LEB & LET are an awsome place, sometimes fun, sometimes stressful, sometimes 3D. Over the past week we have been working towards a “plan” for LEB/LET that would bring this place forward. The LowEndBox market is incredible, unique, and has a couple of main driving factors. Generally those trying to grab the cheapest possible VPS, and those trying to squeeze the most out of the smallest possible VPS. The most interesting posts generally come from the second of the two groups, and discussions become interesting and informative.
However over time LowEndAdmin grew tired of the kids “plotting their next pump ‘n dump” on LEB/LET, and this was a deciding factor for him moving on. In this time “A Trio” of us was left with LEB/LET, and we have been discussing ways privately that we can make this a better place. LowEndBox is not LowEndStartup, and while we always want new providers and new competition, we also want to be promoting providers whom have a proven record, or are of a higher percentage of being around in six months to a year.
To assist in this we have added some basic new rules to accepting LEB offers:
* Using a nulled WHMCS grants you a lifetime ban on LowEndBox and LowEndTalk.
* Hosts posting offers are not to use Private WHOIS data on their domain
I invite you also to join the discussion on LET as well and suggest what other safeguards you would like to see. LEB is a place for quality, not quantity, it would be better that we promote 10 hosts who are still in existence in 12 months, than 25 hosts who have all disappeared in 3 months.
We will start taking offers and new plans from Friday 3rd February for posting on LEB, and will work towards a dedicated “DeadPool” page as some are already looking to return post-Christmas.
We are clearing the backlog in Moderation and Flagged comments, posts, spam etc. So if you see anything that you believe is in breach flag it, and after Friday you should see a quicker, more timely response to flagged items.
- ServerMania – $4/Month 512MB OpenVZ VPS in Buffalo (NY) USA & Toronto Canada - March 2, 2013
- ChicagoVPS – $21/Quarter 3GB OpenVZ in Atlanta, Buffalo, Chicago and Los Angeles - February 15, 2013
- ChicagoVPS – $7/Month 2GB OpenVZ SSD VPS in Chicago - December 26, 2012
Woot! New post is new!
Glad to see things are moving forward here on LEB :D
How about taking what you’re doing seriously? Making jokes at user’s experience isn’t that great of a way to start things off. How about we ban those providers who have been harassing me? You can start with every provider in this thread who stated that I took over the site. I begged people to stop but they and you continued on with the harassment. Are those folks going to be banned? Or is this change over one big joke?
I have to ask though why stop at just a nulled WHMCS? We’ve seen other providers run illegal operations such as spamming and harassment. Why aren’t they being banned? You can put YardVPS at the top of that list.
You talk about quality. How about actually holding up to that statement?
No one said he wasn’t, there’s a suggestions thread to bring up points :)
If you have examples of multiple hosts being that way, link them and i’m sure he’ll take it into consideration.
I’ve already put forward a nice list for sure.
Francisco
you’re a dick, does it really surprise you?
I don’t even know you and you come across as somebody who I would naturally feel drawn to push into a pile of garbage
Dr. Mike really is an asshole that needs a permanent ban on here.
Ah, give it break! That’s old news. Some things has been said but it’s not like anyone would be harmed in this process. It’s just internet chit-chat. No need to pursue this further.
Can’t wait! Good luck, LEA’s Trio! :)
There are some good LEB regular hosts using private whois… locking them out doesn’t seem that great?
“LEB is a place for quality, not quantity, it would be better that we promote 10 hosts who are still in existence in 12 months, than 25 hosts who have all disappeared in 3 months.”
So it started. I will be most likely one of rare which will miss old way of all kind of informative offer posts rather than limited “promotion” of established names. Even term “PROMOTION” (wtf?!!) sounds strange considering fact that LEB wasnt build to promote hosts but to introduce offers to us and many nowaday popular lowendbox hosting stars didn’t even exist 12 months when they was featured (and not promoted) here but then again.. it’s impossible to make everyone happy so lets make BUDDY SYSTEM friendly site rather than just ordinary lowendbox open to discuss and discover great and yet unknown hosts – as it was always.
I was about to post something similar. I really liked how LEA posted offers from companies I had never seen before. Some of them worked out for me and some didn’t, but I like how he posted them and allowed me to judge
the risk and decide for myself if I would spend my money or not.
I’m really not too impressed with this plan and I think ‘buddy system’ is probably the best term for what
it sounds like. We’ll see the same offers from the admins and their buddies who will try to maximize their profits by “saving us” from the “bad hosts”.
Nobody dies in a “pump and dump” and sometimes it works out great, so whats the point in ‘saving us’ from them other than filling you and ‘established’ buddies pockets?
