Sorry about the late post on last month’s dead pool list. After a quiet month in December, list of dead providers seem to be picking up again! I did make some changes to my tracker which flags more positives. If size of the content of the website is too small (under 1kb for example), then the provider is flagged as DOWN as they might have replaced their home page with a blank page (common with provider who just did a runner). It did pick up some extra dead providers, whom might have already died for a while.
Brad’s Hosting
Brad’s HostingCurrent Status: IP not resolvable
Brad’s Hosting was first featured in LowEndBox.com with their $6.95 95MB OpenVZ VPS back in August 2010. Wasn’t really an impressive offering at the beginning. Their website moved a few times, and later on Brad the CEO commented that they are moving to SingleHop in November. It did happen on 6 November 2010. On 12 December they put the WHOIS privacy mask on their domain again, and their IP is no longer resolvable by 6 January. Brad’s WHT account is currently disabled so I have no idea what happened to them. Nor do I think they have many clients anyway.
CloudStatic
CloudStaticCurrent Status: Blank page
CloudStatic tried to pull a quickies back in Christmas time in December. “Anthony Santos” emailed me their offer on 23 December (if that’s his real name), and by 21 January their website is already down showing a blank page (yes, in less than a month). IP hasn’t changed, and their current server is now owned by “ReadyWebSpace.com” a newly registered web hosting company owned by “eFlipDomains”. Message on WHT says they have been taken over, but somehow I don’t have a good feeling about this. Watch out for them respawning elsewhere :)
HostPenguin
HostPenguinCurrent Status: Blank page
We first looked at HostPengiun back in 2009. $6.95 for 75MB OpenVZ VPS and only 5GB/month of data — pretty bad offer even 1.5 years ago, and right now it is showing a blank page. Looks like Matthew is now focusing on PogiWeb instead. I can’t really work out the reason for rebranding (probably someone who has read more news on WHT can share with us), but HostPengiun is established on a 2007 domain whereas PogiWeb is pretty new. Maybe “Penguin” is preventing Matt from selling FreeBSD or Windows hosting?
HostVillage
HostVillageCurrent Status: IP not resolvable
First post about HostVillage was from June 2010 with their $2.49 LowEndBox specials — which turns out to be a confusion as they merely wanted me to pay to review their hosting. Anyway, they subsequently offered a few more offers, and even purchased one advertisement spot (which is hopefully cancelling soon). They moved the website to Linode on 9 Jan (on a server announcing itself as 文胜利.com), and then on 19 Jan their website stopped resolving. Here is another example where age of domain name cannot be trusted — they are sitting on an 11-year-old domain!
NWABytes
NWABytesCurrent Status: Empty website
Again here is someone I first reported on 6 December, and now the whole website ceases to exist after less than 2 months. NWA Bytes was offering 256MB OpenVZ VPS for $6.39. “Kevin” has lost the .com version of their domain to domain squatters so he settled on the .net domain. Now he appears to have lost it again — after 4 IP changes since early December, his website is now showing an empty page. Claimed to be in business since 2005, hmm maybe not.
Other Deal Hosts
There are some others that have reported dead by the tracker in January 2011, but might have died long before that. Some are showing “coming back soon” messages although I doubt they will be resurrected.
- ChilledHost — BurstNet reseller that currently has “Account Suspended” message on its website.
- DigitalLinux — original website is long gone I suspect and now just a small page with an email address.
- Jones IT — only reported on 10 Jan 2011, and now showing the “coming back soon” message on the website. Moving datacenter according to Justin, but can’t keep the website updated?
- RapidDuck — Daniel was 15/16 back. As of “RapidDuck” experiment — well hopefully no one got burnt by it.
I am pretty sure there are more dead providers last month. I am flat out at work so might have lost track a few. Post them in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.
- 5 Reasons Why You Want a Low End Box - May 26, 2021
- Dead Pool January 2012 - February 2, 2012
- exit(0); - January 19, 2012
I wonder how much capital is needed to start sustainable vps hosting?
Zero. Just be a reseller. That’s what most VPS “companies” are doing anyway… :(
HC, Nice site. Reminds me of the good ol’ terminal.
ah to bad. dead pool oh dead pool. make little bit stress
As for RapidDuck, I gave all clients 1 month extra free, and gave them all backups and warned that their VPSs were to be terminated.
Hopefully I ended in the dead pool in a nice way.
Trusting a new VPS provider by the age of their domain is silly, since lot of those who used to sell cheap unlimited webhosting are just converting their sites to offer VPS hosting. — age of domain should not be counted as trustworthy indicator on how a business will perform.
