Looks like it’s going to be a very long post for October 2011. Here are the low end providers declared “dead” last month.
Byte Bistro
Byte BistroCurrent Status: IP address not resolvable
Byte Bistro was only featured on LowEndBox in August, offering 512MB Xen VPS in France for under $7/month. Two months later they are dead and Fionn posted this lengthy response on why they have decided to terminate the services, blaming on data center (OVH turning off their sevrers) and blaming on LowEndBox (for sending them too many clients).
Do take notes though, those future low end provider wannabies. Too much initial growth and many clients might not be a good thing, especially when your support staffs are not equally scalable.
CheapestVPS
CheapestVPSCurrent Status: Redirect to Cingular Hosting
CheapestVPS.org was first listed on LowEndBox in June. The plan wasn’t really interesting — 128MB memory, 100GB/month data OpenVZ VPS for $5.95/month. Kunal promised some new discounts for their anniversary. However it seems they were trying to sell it off (together with BuddingHost) soon afterwards with just $3,600/year revenue.
DediSRV.eu
DediSRV.euCurrent Status: 403 Forbidden
Jake from DediSRV first emailed me their offer in April this year. £2.50/month gets you 128MB Xen in UK, which is not bad at all. However they seem to fall into the “UK teens” category here and their website reported 403 at the beginning of October. I actually failed to find any complains here, on LowEndTalk and on WHT, which shows not many people actually took their offers.
Fiber Firefly/TinyVPS.ca
Fiber Firefly/TinyVPS.caCurrent Status: Domain parking at Sedo
Part of the fallen Kerplunc network of providers, Fiber Firefly, TinyVPS.ca and SuperBytes has been turned off and moved to become parked domains. See related discussion on LowEndTalk.
Fiberhead
FiberheadCurrent Status: Website timeout
Albert Horyza of Fiberhead contacted me on 20 September to have his VPS business listed. It got listed on LowEndBox 2 days later (with 256MB Xen for 5 EUR), but website no longer works 3 weeks later. I have no idea what caused the quick death — they were still advertising on WHT at the beginning of October.
Gidux
GiduxCurrent Status: cPanel default page
Gidux was first featured on LowEndBox in January this year selling some pretty “low end” stuff — 128MB memory and 128GB/month on 16Mbps for $5.95/month. Felt sorry for sleddog for defending their pricing. At the end of the day, expensive and low-spec low end offers do not necessarily mean the provider is doing the responsible thing. They might just rip off people more before doing the runner.
J-Solutions.org
J-Solutions.orgCurrent Status: IP address not resolvable
J-Solutions was first listed in August, managed by a Finnish student Jonne. It did not start well — lots of issues with their website and nulled WHMCS scripts. The post was taken down for a short period of time (discussed on LowEndTalk), but I put it back after removing his Facebook link. Them disappearing after 2 months is again not surprising. Hopefully not many people are affected.
Nix Communications
Nix CommunicationsCurrent Status: Business closed
Martin from Nix Communications was probably one of the better Canadian providers out there — cheap servers and good support. However in mid September he suddenly decided to close down his business. Such a shame, but the take home message is still the same — do take your backups, multiple times a day, to at least 2 different remote locations. Anyway, I am assuming what he said is true, and he put his health on priority over his customers — good decision! And all the best.
UKDirectHost
UKDirectHostCurrent Status: Website under construction
UKDirectHost was first listed in May 2011 listing 256MB OpenVZ VPS for 4 GBP per month. It featured an all Flash site at first — probably didn’t win him any iPhone/iPad friends. His connection with the black hat stuff didn’t help either. Website went down on 5th of October, but it came back up soon after. However it has been showing “Under Construction.” for the last month or so, which is even worse than an all Flash site. My guess is that they are not coming back…
Yottabyte Networks
Yottabyte NetworksCurrent Status: Domain parked at GoDaddy
Michael Long of Yottabyte Networks managed to get his site listed back in July, but with FAIL stamped all over the place. He emailed me in September telling me that they are still around, but appears to have kicked the bucket in mid-October.
