting.com/en/');

        const userNameField = await page.waitForSelector('[name="username"]');
        const passwordField = await page.waitForSelector('[name="password"]');
        await delay(3000);


        await page.type('[name="username"]', USER_NAME);
        await page.type('[name="password"]', PASSWORD);


        await page.click('#login-buttons > .btn-login');

        await delay(3000);

        console.log("Solving captcha...");
        await page.solveRecaptchas();


        await page.click('#recaptcha-login-form button[type="submit"]');
        await delay(2000);

        await page.goto(VSERVER_URL);
        await delay(2000);
        console.log("Saving screenshost...");
        await page.screenshot({
                path: 'screenshot.jpg'
        });
        await browser.close();
})();

That will not work. It might work occasionally through dumb luck, but it's not reliable.
Zap-hosting is protected against automation with both CloudFlare invisible captcha and Google invisible ReCaptcha.

There is no way to reliability automate it.

Luckily for me, I have a long list of things I need to do monthly anyway, and adding "logging in on zap-hosting to once a month" to the list cost me next to nothing 🙂

Ympker · September 25

@hanshenrik

That will not work. It might work occasionally through dumb luck, but it's not reliable.
Zap-hosting is protected against automation with both CloudFlare invisible captcha and Google invisible ReCaptcha.

There is no way to reliability automate it.

Luckily for me, I have a long list of things I need to do monthly anyway, and adding "logging in on zap-hosting to once a month" to the list cost me next to nothing 🙂

Yeah, I don't automate it either. It's really just waiting for my Google Calender pop-up to remind me, click on the Dashboard link in the calendar reminder, open all the products and be done with it. Takes 1-2 mins via phone/pc.

alveox · October 14

hi guys, is there any pros on chosing lxc vs kvm root server?
my understanding is with kvm based vps i got dedicated cpu and ram, while on lxc all resource is shared. is it correct ? im planning to order lifetime vps this month, waiting for discount (hopefully) this black Friday .

Wonder_Woman · October 14

@alveox said:
hi guys, is there any pros on chosing lxc vs kvm root server?
my understanding is with kvm based vps i got dedicated cpu and ram, while on lxc all resource is shared. is it correct ? im planning to order lifetime vps this month, waiting for discount (hopefully) this black Friday .

A KVM VPS does not mean dedicated CPU, in fact it's typically the opposite. Virtual servers with dedicated CPU resources are typically referred to as VDS instead of VPS.

xTom has a pretty good write-up on the differences between the different types of virtualization here: https://xtom.com/blog/virtualization-technology-comparison-kvm-openvz-lxc/

A brief explanation:

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full hardware virtualization solution that creates isolated virtual machines (VMs), each with its own operating system and kernel. It provides strong isolation and is ideal for running different OSes but comes with more resource overhead.

LXC (Linux Containers), on the other hand, is a lightweight operating system-level virtualization solution that shares the host's kernel, making it more efficient but less isolated. It's best for running multiple isolated Linux environments with minimal overhead.

alveox · October 14

@Wonder_Woman said:

xTom has a pretty good write-up on the differences between the different types of virtualization here: https://xtom.com/blog/virtualization-technology-comparison-kvm-openvz-lxc/

nice link there.
xtom prefer kvm.
so on zap hosting, pricewise, is it worthed to buy kvm over lxc??

Ympker · October 14

@alveox said:

@Wonder_Woman said:

xTom has a pretty good write-up on the differences between the different types of virtualization here: https://xtom.com/blog/virtualization-technology-comparison-kvm-openvz-lxc/

nice link there.
xtom prefer kvm.
so on zap hosting, pricewise, is it worthed to buy kvm over lxc??

It depends on your use-case. KVM will likely yield more performance, LXC usually gets newer OS versions faster with ZAP. LXC can have docker support enabled in ZAP webpanel, which doesn't necessarily make it a better fit for docker compared to KVM, though. KVM allows for own isos via Netboot.

ZAP-Hosting Lifetime Servers - Discussion, Updates

Comments