Just a quick note on yesterday’s outage here at LowEndBox. It was a DDoS (yes, again!) and the VPS required a reboot to get back to shape. LowEndBox.com availability issues can be discussed on LowEndTalk.
And yes. I am here to confess that I missed last month’s dead pool post. I did raised it in the forums, but forgot about it after the first week of September. I am also apologising for my lack of involvement here and at LowEndTalk (that site has pretty much been set and forget for me, unfortunately). Things have been busy…
Anyway. Besides the legendary Steve Jobs, let’s see who else are in the dead pool.
CurlHost
CurlHostCurrent Status: Connection timed out
CurlHost was first listed in September 2010 offering $2 64MB OpenVZ VPS. Later in October they started selling Xen VPS, and their last offer, a LowEndBox special, was posted in April this year offering Xen HVM with 512MB for $6.50. However from the last few comments here + comments on WHT, it looks like “Prakash Shrivastav” had done a runner.
Interestingly Francisco from BuyVM warned me about them back in October last year, and I’m surprised that they have lasted that long.
EdgeVPS
EdgeVPSCurrent Status: Sold to ThunderCloudGames
So Travis, a few weeks after selling HostLadder, started up EdgeVPS, who was about to have “a great run with it”, and had hoped to be the next BuyVM. Well, a few months down the track, EdgeVPS was sold to ThunderCloudGames, which is a division of CyberLynk Network, Inc. This kind of pump-and-run seems to be quite common on LowEndBox — build a large customer base with low price, sell it to some other company, and then restart the process again. Pretty much fitting into Daniel’s description of Travis here.
MyResellerHost
MyResellerHostCurrent Status: IP address not resolvable
MyResellerHost was first listed on LowEndBox in March this year, although Mark Pammesberger emailed me in December 2010 pretending to be a customer of MyResellerHost. Their first offer came with 250GB of storage at $5.09/month, but surely that’s not sustainable (evidently from all the complaint comments rolling in). They then had a hard drive crash in August, and finally closing its shop in September.
Pluggr.info
Pluggr.infoCurrent Status: Domain expired
Pluggr.info was posted last October as an interesting alternative to low end VPS. Instead of getting a small share of a big iron, you pay $4.50/month for a SheevaPlug dedicated server with a external hard drive attached to it. It did receive some good responses… However, as far as I know, Alex has moved on from KWD Services to form PlugBucket, and the domain “pluggr.info” has just expired. No idea what happened, but I hope those who got the plug there still have the service.
TropicHost
TropicHostCurrent Status: Under construction
TropicHost should have died back in June when its website shows just a directory index page. Then it got replaced with an “Under Construction” page that says “Prepare to be surprised……. In ~30 days (~08/23/2011)”. I am indeed surprised that it’s still off-line.
Volt-VPS
Volt-VPSCurrent Status: Hosting Account Suspended
Despite someone claimed VPS is still working, Volt-VPS‘s home page has been showing cPanel’s account suspended message for more than 2 weeks. With its linkage to previous failed VPSRocket, again I am not all that surprised about it ending up in dead pool again. It’s main backer WhiteLabelHosting is still in operation.
W2 Servers
W2 ServersCurrent Status: Website offline
Okay. I know this is loooooong dead, but somehow someone finally put a bullet through that zombie in September. W2 Servers‘ website (which was hosted on Amazon EC2) stopped connecting on 23 September — no one is paying the bill I guess. Anyway, here is an informative blog on the whole saga. $24/year for 512MB OpenVZ VPS too cheap? Maybe, but I guess whatever touched by Lyron Fosters is determined to fail anyway.
Not So Honorable Mentions
There are still a few VPS providers that I have not yet been able to identify whether there’s any vital sign. To many they are pretty much dead, but (1) they still have their website/ordering system running (2) there are still people claiming that their servers are working. So
- iPAP.co — dead? Some people are still having their free VPS that iPAP have not bothered to invoice. Any news on these guys?
- OneDollarVPS — there are people reporting that their VPS have been resurrected with a new IP address. Still up?
And the one that have gone off-line in the first week of October:
- Byte Bistro — they stated that they are closing down for good. Dead pool for October.
