One thing that always jumps out at me when I’m looking at a host are testimonials with pictures.

Testimonials are always a little suspect, but if it’s a name and a company and you can see they’re hosted on the service, then if you were really skeptical or wanted more diligence, you could reach out to that company and verify statements.

The ones that are immediately if not laughably suspect are testimonials from templates.  You know the kind I mean:

That’s from a template.  By the time it appears on a provider’s site, “John” will be raving about the provider’s fantastic service, etc.

Think about that.  People might be willing to write an anonymized testimonial for a provider, but how many are willing to put their full name and photo with it?  That’s asking a lot of motivation from people doing you a favor.

But OK, maybe the provider really is so amazing that a half-dozen people are willing to put their face on a testimonial and write nothing but effusive praise. Unfortunately, that often falls apart when you examine the pictures.

Which brings us to The VPS Company.  They contacted us asking to post their offers, and there are some nice deals:

• 2GB VPS with 2TB bandwidth in the UK, Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, France, Cyprus for only £3.99/month!

Links and datacenter below.

That’s a decent price, especially in some of those geographies which are less common.  They take PayPal.  They’re a very new company (domain was created June 2022), but for those who like to live on the edge or want service in one of the less common geographies, they might be worth a try.

However, I want to go back to those testimonials.  And their TOS.

To be clear, I’m going calling out what is probably lack of attention to detail, a race to get the company going, or a combination of both.  Some people will interpret these things more harshly but I think those are the most likely explanations.

The URL to their TOS is misspelled, which is sloppy but it happens.  However, I’m not even sure the destination is their URL since it refers to JustGoHosting

Unless otherwise stated, the following definitions apply to this document:
– “we,” “us” and “our” are references to JustGoHosting;
– “you,” “your” and “client” are references to the person paying for services from JustGoHosting having entered into this agreement;

I think JustGoHosting was an earlier venture, because they’re using the same package names and offering service in the same places, so I don’t think is a copy/paste from a random Google.  I suspect didn’t double check his work when copy/pasting TOS from his other brand.  However, it’s always possible that this is an out-and-out scam where someone ripped the language of the web site, stuffed it into a new template, and is presenting it as whole new company.

But let’s move on to testimonials, which are downright fun.  First, we find a few…well…inaccuracies at the least:

Six months?  Years?  How?  The domain was created in June 2022.

But let’s focus on “Katie Allen”.  She is also known as:

• Grisel Paulino, gushing about an Miami obstetrician who delivered her two children
• Pauline Garçon, where she is both an “Amateur de bacon professionel” and a “Fanatique du Web”(I linked to the French version because she sounds way cooler there)
• Muriel Reeves, who is a “Food nerd” (still a bacon professional?) and a “lifelong travel trailblazer”
• Elaine Castro, a “devoted beer practitioner” and a “baconholic”.  Apparently she gets high on her own supply.
• Rylee Hayleye, where she is a “Zombie maven”.  So not only is she a bacon pro but she is Queen of the Undead as well.
• Indeed, her alter ego Gillian Hall is both an “award-winning zombie guru” and a “bacon expert”.  I’m starting to think that if I was single, this woman would be serious girlfriend material.
• Denise, where “the mush luv is overflowing,” where she has “love love love” for max yield mushroom growing bins.  You know, after you’ve been Grisel, Pauline, and Muriel, “Denise” seems rather pedestrian but then again we are talking about mushroom farmers.
• Aygen, a “certified zombieholic”.  I am curious to examine this credential.
• Sue M, who’s been a client of her hair salon for 15 years.  Alas, no mention of bacon or zombies, but apparently after a hard day slaughtering pigs and raising the undead, she cleans up nicely.
• GraceBrown, a Volvo enthusiast.  A brand that emphasizes safety is probably a smart choice for someone working with zombies.
• Karen T, who left a 5-star review for a pest management company on Yelp that I’m sure is completely legitimate.
• Ashely, who is into cats, cats, and more cats.  What happened to the bacon, beer, and zombies?!?
• Nicole Thompson who is very passionate about her choice of hair dryer.
• Laura M, who got great pool service in Winter Garden, Florida.  (We’re seeing another side of her here).
• Beatrice Moss who is an “unapologetic entrepreneur” (I suppose that’s one way to describe being a necromancer) and an “alcohol fanatic”.  She is also a “certified writer” so she definitely has some interesting credentials.
• Ellie Clark, a college recruiter in South Florida

There’s 15 different versions of her – how many more would you like?

The point is that this woman is clearly not “Katie Allen” of England.  I know that because I happen to have read the entire Internet and remember seeing her picture in multiple places.  There are at least 3,180 uses of this image on the web.

What happened is either

• The template author hired and photographed a model, or licensed the stock media for use in his template, or
• Back when her face popped up on randomuser.me, the template author was lazy and grabbed it, assuming (of course!) that future users of the template would do the right thing and replace it.

Now, template makers, if you just need royalty-free pictures of people to use, we live in the 21st century and plenty of websites will give you procedurally generated of people who don’t exist that are indistinguishable from real photos.  Some examples:

• Generated.photos
• This Person Does Not Exist

So Should I Buy From This Provider?

That’s up to you.  It’s unfortunate The VPS Company was a bit lazy in putting their site together, and it’s not earth-shattering news that people selling cheap templates don’t always follow the strictest IP procedures.  Some will immediately say “this is not a legit company” or worse.  I’d be more concerned about attention to detail (considering we are discussing complex IT systems that have to be configured, monitored, and managed).  On the other hand, it is a good deal, so…as always, we lay it out for you to play it out.

The Offers

Recruit
2 GB RAM
1x vCPU
25GB SSD
2 TB transfer
100Mbps uplink
1x IPv4
Coupon: VPS10
£3.99GBP/month (before discounts)
£3.59GBP/month (after discounts)
Order link: https://thevpscompany.com/client/cart.php?a=add&pid=1

Scout
4 GB RAM
2x vCPU
50GB SSD
5 TB transfer
100Mbps uplink
1x IPv4
Coupon: VPS10
£7.99GBP/month (before discounts)
£7.19GBP/month (after discounts)
Order link: https://thevpscompany.com/client/cart.php?a=add&pid=2

Soldier
6 GB RAM
3x vCPU
75 GB SSD
9 TB transfer
100Mbps uplink
1x IPv4
Coupon: VPS10
£13.99GBP/month (before discounts)
£12.59GBP/month (after discounts)
Order link: https://thevpscompany.com/client/cart.php?a=add&pid=3

Network Info

Server Location: United Kingdom
Test IPv4: 178.157.82.100
Test file: http://178.157.82.100/100mb.bin
Server Location: Netherlands
Test IPv4: 178.157.90.100
Test file: http://178.157.90.100/100mb.bin
Server Location: Greece
Test IPv4: 185.234.52.100
Test file: http://185.234.52.100/100mb.bin
Server Location: Ireland
Test IPv4: 91.250.249.100
Test file: http://91.250.249.100/100mb.bin
Server Location: Germany
Test IPv4: 194.32.77.110
Test file: http://194.32.77.110/100mb.bin
Server Location: Sweden
Test IPv4: 45.153.187.100
Test file: http://45.153.187.100/100mb.bin
Server Location: France
Test IPv4: 194.32.76.108
Test file: http://194.32.76.108/100mb.bin
Server Location: Cyprus
Test IPv4: 193.201.15.100
Test file: http://193.201.15.100/100mb.bin

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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