You are jumping to some huge conclusions, and that being that there will be no opportunity for “New Hosts” to promote themselves. Either way, there’s a discussion topic on it which you are welcome to join in to, contribute, and have your ideas considered. There is absolutely nothing to say that what the rules are now, are the same next week. I am all for hearing solutions to improve the quality of the listings.
For reference, I now know who the new owner is. I have to admit that I’m rather shocked as the person is not an active member of the community and I can count on one hand the number of discussions he has taken part in that i can find via some searching.
I don’t think Spirit is jumping to any conclusions. We’ve already seen that what the new owner says is far from what he actually does. He seems more interested in causing trouble and problems than in actually providing quality as he says he wants to.
Very bad way to get started now that he finally has. He needs to make some serious changes immediate as well as make some serious apologizes for his actions so far. He’s already offended and insulted me as well as others.
And he’s still screwing around:
http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/26334#Comment_26334
Looks to me like you don’t really know who it is, then <_<
Considering all your posts have different sigs, it’s kind of hard to tell.
Maybe if you would take the change over seriously…
All of my posts have the same BuyVM sig that they’ve had from the get-go.
Maybe if you would lighten up a bit…
I’m being harassed. You’re one of the people doing it and this isn’t the first time you’ve done so. I asked you to stop. You choose not to.
This is interfering with my business and causing me problems.
I asked the new owner to step up and put an end to this. He choice not to.
Yes, I’ve trolled you a few times. I’ve been trolled quite a few times as well, but you don’t see me getting my panties in a wad over it. If you didn’t get so bent out of shape over every little thing, and maybe learned to loosen up a bit, you wouldn’t find yourself made a target of so often.
You made multiple bigoted remarks towards me. Get your story straight.
I’m still waiting to see these bigoted remarks you claim I made. And not just telling me I made them… I don’t delete my posts or unsubscribe from PMs.. show me some links. Otherwise, you sir are simply a liar, and we’re done here.
I did. Again get your story straight.
Show me the money, son. Links to the posts, right here, or you are simply a liar out to tarnish my name.
We’ve already had this discussion previously. I gave you the links. You continued on with the distasteful comments via a PM.
I asked you to stop with the harassment on LET. You continued on.
I’m not giving you more openings. If you were honest with resolving the issue, you would have been willing to deal with it when it first came up. You choose not to.
Again get your story straight.
Then you’re simply a liar. Would you like to see this PM as a reminder?
(http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2395/selection005xh.png)
There’s the first time you called me a bigot, and you have -never- responded to my inquiries, even when I politely stated that I would be happy to apologise for your misunderstanding. You have yet to ever show me these supposed posts where I was a bigot.
Of course, you could’ve easily put this all to rest simply by, oh I don’t know, actually linking these supposed remarks instead of trying to tell stories about the imaginary things the mean mean man said to you.
So, you are simply a liar. Thank you for clarifying that for everyone, and we have no more need to offtopic this posting. If you have anything else you would like to add, I strongly suggest you do so in a new LET thread, or I will be happy to do so for you. Good day.
No, that’s not the first one. Again please get your story straight.
If you’re not going to be honest with folks here, why bother having this discussion?
You’re a bigot for not seeing his physical handicap over the Internet.
James, just to clarify the issue had come up previously. I reminded him of the situation. He continued on with the distasteful comments.
No, I do not expect someone to “see the physical handicap over the Internet” as you state.
If you’re going to continue your lies and libel, “dr” mike, I strongly suggest you work this out with me personally. I’ve given you multiple chances to resolve this privately, all you continue to do is insist that you “remind me” of “getting the story straight”. You’ve pretty much shown everyone just how full of it you are by this point, do you really think anyone is going to believe your drivel? Especially since you won’t actually prove it?
Grow up. Or at the least, go find someone else to spread lies about, I’m sick of your cries for attention.
This site really won’t be same if it will be oriented toward promotion of stablished lowend hosts instead featuring various lowend hosts – the way as everything started. It’s not about jumping to some huge conclusions but about reading intitial post which clearly state some future guidelines which are orinted toward promotion of established hosts offers instead introduction of various hosts.
For me personally it was always exciting to open page to see introduction of plenty new hosts which I never saw before and not to see new xx$/y offer from same hosts again and again.
Every nowaday established host was a newb once – don’t forget that.
Spirit, the idea of “established” isn’t to say you need a 5 year trading history. We simply want to try and improve the quality of those listed, without aiding the deadpool. Put your ideas forward how an improvement of balance can be reached, we are all for that.
LEA’s Sentiments: “At the same time this community is also filled with teenage hosts plotting their next pump ‘n’ dump, and scam artists planning how to defraud a provider.”
In the short term much of the listings will be in the same mannar as they were before, however based on some input already we are working towards a better system.