- DediSRV — 403 on their home page since 2 Oct. Judging by how many emails I got from Jake trying to get me to list their offers since January this year, they must be pretty desperate.
- GenVPS — connection timeout since 6 Oct. See WHT report here.
- UKDirectHost — website is not resolvable since 5 Oct. Another those non-redundant NS fail, or maybe the fault was deliberate, i.e. doing a runner?
- VPSVibe — connection timeout since 6 Oct as well. John sold AlienVPS to webRolun to start VPSVibe. Maybe he is hunting for a new buyer again?
That’s it for the last two months. Need to run for the meeting now so I’ll fix up errors in 2 hours after you guys done the proof read :)
- 5 Reasons Why You Want a Low End Box - May 26, 2021
- Dead Pool January 2012 - February 2, 2012
- exit(0); - January 19, 2012
Thanks, long post.
Curlhost, I was with them for more than 6 months, and my experience was really good. Then, the support dissapeared u_u
Pluggr, I wanted one of that boxes, maybe someone here in LEB have one?
Myoversellerhost, piece of crap, ignorant support u_u
EdgeVPS, after the comment of Daniel, if that is the case, I guess anyone that read it, won’t be buying ANYTHING of this guy, now and future.
And W2, that guys must go to the jail forever.
My 2 cents
PS: So, VPStree and enotch? =P
we called myresellerhost when it first got posted.
I didn’t know GenVPS did budget, I thought it only did ‘fully managed vps’. It looks like Lyron took down his blog along with the rest of his stuff, we’ll see when he returns again.
Francisco
The Curlhost situation sounds like maybe they were trading services for tech support, and the tech bailed.
It is pretty common.
It’s a pity that pluggr went down, it seemed like a good idea :/
Actually pluggr’s parent company KWD Services still has their domain up and running.
Here’s WHMCS order page (0 available): https://kwdservices.com/clients/cart.php?gid=6
I want one now.
Don’t forget cripperz.sg, they stole my money 3 months into a 1 year contract. There are others who have complained about this but perhaps their customer base was too small to make any waves among the LEB crowd.
I’m thinking it’s more that the majority of their users were chinese so they wouldn’t know how to write a complaint properly.
Francisco
why?
we just complaint it in chinese vps forum instead.lol
but i never heard of that provider.
Very true but the complaints on hostloc rarely spill over to WHT :)
Francisco
My VPS is still up and running. 14 days uptime at the moment. Its at the Kansas city DC.
I assumed that one to be a scam just from the name. It sounds like something a 14-year-old would come up with.
I concur, definitely a deadpooler.
Suprise2 … since when did we have a 1 year contract and as far as i am concern we did not stole anyone’s money of a 1 year contract. And to add to that, i am away dealing with some other matter along the way, my sincere apology to those who have been affected with multiple distruptions on the vps service.
I might have highlighted in my reply via twitter for those who tweeted me, there was no response to tickets is because we had dozens to hundres of incoming malicious tickets opened in a day, just happened to fix that, all tickets in logs deleted, none attended. Also our colorado server went out due to our failure to make necessary agreement to arrange payment due to local singapore paypal had imposed limits to our account as they would like to check on account activity -> really something new for me as well and yes Singapore has strict paypal policy linked to our local bank accounts.
None the less, the colorado server is hosting only 9 VPS users and it is hosting our main bulk of our web design customers. If you are one of the 9 vps user, kindly open ticket with your account that you bought with us before and we move you to some server elsewhere.
Yes we have been hit unexpectedly. Learning turf but never say die. Also to highlight, VPS is not our main business, i am selling out space on the server base on our web design / hosting demand here in Singapore.
Oh yes, I AM NOT CHINESE by the way. My name doesnt sound chinese either do i.
Nonetheless, dont make it seem like i ran away with hundreds if not thousands of dollars. I have run with none so far. For some of those affected colorado users, they filed a dispute and refunded via paypal, i doubt i owe anyone else for that matters. Every transaction is done via paypal, you contact us via http://cripperz.sg contact form, twitter or your WHMCS client account for now.
As far as i am concern, i am trying to run an honest business. Not running away with anyone’s money definitely for sure.
cheers.