Zombie Pool
There also exist a few providers that still have their website running, but are as good as dead. Zombies or Vegies pool?
eNetSouth — A lot of people are still waiting for Brandon to reply their support tickets. Unfortunately the quality of service went downhill since their last deal, to a point of almost non-existence :(
HostD8 — Website down since 5 November.
Nixhost — Website down since 1 November.
Yes, a long list I know…
- 5 Reasons Why You Want a Low End Box - May 26, 2021
- Dead Pool January 2012 - February 2, 2012
- exit(0); - January 19, 2012
Fionn’s post is something a lot of current LEB providers, and future ones, should read and take to heart.
Well said!
Francisco
whos Fion?
I feel that Fionn has not blamed LEB.
No not really. It’s more of mismanagement with flooded clients, and they did get quite a number of sign ups from LowEndBox. I was trying to be cheeky in my post.
How many customers can bring LEB to that kind of providers?
More than 100?
If so don’t you think that LEB itself is creating the LEB market? See what I mean? (Wouldn’t be a bad thing at all though, pretty funny :-)
Ask Francisco how many accounts he sells on a release. Probably a couple hundred.
Hundred?
We did 2000+ new VM’s in August <_<
Francisco
Wow…
Mainly 128MBs or a bit of everything?
Anyway I guess that the fact that you made yourself a reputation helped, all those customers didn’t came only from LEB?
I’m really curious to know what exactly happened with eNetSouth, does anyone know?
(I have read the previous thread)
There was another staffer that came around that claims that they were simply not making money off the LEB offerings – ever. It’s quite possible they were hoping that people would instead move to full pricing but I doubt that. The staff claims Brandon has been having to fork out to keep the brand going for a while now :(
At one point Brandon was looking at dumping all of the LEB customers and only keep the full priced ones since he makes a nice profit off them, but with him being locked out that isn’t likely.
Francisco
Got a link for the lazy?
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/enetsouth-7-2gb-openvz-vps-in-san-jose/
Search for BH – eNetSouth in there as there’s a number of comments in there.
Thanks drmike
He doesn’t have time for the business anymore. He got a new job with lots of travel, owed money, etc.
Wish it didn’t come to this as I think someone could have taken it over and gave it the attention it needed for a turn around.
Chris
Looks like you probably know more about the situation than the rest of us here. Yes you are right — it would be better if someone takes over. Even a bit more communication would be good…
last time i know OVH give a chance to move your data before closing it? but i’m not very sure about this, i have an experience when OVH set our server into FTP only (they want me to fix the issue or move all our data to another data center).
Thats correct its probably complete BS from the provider
Unfortunately, I was telling the truth. OVH wiped the node clean and made it ready for the next client that came along looking for a dedi.
If new providers are looking for cheap, fast and reliable nodes in the EU – go for Hetzner in Germany. Currently have one of their vServers there where I host my new projects and websites, been very reliable and I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever.
For the record, I did not own ByteBistro and my opinions here on LEB are not the opinions of former ByteBistro staff.
Fionn
Ouch. There’s a lot this month, must be because christmas is coming up and they cant afford the bills :P
Wow, that was a surprising claim by Byte Bistro. Too many clients sent by LEB. I remember that i was listed here during June and July, not all that overwhelming respond especially people claiming the name looks weird and stuff haha!. I wonder wat sort of respond they he get that made him and push the blame to LEB … few hundreds customers in a month?
LEA, your advise is wise. Sometimes a spike in growth is not good especially support team are not scalable or the whole business model just cant sustain another support stuff just to support LEB users. Nonetheless, i do feel that some of the LEBs users here have sky rocket expectations demanding supprot when it is suppose to be LEB and un-managed. =P Just an opinion, fire at me if you want, but facts do lie around when a host try to advert all the fantastic stuff about their organization ending up folding in the deadpool in the end. I rather be straight off from the start then giving empty promises or the twist and turns for being in a deadpool. No one else to blame but yourself. Actions and decision do carry consequences and responsibility is yours not others. =P
We’ve had providers do a limited offer in the past. Pity that they didn’t consider it. Either that or they just got excited with all the dollars rolling in and let it go.
ByteBistro didn’t blame LEB, in fact I clearly stated in my post that we were in no means blaming LEB for the sudden spike of clients.
