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Dead Pool June 2010

Sorry this Dead Pool monthly feature is a little bit late. I guess it is still better to be late than never. So here is a list of previously featured providers that become no more sometime last month in June 2010.

GretzyHosting GretzkyHosting

Current Status: Domain Parked

GretzkyHosting has first graced LowEndBox back in 2008, offering $6.95/month OpenVZ VPS with merely 96MB of memory. While I have not been tracking this particular host, it stopped resolving on 1st of June. It did come back a few days later, only to go down again on 26 June 2010 — this time it came back up on a Google AdSense for Domain page. I guess we have to declare it dead. I guess Snat is going back to write his blog rather than doing hard laboring job of running a low end virtual server company.

JunaWeb JunaWeb

Current Status: Redirect to HeHost.com

Now something more recent. JunaWeb only scored one post here as well back in March this year, for their $7/month 128MB OpenVZ VPS. The offer was a St. Patrick’s Day special and did not really last — nor has the provider itself I guess. Now when you navigate to JunaWeb it redirects to HeHost. HeHost’s VPS starts at $49.95 — definitely not the low end with the definition around here.

BreezeHost BreezeHost

Current Status: Redirect to InoxHost.co.uk

BreezeHost was also first reviewed in March on their sub-$3 OpenVZ plan with 256MB of guaranteed memory. The plan is “too good to be true”, and indeed it was! With over 30 comments on the blog post and most of them are against the provider. On 25 June the domain stopped to resolve, and on 4 July the domain came back, only with excuses blaming on their payment provider. It started with SoloManaged/LinuxManaged.com, and it ended up in the same pit. Clients are transferred to InoxHost.co.uk, which is a lot more expensive.

Cohoster Cohoster

Current Status: Website offline

Cohoster was only reported on 14 June 2010, and on 17th the website went down. Came back up for a small period of time on 21st, and have been offline ever since. Maybe $6.40 VMWare packages are just unrealistic? I certainly am keeping eyes on other VMWare based providers if it is the case. Either way, a total FAIL.

TheVPSGods.com

I have actually never posted their offers on LowEndBox. When I first saw their offers on WHT back in early May, these were too good to be true. However the way they spammed WHT looks quite suss so I only added them to my tracker, but never bothered to re-post their offers here. The owner is also associated with DareDevilHosting, who was in our dead pool 2 months ago. It turns out only after 1 month the domain stopped resolving on 8 June. Multiple FAIL!

I think that’s it for the month. The “candidate” from last month, HostMist, did manage to resurrect itself + giving an exclusive offer to the LEB readers. Good on them! HighVPS has also been sold, but their website is still functioning and looks like you can still buy the same packages.

I also noticed that two providers have their websites parked over the last couple of days — Zabogo and VPSRepublic. Weird. One was backed by Graxis and the other one backed by EchoServers. We’ll see next month.

LEA
Latest posts by LEA (see all)

20 Comments

  1. earl:

    I almost ordered from Breezehost but by the time I was ready to sign up the site was already down.. now I wish I had sign up sooner cause I think the new provider is giving 3months free if you were a client of Breezehost.

    July 8, 2010 @ 12:14 pm | Reply
  2. hmmm… can you check kerplunchosting.com, they own both tinyvps.ca and tinyshared.com
    none of them resolving now

    July 8, 2010 @ 1:25 pm | Reply
  3. AZGuy:

    What a waste of domain names.

    A very interesting article about the previous owner of HighVPS

    He goes by JSCL on WHT. I’d steer clear of any companies he has since it is the second VPS company he has sold off. Not to mention that he’s only 14 or 15 years old now.

    I hope the sale of HighVPS ended up well for the new owner and especially the new end users.

    July 8, 2010 @ 5:06 pm | Reply
  4. AZGuy:

    @ eM – Not sure if you’re still having problems now, but they all load OK for me.

    July 8, 2010 @ 5:07 pm | Reply
  5. What a waste-vps-republic.

    @LEA Wow, thats a fine job you are doing :)

    July 8, 2010 @ 9:01 pm | Reply
  6. SR:

    Stop wasting your time. These cookie-cutter resellers and ‘providers’ are not even worth mentioning. Stop featuring ‘deals’ every few days, the site got generic and boring.

    Focus on technical articles regarding running on low end boxes. That was what made this site interesting in the first place. I know you are trying to make a buck with advertising etc., but enough is enough. It is better to pay $10-20/month to a reputable provider then shift hosts every damn month.

    July 9, 2010 @ 11:23 am | Reply
  7. Gary:

    I disagree. Not every VPS I use is a production box. Some are temporary. If it dies I don’t have to move hosts.