But it was always about INTRODUCTING hosts and their offers to us. Often new hosts. Not about to help to make earnings with new and new and new special offers of same providers. This what you suggest elimitate introduction. Elimitane listing providers. It’s just as you said: promotion of offers. And that’s not LEB which keep me here. And I believe many others.
I just want to say that SD was posted on LEB after only being online for 1 week (although we were in development for 6+ months with our domain and LLC registered long before going live) and without LEB we wouldn’t be as successful as we are today. We will need to find a balance as the new Chief said.
I believe the primary reason for putting the restrictions is to prevent scammers which was the primary cause for the original LEA’s departure so maybe that is what fueled the stricter rules.
Maybe if the new LEA were able to post likely scammers, watch them scam hundreds of people who rely on LEB’s posts over doing their own research, and still sleep well at night that would be one story, but maybe he’s taking LEA’s tale as a cautionary one instead.
Maybe as a balance, he could increase the time between posts for providers to 2-3 months instead of 30 days to avoid the “BUDDY SYSTEM”?
Future lowendbox admins. All what you can give us from established hosts are new offers. Do you really think that you can build community and motivation for membership on discounts from hosts where we’re hosted already?
Spirit I think you’re getting caught up with 1 word, and that’s simply I used the term “promotion.” I could have used other words as well. The end result is all the same, submitting an article on the front page is promoting a point of interest. The context inside the posting is what’s important. Even a deadpool post is a promotion of a point of interest.
Anyway, I do appreciate your reply, as I understand your concern now in how it read.
In the case of the “Trio.” We are simply looking to improve the quality of what’s here, and from a providers point of view as has been stated to us having fly-by-nights appear and disappear a month later really does harm the industry for the legitimate hosts, as well as the upcoming legitimate startups. If there is a way we can improve our listings, whether it be through better criteria or screening then let us know.
Once we have things generally established and running, we will look to grow the Trio, and make the site operations more community involved and reflective of the community.
You can only introduce us hosts and their offers. All rest is our decision. Our responsability. Most of my established long term vps providers was completely new, unknown when they firstly appeared here.
Imho. it shouldn’t be your call to protect us from our bad decisions. I am not saying about posting really everthing. But when you favorize QUALITY you also by default favorize something what we know already. So it’s not about listing and introducting lowendbox hosts but about listing promotional codes.
@Spirit, you could take a wait and see attitude instead of jumping to conclusions before these new folks get any chance to do anything. I know people hate change, you seem to hate it even more, but they are the new boss, not the same as the old boss, if you wanted the same, you should have ponied up the $10k or whatever LEA was hoping for to see every idea you had come to fruition. I’ll continue with my wait and see, it’s either going to be good or bad, but I haven’t given them a chance to prove which yet, so it is only fair to wait it out.
Huh? What you’re talking about. You seems irritated by my expressed opinions while they’re just this – opinions – and nothing more. And why would I wait.. why anyone would wait as we’re merely discuss. It’s not like I killed or harmed anyone with that. Beside that it’s nothing bad with shedding a light on various aspects where things CAN go wrong but because our writings maybe won’t go. You continue and wait freely as long you want before your next post but this doesn’t need to be way of everyone here. Relax. It’s not one harmed with commening posts.
Spirit, you never just express opinions, you wear the other side down til they walk away, as I am doing now.
This isn’t that bad thing considering that you came to this community firstly to exploit it (as business interest -> I don’t mind, just saying) and I didn’t.
I know I was walking away, but I can’t resist, have you *EVER* not gotten the last word in? I swear you must keep Reynolds foil in business with the oddness of directional changes you take in a conversation.
Who is this “Trio”?
Joel
Okay, now how to contact LEA for personal reason?
That one coming soon. Just let me finish my last post over here at LowEndBox.com.
sent you an email. :D
“* Hosts posting offers are not to use Private WHOIS data on their domain”
I can understand your point… But why don’t “you” start by yourself?
I’d like to see that too. However I know one of them (DrMike knows it too).
In addition, I’m not a hosting provider and never will be, but if I did become one, the whole lifetime ban is easy to work around. I mean come on, were all good at the computers and networks right? People should know that this is easy to workaround.
I’m not liking how this is going either. It does look like a cause of more trouble, and no drama host sites. It’s a good thing to have bad reviews. I can make any provider out there, make it like BuyVM and be completely sold out, then run away and shut everything down, running with money. Changes to what’s happening is minimal at best for providers. WHOIS… easily can be wrong. Come on now.
* Hosts posting offers are not to use Private WHOIS data on their domain
I have my reason for using Private WHOIS. Isn’t lowendbox.com also using Private WHOIS?
