Don’t think we can ever have a month without any dead-pool-providers. Here are some from last month.
The Server Experts
The Server ExpertsCurrent Status: IP not resolvable
Looks like being in business for 9 years, having a 6 year old domain, being the first fan for LowEndBox on Facebook — these ain’t enough to avoid the dead pool, especially when you stated upfront that you owned your own private rack and hardware, when you are in fact just a BurstNet reseller. The Server Experts first came into the scene selling exactly the same plan as BurstNet — $5.95 512MB OpenVZ/vePortal VPS — while denying that they were reselling. That’s just low, and we all hated to be lied to. Whatever, welcome to dead pool 2011.
Plus Hosted
Plus HostedCurrent Status: IP not resolvable
Plus Hosted featuring its “goatcx” website (picked up by Francisco) first appeared on LowEndBox back in November 2010, selling 128MB Xen VPS for 3.15 pound. It did not get much interest here, and then in December it changed hand to someone in Ireland. Andrew, who initially started PlusHosted, is now working for ClubUptime.
VPS Squad/VPS Under 5 Dollars
VPS Squad/VPS Under 5 DollarsCurrent Status: IP not resolvable
Websites for both VPS Squad and VPS Under 5 Dollars stopped resolving on 19 February. I guess “dead pool” is not a strange land for them, as their previous incarnation, Alien Media House (AMH) Network, also went to dead pool in October 2010. Vladislav commented on 28 Feb that “the owner of VPSSquad has left the VPS business without prior notice”. More information can be found on this thread in WHT, but basically they haven’t paid their server bill, and have their domain hacked. However it is great to see various upstream providers helping out strangled customers.
Anyway. Google around and it is not too hard to find out where Mr. Watson’s address and phone number.
VPS Royale
VPS RoyaleCurrent Status: Domain parked
We first featured VPS Royale back in November 2010 with their launch offer. $4 for 512MB VPS with 50GB storage + 10Mbps unmetered bandwidth was a pretty good deal at that time. Too good to be true indeed, and throughout February there has been reports of dead service. Their domain was switched to AdSense for Domain on 28 February, and looks like Conner has done a runner. Conner still has his address on WHOIS though (provided that it was valid in the first place).
LaxHost
LaxHostCurrent Status: Domain expired
LaxHost went way back to January 2009, offering 256MB OpenVZ VPS for 5 bucks a month. Not much response back then, and I see no further offer from these guys. Maybe it has long dead as my script does not pick up parked domain that well. For now the WHOIS shows “RENEWAL HOLD” and the website goes to a parked page. Anyway. One less for me to track.
Elite Data Hosting
Elite Data HostingCurrent Status: Parked domain
Elite Data Hosting first featured here in April 2009. Terii was the sysadmin then, sold the hosting business to Server-Logix, and two years later they have decided to fold this domain, and migrated all the plans to Server-Logix.com. So not strictly a “dead pool” provider, but Elite Data Hosting is now no more.
Meanwhile, Terii has moved onto another project. Annoying website design aside, wishing him best of luck.
That’s it for this month. I know there are some that should probably be described as “zombies” (i.e. vpstree.com) and some have been knocked semi-unconscious (availablevps.com, nordicvps.com for example). I’ll put them into the deadpool when they are verified as dead.
- 5 Reasons Why You Want a Low End Box - May 26, 2021
- Dead Pool January 2012 - February 2, 2012
- exit(0); - January 19, 2012
Sad to see many previously very active but now gone.
The VPS market is really competitive, if you are just reselling you won’t make it unless there’s a sound business plan in place to grow your business including some niche products that other cannot just simply offer for peanuts!
I’d give you some karma is this was an LET post :)
Francisco
@LEA
All NordicVPS.com budget VPS’s in Germany have been recovered and are online :) Even some wish us “dead”, we are still here and live.
:)
Don’t flatter yourself :) As LEB customers are mainly locked for year pre-payment with you we wish you only long live with servers online and decent ticket reponse. Yeah, this would be refreshing!
Quick aside: The VPS Royale whois address (532 Canterbury Place SW, Calgary, AB) shows a nice middle class neighborhood, end home on a cul de sac and surrounded by parks.
As to NordicVPS, I think you’ve pretty much shoot yourself in your own foot from reading the previous threads.
Any reason you guys closed your Chicago location?
Francisco
I have to say f**k vpsroyale!
“Vladislav from Dynaceron commented on 28 Feb”
I’m not Dynaceron. I was a client of VPS Squad.
Ha, ha, ha.. good one :) Yeah, I was wondering too who’s this new Dynaceron Vladislav, as there is usually only Bora (in public).
Oops. Sorry I misunderstood.
I don’t know about Europe offers of NordicVPS ( Germany Servers )
But, their USA servers even though not with the best performance, i never noticed any big downtime, like 4 hours sometimes it does goes down but nothing special.
They seem to have done something to their USA servers since they are now ‘usable’, same goes for hostrail after allot of support tickets/comments on WHT they seem to have done something.