    I like that LEA tells us about all the new VPS providers, impartially. I like the odd article on tweaking and optimising too, but it all depends how much free time he’s got. 5 minutes to knock up a blog post about a new provider, an hour to do a post about running wordpress as lean as possible. And then the time to deal with the follow-up questions.

    July 9, 2010 @ 12:57 pm | Reply
  8. earl:

    I actually visit this blog looking for the Deals.. I wish LEA would post more.. It’s kinda fun benchmarking the different providers. If I wanted to find an article on optimizing my VPS I would use google.

    July 9, 2010 @ 1:28 pm | Reply
  9. SR:

    Well then enjoy your ‘deals’ :)

    July 9, 2010 @ 1:57 pm | Reply
  10. @SR — well. Each to his own. This blog is just one of personal interests of mine. I like cheap stuff, and for some applications I don’t even need high quality providers. Relaying an offer is also quick for me to do. As much as I like to get my hands dirty and talk technical, I don’t really have time for it. When you add a full time job, other websites that I run (that get almost 100x the page views here), family, church, etc. Sorry LEB can only get a tiny portion of my life.

    Feel free to move on if you don’t like the posts here :)

    July 9, 2010 @ 2:12 pm | Reply
  11. earl:

    Your other sites must be interesting.. care to share?

    July 9, 2010 @ 3:00 pm | Reply
  12. Nah. It’s a regional site and no one in US would be interested. Served 6+ million page views last month (according to Google Analytics, could be a lot more) from a pair of web/DB VPS from a much more reputable provider :)

    I probably would not use any provider listed here for that site, but I do use some for backend processing.

    July 9, 2010 @ 3:04 pm | Reply
  13. richard:

    What’s the best alternative for breezehost then?? Actually, I really like their VPS pricing. :P

    July 9, 2010 @ 3:20 pm | Reply
  14. earl:

    Oh I see.. 6 mil PV is impressive, it must keep you really busy. My buddy just gave me an HP DL360 G3 it’s a single Xeon 3.2, 4 GB ram with 2x 36GB 10k U320 SCSI drives.. how well do you think that site will run on it?

    July 9, 2010 @ 3:23 pm | Reply
  15. earl:

    @Richard

    Isn’t the new provider who bought out Breezehost giving away 3 months free?

    July 9, 2010 @ 3:32 pm | Reply
  16. Cohoster offering VMWare packages that cheap made me raise an eyebrow. The profit from low end VMWare boxes would be so minuscule that I don’t think providers could survive.

    @eM: I’m a client of kerplunchosting (have been for nearly over a year now) and I can tell you everything’s fine and dandy.

    July 9, 2010 @ 7:57 pm | Reply
  17. eM:

    @Chuck Findlay: I am too, both for the vps (actually found is here) and tinyshared, but the service was unavailable for the most of the day, emails bumped back, etc.

    July 10, 2010 @ 12:24 am | Reply
  18. Hostlatch.net just got bought out by some new company, and they are moving all previous clients to the new company servers. I hope this doesn’t turn to ****.

    July 10, 2010 @ 10:27 am | Reply
  19. mm…. finally, BreezeHost is in the dead pool list !

    @earl , yes it is .

    July 12, 2010 @ 2:35 am | Reply
  20. Gretzkyhosting is indeed dead but I would like to add that I did not actually run Gretkzyhosting but I helped out whenever possible and did work on sales and support. I did run a web host on Gretkzyhosting systems, but never did own it (although I am aware the domain is in my name for some reason).

    Other then that, most clients did leave on a happy note and all my shared hosting clients was given a month or so to move and I still even have their backups just encase they never made a backup for their own shared hosting accounts

    I am more then sure some people may find out about Gretkzyhosting via this site using Google so I might as well post some time lines on when things when down.

    The first record I have of the server going offline was at exactly – 01/06/2010 09:14:02. The server never did come back online due to an error I am not even sure of myself, but all my shared hosting accounts was migrated away to another system but sadly Gretzkyhosting VPS clients was not so lucky.

    I did have access to the domain login details and I did bring up a temp page explained what was going on but after dealing with all the clients that I personally could (my shared hosting clients and whatever GH VPS clients I could do something about) I took down that page and parked the domain at which is still parked today and will likely be staying until the domain expires.

    It is safe to say, GH will not be coming back online and most clients should already have their backups and be hosted elsewhere (I sent them towards VPS.NET or IntoVPS.com). It is a sad way to end being in the shared hosting business for over 5 years but these things to happen.

    Although there is not a lot I can do in relation to GH, if anyone needs to contact me about something relating to GH , you can contact me by this e-mail (http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01YN5B4_O5OM7A7hkQu7wlxA==&c=K6PR9Es5n_YKPe-nqEe7mqE6ciFYgKpBFUMKuopyEts=).

    July 14, 2010 @ 4:47 pm | Reply

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