LEB is not providing a service that people are paying for. Thieves love anonymity, why let them hide behind WHOIS. There is absolutely 0 reason for a real company to hide their WHOIS information.
Some people do have complex circumstances and genuine reasons and I am sure in those cases as long as they are willing to provide other evidence of ID/address/telephone number that you agree to have spammed all over LEB if you were to rip people off to the new site owners it could probably be mitigated which sounds reasonable.
At the same time, I think in 999/1000 cases public WHOIS should be required and those hosts that dont want to reveal dont have to post offers.
I can understand why some people would have a reason for not advertising WHOIS, but a real company should have no reason. If they are worried about spam/hate mail then purchase a mailbox elsewhere, if phone calls are a concern then purchase a new phone number for your business, if privacy is a concern register a real business for a few hundred dollars.
If you want to be treated like a real company, it would be in their best interest to act like a real company. If you are taking people’s money, the least you can do is attempt to provide valid contact information to your clients.
WHOIS protection is great for individuals, but a huge red flag for companies. While I understand that a lot of companies out there like to live in secret and feel that the lack of information gives them power, it’s good that LEB is taking a stance against them and forcing some accountability on those providers.
“WHOIS protection is great for individuals, but a huge red flag for companies. ”
Some well-regarded LEB hosts are run by individuals. Unless I’m mistaken yours is one of them? Actually I think almost all the LEB hosts (Burstnet is the only exception I can think of) are very small (no more than 4 or so people). Bigger companies (such as. Linode) have their attractions but they tend to stay out of the ultra-budget LEB sector.
SD is not run by an individual, Secure Dragon LLC. is a registered company. Even if the company is run by 1 person it can still be a company and not an individual. The WHOIS protection is good for non-companies. All LEB providers should at least make an attempt at being a real company although a few of them are not.
Well, SD is a pretty good operation, but it hasn’t been around nearly as long as (for example) kiloserve, which has private whois and has been a steady presence here. I hope SD stays around for at least as long as Kiloserve already has (5+ years) but until that actually happens, we can’t really say that operating from a company is an indicator of expected longevity.
“WHOIS should be required and those hosts that dont want to reveal dont have to post offers.”
In past LEB admin often posted new discoveries/offers found by himself (or mailed from readers) instead just those which sent him offer ;-) But that was LEB which many don’t know anymore and see it just place for promoting own business.
Congrats, and good luck LEB!
Rather than ban providers that don’t meet certain requirements, I recommend that LEB score all provider’s “businessworthiness” based on factors such as following:
1. Has a one-year record of business;
2. WHOIS information is public;
3. Offers money-back guarantee;
4. Posts network status/downtime notices on web site;
5. Uses properly licensed WHMCS, etc.
Established and trustworthy providers will score a 5. A new provider can still earn a 4 by “doing the right thing.” Users need to be cautious with providers earning a 2 or less.
So you suggest only those providers which set up sites by LEB rules and then send out offer to be featured here? Read my previous posts: In past LEB admin often posted new discoveries/offers found by himself (or mailed from readers) instead just those which sent him offer.
So if new lowednbox admin finally some lets say budget host from Norway or Finland (something what many from us looking for but can’t find yet) he wont feature it here until:
– this host set up site by lowendbox.com standards
– this host don’t sent him offer to be featured
*finally find
No, I’m recommending that LEB post offers from any provider, but indicate if the provider does/does not meet LEB’s standards (such as the five I’ve suggested). For example, LEB would report that FjordVPS.com is now offering plans in Oslo, Norway, but add that FjordVPS scores only a 2 out of 5 because there is no one-year business record, no public WHOIS, and no money-back guarantee.
The problem with a rating system is that so much of LEB is scraped to other sites where users simply can’t read it (chinese VPS blogs are all too common) so it’s meaningless.
There are companies on here that have had tens of points marked against them that they were going to deadpool and very soon. A month later when the host is gone with everyones data, people post on WHT asking where they went and where can they get backups.
Francisco
I think the new team should scrape WHT for posts, but I think they should still get the same level of filtering that direct submissions get.
Francisco
We already had a discussion about that some time ago, and it’s generally not a bad idea.
I agree with everything the new LEA is trying to do. Ive said it from the start, there were too many new hosts being posted at once. I would limit the number of new hosts allowed to be posted per month and let the more reputable companies provide services.
Regards,
Chris
You completely missed (or twisted?) point of this blog.
I think everyone should still be enforced on the ‘one post every 30 days’ rules that has existed for the past year.
Francisco
Why not increase it? This way instead of the “copy and paste” promotions a lot of us are guilty of, the providers will offer a once-a-quarter killer deal. At least, that’s my logic. If I knew I was only able to post one ad every 2-3 months I would make sure it was a good one. LEA could do this and keep the current 30 day rule in effect for LET so companies could still post their copy and paste promos in the Offers section while saving the insane deals for LEB (thus giving the new LEA time to focus on other articles and such).