Hi Haas,
You have closed both my high priority tickets that I have opened in the last couple of weeks. I am not sure how this is customer service. There was nothing in the client area about the problems you were having, perhaps that would have been a good place to put your updates? My VPN on my VPS is still not working. Please could you reply to me as a matter of urgency… My VPS is number VPS121. Please contact me.
Michael
Hi Michael,
Yes i closed all tickets because we was hit with hundreds tickets a day maliciously. We just fixed that problem now. I would appreciate if you can open a ticket via your client area if your account is still active.
I have lost quite a bit of customers but that doesnt bother me much. Like i said, Colorado server are the minority users and we see no feasible way of having our servers there as the cost of maintaining it doesnt make sense to us. To be precise, we have 9 users in colorado, 2 of which have place a dispute for refund via paypal and have been refunded accordingly.
Things are fixed now, just open a ticket and i deal with it.
cheers
Nvm, i saw your ticket you created 5 hours ago. All done now.
cheers
I used have CO vps and has been gone for almost 2 months now.
Please see Ticket #317781
I have a Cripperz VPS on the Kansas City node. It is performing well and Haas has been very friendly and helpful to me so far.
I live in mainland China. If you know anything about Singapore, and particularly the business culture in Singapore, you’d be very surprised to encounter anything other than an honest business. It takes a decade to earn a good reputation there and about 3 minutes to lose it, and it’s a small country–everyone in the IT business there knows everyone else (2/3 of the IT business in Singapore is in Sim Lim Plaza, all in the same building). I’m sure Haas has had some challenges but I certainly don’t think he is out to rip anyone off.
@TProphet
thanks, at least someone here is Human still i guess.
@john
i have replied to your ticket.
@everyone
Obviously i am in the phase of some difficulty but it pisses me off when people start to make up stories. Pathetic stories to gain the attention, petty. Nevertheless, i cant please everyone and i am not going to try to do that. We are in various businesses, definitely not going to rip anyone off, even if i fall not making any profits, i will pay you out of my salary if that has to happen. We go where the money are, definitely VPS business as you can see is nothing that going to feed me my meals everyday, as i mentioned, i am sharing the resources i have at a low price, its a win win. If something happens inevitably, stop flaming, get down to it, we talk, open ticket, get it done. Not happy leave.
Life is simple, dont complicate it. You got whole loads of choices here in LowEndBox. I do not know what you gain by making up stories, trolling and flaming others. Really pathetic seriously. =)
cheers and grow up to some of those here aite.
freaking server in KS is online,
what is your freakign problem.
I have already mentioned that server in colorado had issues.
above was his twitter message
I was one of the lucky few that got a w2 server refund…granted it was via a paypal dispute, but a refund is a refund…
Lucky. Paypal told me that I was SOL unless I wanted to pay them to investigate it further.
thanks for updating very useful list
Is it possible to add a wordpress tag for deadpool keyword, so I can bookmark all deadpool updates :)
It’s actually a category:
http://www.lowendbox.com/category/deadpool/
Doh!
Awesome thanks :)
In regards to GenVPS and vpsVibe they where really the same company. VPSVibe was a subsidy of GenVPS.
jTam was “Helping my friend out with some sales” SOURCE: http://www.clubhabboforum.net/showthread.php?t=360420 (A quick google appeared)
My server from onedollarvps is still working with a new ip.
I haven’t paid the third invoice overdue notice of 30th September.
Its amazing how you pretty much remember every comment made by heart.
LEA uses the search function? That’s how I find things. :)
I had expected such hosts Volt-VPS, curlvps,w2 , MyResellerHost to get fucked up sooner or later. Some kids couldn’t even keep it though summer.
Dead: Nixcom, Firstnetserv.
Also dead: Kgninfosystems (not in leb, but seen on let some times ago).
OneDollarVPS:
Ticket: Affiliate Withdrawal Request Open since 22/09/2011.
Invoice 27/09/2011 still unpaid (third and final billing notice received).
Vps Online!
Yes sorry forgot that. Martin is a nice guy but too bad with what happened to Nixcom.
Daniel M cared to comment on that?
Yes that guy kept on asking me to have his site listed. Well I guess I would never have the chance.
sorry firstnetserv.info don’t know its just the domain or another company?