I have come across few providers on WHT advertising “since xxxx”, but yes of course, you may have been selling webhosting space for xx years, but that does not guarantee that you know how to manage VPS’s and node servers.
It takes more skills than just knowing how to use cPanel to sell VPS’s but tools like hyperVM and solusVM makes it very easy for even kids to start up their VPS hosting business far too easy.
I hope we will see less hosts in the dead pool in future once LEA gets tight on who gets announced on LEB :)
Im 16 and have an advanced understanding of Linux and VPSs
and what is this.
At 16, or 12, you cannot be advanced at anything yet, it simply takes time that you’ve not been alive long enough yet to amass that knowledge. There is no reason one day you will not be advanced, maybe the best in the field even, but there is a lot more to being advanced at something then simple knowledge, and only time can give you those gifts.
Ive been doing PHP and using Unix based since I was 11, and I call myself not a master, but pretty advance with it.
I’m so used to Unix, I can’t use Windows, at school I get Fs in IT when its todo with using fEatures with whatever version of Windows it out now.
@Daniel — the main issue with minor is not really the ability. I am quite sure that there are some whiz kids out there that are very knowledgeable. The main issue is actually with accountability. That’s why I much prefer hosting providers with proper LLC or company registration number.
I don’t think it is so much about accountability even, but more about maturity and the patience that comes with it. Although many adults lack those traits as well, and many young people I’ve encountered possess more.
Nope. Maturity and patience are correlated with ages — yes — but there are also some very mature and patient young-adults (and vice versa). But with whatever law of the land, with establishing a business and being accountable for your account, it is usually 18+ or nothing.
So it *IS* about accountability especially with local laws.
Cloudstatic/eFlipDomains also mentions they sold their “AlienVPS” brands … seems like a big circle of domain recycling between group of people who acts as “new owners”
> ““Kevin” has losted the .com version of their domain to domain squatters so he settled on the .net domain. Now he appears to have losted it again”
Losted???
It seems to be a simple language barrier, I’m assuming LEA is not a native English speaker, and wouldn’t know losted is not proper usage, the proper term is singular, lost. Thinking about it, there doesn’t seem to be a use other then “lost”, but if someone else has an example, please step forward.
Native English speaker? No, although I have been using that language for the last 20 odd years LOL. Sorry the post was written at odd hour of the day without any checks on spelling and my mental state :P
And as of “lost”, it is an adjective and of course you don’t apply the verb tense rules on it.
Actually it’s the past tense of the verb “lose”.
Present: I am losing it; Future: I will lose it; Past I have lost it. And ow I’ve lost the topic of this thread :)
What is pretty sad is most people who learn english as a second language (or however many they know) understand the language better than those in the US.
LeA, how comes you think I’m working at LoveVPS
Edit: Nevermind. Post fixed.
Just want to subscribe :)
Frank: So what do we do now?
Ben Brigade: Sit there and watch your brother hang.
Frank: You don’t mean that.
Ben Brigade: Don’t I?
Frank: He’s only a boy!
Ben Brigade: He’s as old as his gun.
Frank: It’s me you’re after, Brigade. You got no quarrel with Billy.
Ben Brigade: What quarrel did you have with *her*?
Frank: That was a long time ago. I almost forgot.
Ben Brigade: A man can do that.
Ride Lonesome (1959)
And what about vpstree? That and other companies just have a website, possible customers (like me) and ZERO support. They just forgot their business…
I’m still using 2 of their $0.99 VPS for my NS server. They never answer the support ticket, so I have to manually e-mail the “mothership” http://www.unixy.net
Interesting. As the signup link at http://www.unixy.net/99 is gone I thought the mothership had ditched VPS Tree long ago :).
I cancelled my 99-cent server two months ago and billing stopped, but it’s still up and running (with the best uptime record of any budget host I’ve tried). Which I think proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the adage, “you get what you pay for” is false :)
Yep, the uptime is great. Unless you contact Unixy, I don’t think VPSTree realize that the canceled VPS is still up. ;)
LOOOOL! Yes, my VPS is running too :D
And with a great performance too! But, 64 mb :S Isn’t enough :P
I once signed up for the $0.99 VPS but never received the information, and I never bothered to ask them again.
Damn, my email has a typo… Awaiting moderation.
And is bad again!!! Sorry LEA just delete my spam :S
To clear some things up, we currently don’t have any staff name Daniel in our team.
I’m just a very good friend Of Matthew
vpsroyale.com, vps many days dead too…