Excellent idea! Good to see the site live on!
Hi,
Great to see LEB is going to be back stronger than ever and most importantly it’s not going to be shut down! It is indeed a great resource and I would hate to see it go away.
How do I flag comments for moderation?
Best,
Kevin
nice to see LE(B/T) is going back to normal. although there are still some detail-execution problems, i believe the group of LowEndAdmin in the future can fix it via the discussion.
best wishes to LE(B/T).
LEB was never about quality. If I want quality I go ahead and buy a linode. The main reason I(and I think lot of us) was visiting LEB is that we always found here cheap VPS startups, which we did not heared before. This blog was not about promoting some established businesses. Who cares about whois? This can be fake either, or they can have their informations on their website aswell. So when there is a rather new company with a decent offer, you won’t list it just because it is not 1 year old? I think with this decision the community is serving the interests of the established VPS companies and no more the interests of the users.
When I first started coming to LEB it was because the age of shell accounts was coming to an end and the rise of vps was starting. LEB was a place I could come to find new hosts offering vps accounts to users, much like shell accounts used to be offered. It used to be shell accounts cost you 2-7$ a month and came with a set amount of background processes and disk space for yout account. Once machines became powerful enough to sustain more than one operating system, instead of selling people their own user account it became possible to sell a whole virtual server at virtually the same price, this for the first time coming with its own dedicated ip.
All this being said, when I came to LEB for the first time it was a place that allowed me to find new hosts, hosts in different countries, hosts who were using different types of virtualization and this all in one easy to browse format. It also was a place where current customers could come to leave feedback about their experiences with the providers. This probably being the most important, not only to warn people from bad support or poor service, but to be able to compare experiences. This would allow you to find out if it was really only you having an issue with the provider, or if there were also others experiencing the same thing, and to communicate with the provider in a public forum. At the beginning of my use of LEB it never felt like a place oriented at shoving “great deals” down your throat, but a place where you could find out about new places and technologies. This also allowed you to find providers who were innovating in their field and be the first to try out the “new” thing.
Now a days, I can understand where LowEndAdmin was coming from. Instead of it being a place to find out about new providers and new technologies it became the place for new scam artists to try and take advantage of the forum to advertise their scams, bombarding LEA with promotions and advertising, and begging to be listed. This instead of the occasional discovery of the new host trying to get off the ground putting out a too good to be true deal, or the new location that no one has a server in, or the new place with an awesome amount of storage for cheap. I say if you want to advertise, buy an banner advertisement on the side like all the rest. Otherwise, post your deals elsewhere and hope to be discovered by the LEB contributors. If need be, put up an offer on LowEndTalk and if it really is a too good to be true offer, maybe it will make it onto LEB.
Go back to your roots if you want to keep this going, otherwise like it or not it will become a propaganda machine just like WHT and many others.
But as always, thats just my 2 cents.
Otherwise, post your deals elsewhere and hope to be discovered by the LEB contributors. If need be, put up an offer on LowEndTalk and if it really is a too good to be true offer, maybe it will make it onto LEB.
Excellent point. When the Offers section was added to LET, I thought this was the reason for it.
Looking up records is easier that way at least :) There’s a lot of skilled investigators on here that have dug up lots of things on many of the countless scams that have come rolling through here.
Francisco
_NOBODY_ hides from Pony.
I just need to know, what are the usernames of the new admins and does the original LEA still use the LowEndAdmin nickname?
Thanks and good luck!
NickM? Epic lol.
“Using a nulled WHMCS grants you a lifetime ban on LowEndBox and LowEndTalk” – its like reading the ToS of a new host setup by a 12 year old. It seems you aren’t taking this seriously at all. You’re screwing with a community which has been responsible for taking many VPS hosts from a nothing to something big. I’m pretty sure Fran owes a lot to LEB for how much it contributed to growing Buyvm from nothingness.
I’m afraid to say, this really is the demise of LEB and it’s a shame. The big deal of LEA was always anonymity. You aren’t bothered abut that looking on LET.
Not sure how it reads that way?
There’s been way too many hosts on here that have used nulled WHMCS licenses. Would you be OK with your details easily to be lifted?
Francisco
If you take a look, each one of the comments of this guy are complains and trolling, just ignore him.
I just want to make this clear…. I’m not involved in the operation of LEB/LET in any way (at least not that I’m aware of).