We let go the .info domain go some time ago. Now its all done via the main site.. And email
PlugBucket’s site is hosted on one of KWD’s web hosting servers and uses KWD’s nameservers, so it may be that they just wanted to change names for the brand.
Hello,
fortunately we are not dead we are changing MANY things in our service/ordering system so that we can provide better services :)
just allow us 24 hours :)
Rofl, only an idiot will buy anything from you after reading your last offer.
But yeah, guess you are just looking for this kind of idiots who buy from idiots to be ripped off by idiots.
I wouldn’t say it any better :)
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!! Great hahaha
lol it is not the real ipap admin but a poor ipap victim imo.
Agreed. I can read and understand this. The “ipap co admin” has had problems with written english previously. Although it’s weird that the gravatar is the same. Hmmmm…..
yeah, the hash code is the same too (5ffee4c6d34054d446bec8c6ced210e4). perhaps they are taking some english short course..
Blogs say “email address will not be published”, but a gravatar isn’t that far off from plaintext. It’s just an un-salted MD5 of the email address. Makes testing guesses really easy, and a brute-force guessing attack isn’t too hard either, since emails are pretty standardized. I think a quick test done at stackoverflow or somewhere like that had better than 50% reversing success just by taking the username and sticking it @gmail.com, yahoo, hotmail, etc. At LEB, I suppose you’d include the host’s domain name and standards like admin@, info@, support@, abuse@, etc. WHOIS records would also be a source of possible email addresses.
Anyway, the point is a gravitar doesn’t mean anything as far as a confirmation of identity, it’s far too easy for someone to try some obvious guesses and see if they match the MD5 sum, and I’d be surprised if it took more than 4-5 guesses usually. Often the email address seems to be one that the company mentions on their website or in one of the comment threads. In this case, I just grepped through the old threads for mention of ‘@ipap.co’, and the first address I saw looks like it’s the gravitar in question:
‘In this case’, meaning after drmike made me curious if it was an easy-to-guess address behind the gravitar. I don’t mean I posted the IPAP Co. Admin comment.
Damn, that is how gravatar url is calculated? Piece of crap u_u
Yeah, why don’t they just use email address in plain instead? -_-
Really disappointing
I was going to point out that that would mean making an email address public which is a nono but during my wp.com moderator days, staff made public at least three addresses of clients that I know of in the forums.
Granted they were all abusers….
You deleted my data without my permission. When you give any compensation?
Quote from Ricky
And I think the same.
I got $5 on them releasing a 4GB plan for $7/m, but enforce a 300Mhz CPU cap and extreme prejudice on anyone that tries to use either up. I’m waiting to hear the reports of someone getting cancelled because their copy of yum spiked while updating <_<
Francisco
IPAP.co has now become LydiaNET. Just received their new offer.
And he believes that change will attract us? lol
Out of curiosity I went ahead to order. It seems their new site is broken; most of their order link doesn’t work.
MAybe you can give me that money n_n I can use it in something better than his crap
Linkie: http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/412/ipap.co-changed-their-company-name-and-added-sla
At least the new name isn’t a female medical procedure. Gotta give him that credit.
Pity that their site isn’t much better what it was previously. You would have thought that they had learned their lesson. Guess not.
God bless GenVPS. We have created a range of fully managed VPS plans with cPanel/WHM just for there refugees, we have sold out already ;)
Where do I find information about your FULLY managed VPS service?
On our website. Like i said though we have already sold out. FTR if your intention was to point out that they are called semi-managed plans on our site, fair play. There`s not much between the two.
ouch, i thought gravatar already fix that issue. thanks for remind me about that.
errr,, replying this comment
Still unbelievable the number of “hosts” going out of business every month, and I use the phrase “hosts” lightly :).
You forgot to use word “business” lightly.
Maybe one of us should do a head count of how many LEA has driven into the ground. :)
Here you go…
You have an evil twin? I see lowendadmin and LowEndAdmin.
:)
thanks. I can’t count that high.
I *AM* the evil twin!
Actually lowendadmin was before wiki got migrated to LowEndTalk (using Dokuwiki’s own authentication), and LowEndAdmin is using LowEndTalk/Vanilla’s user database.
Ipap may not be dead, but they are sure zombied.
My unpaid June Nitros still works.
Nothing else to say, and just keep it running. Eventually, I may just use it on something unimportant.