My VPS with Nordic on their FMT01 node in HE’s Fremont facility has 18 days of uptime, although it’s been limited to 600 mhz. So it looks like they are OK for now.
Please include in the dead pool Scan-Host.com.
Really? I almost bought a vps with them.
The thing is that I have never posted about them on LowEndBox.com. Mike Sundberg from scan-host emailed me back in October to feature his VPS plans, and somehow it got lost in my piles of emails and I’ve never managed to post that :P
So it’s your fault they went out of business? :)
lots of vps gone
availablevps seems dead too, can’t ping/ssh to its vps
Hazenet.co.uk also died.
Yes it certainly looks like the case from various forum posts I’ve read elsewhere. Sorry I missed it when I did my scan on my tracker.
VPS royale owner: http://www.facebook.com/people/Connor-Buzan/628345436
Wow, seeing as he’s majoring in Business, you’d think he know proper business planning to last more than a year. Maybe he just forgot to renew his domain name, like what happened to Patrick Garman of GarmanOnline awhile ago.
I don’t know why they don’t just use autorenew or pay for more than a year at a time. It goes to show how much confidence they have in their business venture, eh?
In addition to the Dead Pool there should be a section on here called the Dog House
where all the bad providers are listed so its easy to tell who not to sign up with.
And if the VPS providers demonstrate that they have improved then they can get out
of the Dog House.. I nominate 123systems to be the first company to be listed :)
But if they are listed in the Dog House, no ones gonna buy from them, so they make no profit, so they end up in the dead pool anyway.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy!
There would be too much fighting over the award. I can think of at least a dozen providers right off who deserve that award.
Maybe we should call it the “Ooops, drmike went to town on me and proved that I don’t have a clue as to what I’m doing. I should be taken out back and introduced to a dozen angry girl scouts.” award. :)
Not everyone haves a bad experince with 123systems they have good reviews on webhostingtalk about users that use higher RAM VPS’s ( They claim they are hosted in other machines that are way more reliable and way better )
I’ve had pretty good experience with 123systems too. It was bad at first, but once all the riffraff leaves, performance is decent.
Here’s what I usually do when I get a new VPS from a provider who’s been featured here:
1. Load up gnome, vnc, firefox, fill up as much of the alloted disk quota as possible
2. Fire up everything, open tabs in firefox until it’s about to run out of RAM
3. Come back in a month, restore a fresh image, start using the VPS
The idea is to hog as much resources as I can so that the provider will oversell less and then wait for the spammers, torrenters, etc. to leave so that when I actually start using the box, the performance is better. It works!
That worked with ClubUptime and Minecraft :)
Speaking of which, I noticed that ClubUptime suffered a pretty sophisticated DDoS attack over the weekend:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1028865
http://clubuptime.wordpress.com/
There’s a thread over at LET:
http://www.lowendtalk.com/questions/4189/is-anyone-elses-vps-on-clubuptime-down
We did. It was about 10gbps per server at nearly 990,000kpps. It was quite a large attack. Annoyingly large, if I do say so myself. Knocked our main website offline for nearly 3 days.
I’ve had a pretty good experience with 123Systems. :)
Aside from a few initial hiccups 123Systems is okay and doesn’t really belong in the doghouse.
Hey, don’t even THINK about putting VPSTree in the Dead Pool! :) My VPS with them currently has an uptime of 56 days (only because I re-imaged it) and performs perfectly, day-in, day-out.
The only problem with VPSTree is billing. I submitted a cancellation, billing stopped but the VPS stayed up. Been nearly four months now.
But maybe that’s not such a big problem :)
LOL, do you are using my VPS? xD
I reimaged it too, it has 69 days. I am winning
As I’ve said — is zombie VPS provider dead or alive?! I guess from our definition as long as it’s moving it’s not dead :P
Does it really matter?
So long as I get to use a shotgun i’m happy.
:D
Francisco
use salt, pepper and fake yellow money,
an old Chinese’s pop told me to disable the zombies
Im happy to see VPSSquad go, you can find the issue in LET.
I had an Elite Data Hosting VPS and when it got migrated to Server Logix, my January payment (which was admittedly a few days late) got lost. The server on which the VPS was running simultaneously had hard disk trouble. When the machine was back up and running, I couldn’t restore my VPS because it’s suspended. I have two open tickets on this issue and seem to be being ignored.
I’m about to give up on this provider and buy another VPS somewhere else – thankfully I have a recent backup.
I didn’t know til yesterday that VPSSquad was down. I got a cheap yearly deal via a voucher code and was mainly hosting setup and forget AdSense autoblogs. I wondered why my click rates were low…
vpssquad used to be good provider having server located in various location. However, he claimed that he had to pack up his business because of recent earthquake in Australia. Its really nightmare for their users :(
You meant “flood”, not “earthquake”…
Precognition anyone?
NordicVPS is back for a while now, I got my USA VPS back
Maybe you can share some benchmarks? Disk I/O and network speed?
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1069671 next dead pool eh?