The way I see it, LEB/LET.com is the face of Low End Boxes. As of right now, LEB providers are constantly dealing with being compared to scams, fraud, theft, and other negative things. We are looked down upon because more LEB providers fail than succeed and 90% of the time, the failure results in the end user receiving nothing. If LEB/LET.com are going to continue to be the face of budget LEB providers, then it needs to take some responsibility and at least make an attempt to save the reputation of the LEB market.
I don’t understand how some of you are saying “let LEB.com visitors be scammed, we deserve it”. Normally when somebody takes a stand against fraud and theft, they aren’t met with such hostility. I completely understand that you want an uncensored and unbiased blog, but would you rather have the new LEA filter through companies with more strict rules, or would you rather watch dozens or even hundreds of people throw their money away?
The nulled WHMCS rule does make sense, although I wouldn’t limit it to just WHMCS. The rule should be: “Any illegal activity will result in the company being blacklisted on LEB/LET.” If the “company” is not willing to run a legit service then how can you expect them to run a successful one? Regardless if it’s something as trivial as stolen content, illegal content, ripped themes, false WHOIS, or something as severe as mail fraud, breach of privacy, spamming, etc…
I understand the majority of LEB providers out there do not run a legit company. I’ve come to terms with this and just accept this like I do other hosting markets. That doesn’t mean it should be this way and I’m glad LEB is trying to do something about it and hopefully some of these “companies” out there will wake up and make proper steps to running a legit operation before it bites them in the arse and at the expense of their clients.
I hope the new LEA does not fold under the pressure of the few (whom are not providing any suggestions or alternative to the proposed rules) instead of protecting the needs of the many. It’s a good thing I wasn’t a viable option for the new LEA or you’d all be pretty pissed about the drop in dead pool providers featured on here.
[/rant]
I’m kinda confused I guess over why people almost ‘want’ to be scammed. The way I see it (and went into it thinking while writing my random ideas), was that when users keep getting scammed they get a foul taste in their mouth towards the market as a whole and ends up just leaving.
If anything, the #1 site to go to for deals is putting in extra effort to try to help clean it. If the community was cleaner do you think LEA would be rushing out the door? Maybe still, but not sprinting like he’s trying to break the 100m world record.
I dunno, maybe Chief has to take that into consideration and maybe just categorize things a bit more and seclude fresh companies to a sub category with a big link/warning on the front page? Keep front page for ones that:
– Didn’t break any of the initial posting rules
– Have a good setup going on but are still far too new to be front page quality
– Aren’t pulling a 9.0 on the deadpool scale
I was originally hoping for a requirement that posters must have x[y] months in a proven track record, but maybe that’s too mean?
Francisco
How about this:
– Add a risk scale and assign a grade on the risk scale to each offer
– The risk scale could go from 0 to 100, and have a set of rules based on which a company is evaluated. For example: less than 6 months old => +10 “risk” points, private WHOIS => +15 “risk” points, etc…
– Add the number of risk points at the top of each offer, next to the title. Might even use a color scale to determine the color of the title for a certain offer.
Far better idea. Let people buy at their own peril. Old LeA always put a short sentence at the end of posts (especially more recently) with a message along those lines.
My attitude towards the “No nulled WHMCS rule” Fran is that whilst I don’t want to be using hosts who have nulled WHMCS – why not shame the ones who do and want to be posted? Put a sentence “They are using nulled WHMCS” – but the two rules posted almost seem like they’re saying “We haven’t really thought through how we’re going to run LEB, we just wanted it, we rarely use it in the past. So let’s make up a few rules to make a point.”
When they’re seriously what I’d expect from a 12 year run VPS host type of ToS like I already said. It already lacks the professionalism that LEA constantly thrived upon.
Aah.
LEA already did the warning.
Remember, though, all of LEB is scraped to other sites so tons of people get scammed just because they can’t read english or know what ‘nulled’ means. Maybe shortening the text in the RSS would be another decent idea?
Francisco
@Fran — let’s not talk about scrapped sites. Even right here on LowEndBox, people still buy when I have already hinted that the host is dodgy. People simply don’t read. Well, they do, but they stopped after the dollar sign and how much memory it has…
@Jason — well, well. Buy at their own peril? Says the guy who had pumped ‘n’ dumped with quite a few ended up in the dead pool.
Then the new LEA could post dodgy offers with broken URLs, and instructions on how to access the correct URL hidden somewhere in the text. People who don’t read carefully wouldn’t be able to access the site and order.
It’s a double edged sword in the end. The scrape sites help spread companies sales, but it also helps fatten the deadpool bait that is going to end up in there.
It’s a vicious circle. Many companies, even deadpool bait, promote LEB as the place to look on WHT since it’s a way to get around WHT’s self promo rules. If the new staff start making it tougher and start capping the size of the RSS feed, then it might end up limiting the potential growth of the site.
