<RANT>
I have just looked at my inbox and saw around 10 emails that I have received since late Friday which I have not yet actioned — 10 from various hosting providers trying to have their offers posted here. Looking back I have posted over 30 low end offers since the beginning of this month. A bit excessive I found. Not to mention the amount of time spent on background checks and posting the actual offers. And who knows how many of them are just going to do a “Ben Harper” of RackVM?
Not to mention LowEndBox was supposed to be my “spare time” hobby. Unfortunately my “spare time” has been scarce lately due to some up-coming changes in life. As you can see I really do not have time to post every offer people threw at me. I also hate to see LowEndBox becoming “just a cheap advertisement platform” for the budget hosting providers — although I think it might have already been the case.
Therefore I am going to make some changes here. I will reduce the frequency of posts, and tighten up the criteria.
- I will not post new offers from providers which I have previously posted over the last 30 days. Those weekly “reminder emails” are getting really annoying. Unless it is an exceptionally good offer — but I’ll be the judge on what is “exceptional”.
- I will not accept annual payment offers from providers that have been around for less than one year. How can I have any confident that you will finish year 2, when you are still stuck in year 1? I will use domain age as an indicator.
- Annual payment threshold is now capped at $60/year (~$5/month). People should expect appropriate discount if they are asked to pay for the whole year upfront.
And sorry for those who have already emailed me asking to be “featured” — I don’t really have time to respond to all of you. If you don’t fit the criteria, your request might be silently ignored.
LEA (LowEndAdmin) is the original founder of LowEndBox and the visionary who gave rise to an entire movement around minimalist, efficient hosting. In 2008, LEA launched LowEndBox with a simple but powerful idea: that it was possible to run meaningful applications, web servers, VPNs, mail servers, and more – on small, low-cost virtual machines with minimal resources.
At a time when most infrastructure discussions were dominated by high-end servers and enterprise platforms, LEA championed the opposite approach: lightweight Linux distros, self-managed servers, open source software, and thoughtful optimization. This philosophy gave birth to the term “Low End Box”, which would come to define a new genre of hosting tailored to developers, tinkerers, and budget-conscious users around the world.
Through LowEndBox and its companion forum, LowEndTalk, LEA built the foundation for what would become one of the most active and enduring communities in the hosting world, prioritizing knowledge-sharing, transparency, and accessibility.
After several years of nurturing the site and community, LEA stepped away from active involvement, passing the torch to a new generation of admins, contributors, and moderators. Today, LEA remains a respected figure in the LowEnd ecosystem, credited with launching a platform and philosophy that continues to influence thousands of infrastructure providers and users globally.
LowEndBox’s legacy, and its thriving community, is a direct result of LEA’s original vision.
well done lea!
since i am worry about too many really-really-really real low end offers here lately! 😀
Thanks everyone for the comments — I thought I was venting of too much work and you guys managed to give me even more! 🙂 I will see how this site evolves this year.
Patrick has a very nice and practical idea there. Guest writers would be a wonderful idea and would add a lot of good usable content to the site.
@LEA,
What about the idea of paid posts? I would be more then happy to send you a few bucks to post my ad/post/offer.
Thanks,
Anthony
Is there a way to search for hosts by certain criteria?
“How can I have any confident that you will finish year 2, when you are still stuck in year 1?”
I have always wondered why these providers register their domains for 1 year? Why not 10 years? Are they not going to be around in 10 years? Don’t even they have faith in their futures? Are they going to hit and run? Even google gives more importance to domains registered for 10 years (ref: google patent).
I’d be glad to (even though I am not a VPS provider), but in some TLDs it is not possible to pay upfront for more than 1 year, for example in .ru.
I have owned about 20 domains (I am not a VPS provider either) but I have lost all the domains that I registered for 1 year. For some reason or the other like being too lazy to renew, or thinking that domain is not worth keeping or I want a better name or some excuse or the other. But domains that I registered for 10 years (or 5 years for cc TLDs) I manage to find some use or the other so they are still with me. After 5/10 years I sort of get attached to the domain name and renew it further at least for old times sake.
Now I find it hard to trust any provider that has not registered their domain for 10 years, but its ok if the domain is only 1 or 2 years old so far (but not less than 1 year).
By the way LEA thanks for the great site. Keep up the great work, its appreciated.