Time for a ‘Zombie Pool’ together with OneDollarVps!
Btw, are people getting SheevaPlugs shipped to their homes now?
Mine’s a later model, the DreamPlug.
What do you use it for?
It’s always on as low power consumption. One end of a Hurricane Electric tunnel with radv6 running, which gives static ipv6 addresses to my lan with dynamic ipv4. Daap server using a usb drive, Nginx, tinc. Postfix & Dovecot are there although I moved the emails to my desktop, using the sd card was too slow. Also a script for ddns, to update the end point of the Hurricane Electric tunnel & to dynamically update iptables on vps’s with my local ip Running Squeeze.
For use at home you might be interested in the freedombox project, http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ There is a hardware list: http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TargetedHardware
I was referring to Pluggr.info offer which basically involved purchasing SheevaPlug which would be shipped to you if you cancel your service or they go down the gutter.
I wonder if they kept they promise?
Yes, we did, and do, when people cancel their service. It’s actually quite interesting to track them as they go through various countries. We’ve shipped to places from New Zealand to Russia, and each one’s a different experience.
On another note, we haven’t been adding any more plug servers due to lack of room in our current cabinet, and haven’t gotten enough initial capital to expand to a second. (Although we’re looking at a cage in Chicago, which would greatly expand our options)
Oh cool, you’re still around. If you offer plug servers again, it would be great if the servers can support multiple USB hard drives (2 laptop-style drives on a server is enough). That would allow a main and secondary drive, with the possibility of the user having you unplug the secondary drive and ship it to them (for a fee of course). That allows getting 1TB of data through the mail at a much higher “bandwidth” than downloading thru home broadband.
Alex, I never receive mine and my account is now close in your whmcs panel… :-(
Wow, I am even surprised people even went with Curlhost – the whole site was filled with nothing more then dead links.
That being said, two of my friends used it and had a wonderful service.
Since we were mentioned for curlhost:
The owner contacted me last year looking for investment capital/a buy out but we turned it down. When we saw him within a little bit starting to offer < $7/m 512MB XEN's we knew he was in bad shape. Since he was doing it at burst he was barely breaking even after dedi + solus costs came into it.
Francisco
OMG, if you had bought it, probably I would have my good 512 Xen u_u.
We don’t do rented gear, period.
I did the math on the margins and it didn’t really work out nicely. We offer 512MB on KVM for $10/m and people swipe them up like no problem.
Francisco
This is likely how BuyVM is in very good standing today then. Smart move.
I’m really sad about ByteBistro. They had had create servers, support and speed. I don’t know what really happened with their provider, but they were online until closing and do not miss, when their bssiness was bad.
Order a vps with ipap.co last week, and after 3 days spending, I send a ticket and received answer that it’s been up.
Definitely someone’s alive there.
Over a thousand comments, mostly negative, and folks are still ordering from them…..
I was a “happy” ipap client for 3 (yes, three!) months. They do reply to their tickets, no question about it. If you’re happy with “It’s fixed” answers, you’ll be happy with their service too.
Don’t expect it to “be fixed” as it never is, at least wasn’t for me.
Technically, they aren’t dead. You’ll probably get your VPS which you can usually SSH into, and that’s about it. Don’t try to use it for anything else or it won’t work.
Anyway, good luck with that! I hope it works out for you, feel free to share your experience.
They have updated their solusVM to the latest version. Services are stable too…
The vpsVIBE client area was down, our SolusVM/VPS servers were not effected during the outage, we are going to be moving the client area to a new server within the next few days to alleviate the issues.
If any of our clients had any downtime issues during this outage, please open a ticket and we will work with you into solving a resolution.
Another one for the deadpool. I am not sure if any/many used them here, but mycpanel.co.uk have gone. They were offering FREE VPSes…
Michael
They have never been listed here afaik, but you can’t really go lower than that
what about enetsouth?
tinyvps.ca, superbytes.net and fiberfirefly.com passed away.
Curlhost now showing domain parked, end of their business?
Looks like ipap.co merged with another company or they just changed their name. http://ipap.co goes to http://lydianet.com
IPAP have already dead?
the ticket have no any reply for 2 days
No, they are a zombie scammer provider.