Granted, I’d love to see the budget VPS market clean up some. There’s simply too much filth in there and your deadpool posts prove that. I called nordic from the get go yet they still milked the community pretty good.
Francisco
Francisco
Good to see the professionalism LEA in your response.
Sad to see you go LEA. Hopefully the new admin is simlar to you. :)
I don’t know why it’s necessary to cater to sites that scrape the site. If they lose information then so be it. They’re stealing the data anyway!
It’s not about protecting scrapper sites, it’s about protecting users who don’t know better. In an ideal world we all due our own research, read the TOS twice, and have somebody else check out research… but this is not an ideal world and the new LEA has the power to make a difference. If he’s going to post companies that are destined for the dead pool then he’s no better than the people taking our money. “If you’re not a part of the solution then you’re a part of the problem.”
^
I’m personally for limiting the text blob the RSS pushes the title and maybe 100 letters/30 words after that.
Francisco
Limiting the RSS feed won’t stop most of the LEB scrapers. They can always turn to scraping the actual post, instead of using the RSS feed.
I would actually like to see the 1 year in business rule enforced and not only that also a correct process which means if providers wish to advertise here they MUST under go some kind of verification proceedure before hand.
I think that the 1 year rule only applies to being listed in the top of the page green area?
But i agree that some sort of verification “is this a real company” would be good.
The 1 year rule is for people trying to push yearlies I think.
It’s just too common for these hosts that started last week to want to start pushing yearlies. There’s a guy on WHT right now selling a 2GB VPS w/ cPanel for $120/y.
Francisco
A user or a provider offering this for $120/yr?
A “provider”.
The recurring monthly is $15/m which barely covers the cPanel license.
Francisco
My cost as a cPanel Partner NOC is $120/yr for an OpenVZ VZZO internal license, ready the deadpool, fresh meat is coming from that guy.
Tom, you’re clearly a very low commit partner though. If they’re with the right provider, I’ve seen VZZO licenses at $5/mo internally.
Okay , i was going to say if it was a user maybe he had used it for a few months.
Singlehop isn’t selling licenses that cheap, I think the lowest they are is like in the $8 – $10 price.
cPanel has been increasing the prices on all partner noc’s
Congrats on the new admin!
Really nice to know :D
Good luck buddy… bring on the offers…. need a
10/yr openvz… 1tb bandwidth
I’m not going to start a big discussion, but after two weeks worth of discussion between your “trio” (I’m still not sure who actually runs LEB/LET now) – All you came up with was banning nulled WHMCS & banning private WHOIS? The rest you left to “Community discussion”.
I just thought LEA would have picked someone who had ideas flying out of their brain, not someone who spent two weeks and only came up with ‘useless’ restrictions (which where already actually in place, LEA has never accepted a host with nulled WHMCS from what I can see) – the rest you leave to the community? I think community interaction is great, but this seems like your ‘trio’ failed miserably at thinking of any original ideas on how to make this community thrive even further.
I always saw LEB as a way for the consumers to shoot down the hosts as much as possible, if the host still existed in 6months, 12months, 24months.. it has succeeded to a certain degree. – Removing the posting of new hosts will only make this community die out, because people simply don’t want to see the same 10 ‘established’ hosts posted every single month, they want to see new competition, they want to see new fail-start-ups, and they want to see dead pools. No one likes to be scammed, but it has been said before that LEB/LET only helps kill a company which isn’t worthy of being around, most the time the mass influx of orders does not actually help the provider at all, unless they are prepared.
It seems like a corporate take over more than a community takeover, that is all.
The community is hard to suddenly change since some things have been a certain way for a long time.
No one said the trio didn’t already have more ideas, I’m just thinking the ones they picked are etched in stone. I mean, hell, people are already arguing about those as well :P
Francisco
In their defense, it was mentioned to me that they had about 1200 emails (or PMs or whatever) as a backlog.
Granted though it now appears they just tossed everything out so I guess the 2 weeks were pretty much wasted.
You and your crystal ball continue to impress. Keep up the excellent work.
Interesting comments, I will not get involved with all this banter but let’s hope the admin is as good as the previous one.
“A Trio” of us was left
*were
Trio is a singular noun, demanding singular form of the verb. A Trio was left.
People expect to be scammed or quality to suffer in the long term, but they don’t expect egregious scammers like UptimeVPS and this is where LEB in the past has fallen down.
I think the first step is to have a form where providers can filling their details about the company their, their offerings etc, and there should be some way of measuring the technical competence, their preparation etc. They can be reviewed properly and LEB can give them are ranking when their offerings a posted. The bottom line is if a prospective provider wants to be listed, they should be willing to let LEA add a ranking, and they can be judged measured every month, 3monhts etc, also based on verifiable user reviews. It is not foolproof, but better than what is currently in place.
How to get proper informations, experiences from others, reviews… from unknown hosts if no one write about them? Just because something isn’t posted at LEB this doesn’t mean that people won’t be scammed from certain host but posting it here, sharing experiences, discoveries, warnings.. only help me to decide better. To not to do same mistake as other did.
I like the idea of a deadpool meter from 0-100 right smack under the title of every post on the front page.
Personally, I’m just going to wait out, LEB is great, was great and still has potential to be great, however too much change will almost certainly kill the entire community, simply because LEA built what we have here now, and has done so exceptionally well, killing that off with vast change isn’t what’s needed.
For me it’s not that I don’t like change, but more that I like LEB as it is, however long-term if the changes don’t bring growth for LEB then it’s down to LEA’s choice of individuals. As others have said though I think the 30 day rule is fine, but at the same time I think all the current criteria is fine and it worked well, all we needed was a more regular stream of offers, which hopefully we’ll get now. But I do know that if even a hint of bias is sensed within content of posts then I’m gone. The thing is bad hosts NEED to be included for people to see the feedback that’s coming in, if they aren’t listed then they may go under the radar for a long time, ripping off plenty of people, where-as here users can see all, try all and review all accordingly, or at least they could.
Good to see some new activity on the site.
Hopefully everything can be worked out and the community can continue to be useful for everyone involved.
Meet the new bosses, just like the old boss
So if this is going to be offers from established hosts and properly mixed with “new” providers, what is to stop me from getting the same service from WebHostingTalk with a lot less drama / complaining / drmike calling everyone a bigot
LEB needs some real search ability in my mind. The feature offer posts are interesting, especially the trouble that usually ensues, but it’s just not enough.
It’s the same reason I can’t stand Webhostingtalk’s offer areas. Go try to find an offer that meets some criteria (i.e. a host in a geographic region with 1GB of RAM and 50GB drive space). All that disorganized, unstructured data shoved in a forum. LEB is all that disorganized, unstructured data shoved in a blog. I spend way too much time on both of these sites :)
So still a big hole in both.
Rather than making the circus hoops impossibly high for anyone to jump through (catching on the WHOIS private data to start), why not just allow all the offers through. But, come up with new flags or visuals that clue people into the gotchas, the small asterisks *** stating what is and might not be up to standards.
LEB would do well to have more offers from more companies, not less and certainly not the same companies over and over again. Hell, make the repeaters just buy ads on the site and that will aid in financially keeping the site interesting to the ownership.
Having profiles on this site and ability to see previous posts easily would go a long way too. Do I have eons to determine if a given person is just grinding an axe on a competitor or do I stick around and determine a given poster is just having a bad week? The idea isn’t to elevate folks into leadership, but to allow one to see who contributes and what they have and then perhaps determine they are credible person worth personally investing trust in.
That’s my five cents.
IMHO, I think the new listing criteria is great. A rule requiring that a new host has to have at least 6 months, and a public whois, and other straight forward, non-dodgy, common sense earmarks makes good sense.
If you really, really want to go with a startup and line some skool kids pockets with juju bean money, you can always browse the hosting offers section at WHT.
With LEB being a favor-as-a-service site (free), some folks need to back way the Ef up and mind their mouths.
I, for one, have been using LEB to find hosts since, almost, it’s inception. And, about 3/4 of the hosts I use now I’ve found here. Having some listing criteria that is more stringent is long overdue. I’m aware start-ups need their fair chance. Some are, and can prove, they are legit, but I think that those who can’t, and ESPECIALLY if you are “CEO” and under a certain age, waiting 6 months to prove you can make it in business, at least past the start of the new school year, is a wonderful thing.
Really, who wants to take a chance on a company whose domain was registered less than 180 days ago? You can, if you want, but there is another place to find them…It’s called WHT offers section.
The way I see it, this site is here as a favor. And it’s still trying to do the best favor by saving us all headaches and possibly some lost $$. Having minimal criteria makes as much sense as using a SPAM filter. Sure, there is a delete button. But who want’s to wade through all the junk in the first place?
The push for quality is reasonable from my perspective. It’s important to allow new providers to break into the market, but I think my experience proves there are too many scams. I have purchased 5 VPS on LEB in the past year, and 2 of the providers have suddenly gone out of business. I lost all of my money on one of them, and was able to get a refund from my credit card company on the other one. That being said, “established” still does not equate to quality service. I have a VPS with 123Systems and have had a very poor experience with them. Given the number of people with similar complaints, why are they still listed?
In general it seems that the old axiom holds true, you get what you pay for. The best performing and most consistent VPS I have are from more expensive providers.