For the record, I did not own ByteBistro and my opinions here on LEB are not the opinions of former ByteBistro staff.
Fionn
“demanding supprot when it is suppose to be LEB and un-managed”
Because there are still idiots who can’t go to wikipedia and read what a VPS is and they expect it to the same experience as their 2$ shared hosting.
hehe its suppose to be support and not supprot =x sorry my typo is getting really bad. Lack of sleep ?
In that case wouldn’t be possible to tel them to FTFO? (i.e ‘sorry, this is unmanaged as written in your main page’?)
I dunno, what do you think? Like going to macdonalds paying for 10bucks meal but expected to be serve right to your table with a waiter that you can keep calling to serve your every request? Ridiculous? I would think so.
So do I but well..
as es :-)
No Hostsign/OneDollarVPS? Their websites are gone, but services (some, at least) are still up…
16:11:56 up 49 days, 20:22, 2 users, load average: 0.07, 0.02, 0.00
yes they are at least zombies, personally for me they are dead!
Thy have indeed ben in the zombie land for quite a while…
For any aspiring VPS companies who cannot comprehend all this info:
Make sure your bills get paid, your prices are appropriately priced in regards to your overhead and taking the “Wal-Mart” approach of trying to move services at an overall loss will prevent you from being in the dead pool.
I offered USD10/year vps and got labeled the next deadpool candidate right away in LET .. haha =P
I offered USD10/year vps and got labeled the next deadpool candidate right away in LET .. haha =P
http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/530/cripperz-prodigy-cheapvps-blowout-usd10year-25-stocks-only-us-kansas-city-offer-only-for-2-days#Item_28
Sheesh, what a long list. I wonder what the percentage is of hosts that are listed and go dead pool, and those that are still alive.
Wow, didn’t see my eNetSouth VPS was down.
Can’t SSH to it or visit the vCenter.
But i can still login to the “ControlPanel” and according it’s still “online” there.
Hope this is a temporary issue, but from what i read here that might not be the case.
Ahh well, it was a good VPS and a lot of fun. Brandon was an really nice guy when he answered support tickets.
what about vpscheap.info ?
What about them… i can still access their page.
dreaming? what’re you talking about?
Francisco, i had close my education website project because of Fionn and his stuff!
They are so noobs as i would like from everyone to search for my comments in here regard a bad review from them, they just accept a money from crackers to reset our server data to them, and after-that they advising us to check if we have a key-logger or virus, but anyway am so happy to see your company down Fionn to didn’t accept more money from crackers.
Where are EnotchNetworks in the dead pool?
Their website appears to be still working? Yeah enotchnetworks had large outages before although I don’t think it’s dead yet.
This is the umpteenth complete outage for them.
They had one just last month where they were down for well over a week without any contact from the owners until Cogent addressed their suspension. They had one a couple years back as well which ended with a total data loss on all of their nodes I think?
Right now there is an outstanding outage for an unknown amount of nodes and, once again, there’s no chatter from the staff about it.
Francisco
LEA,
The past few months have shown larger dead pool’s than the rest of the year. Is it possible that maybe you are posting too many providers that plan on just running, or even possible they just do not have what it takes to keep a successful company running? Maybe the community needs a cut back on the number of new providers being posted each month and let the hardworking, lasting companies flourish. Just a thought and opinion.
Any thoughts?
Chris
Hi,
my thought about this is to make some ladder of providers based on how long they are around. The longer a provider is up the better ranking he would get. Actually it does not solve number of providers in dead pools. I believe it can help customers make a better decision which offer posted on LEB to choose.
TZ
But how could LEA have differentiated between your (Chicago VPS) 2GB/$7 offer and eNet South’s 2GB/$7 offer? I’d say that at the time of offer, most LEBers opinions of Chicago VPS and eNet South were roughly equal. But as we’ve seen, two completely different results.
Everyone starts somewhere. Some smells fishy right from the beginning, but even “hardworking lasting companies” had a start. When we first listed you last October, your domain was merely 3 months old…
LEA,
Yes you are correct, but I would like to think we had a very professional appearance. Also it was stated we were not new to the hosting business just a new market. I’m not saying new companies do not deserve a chance, but just limit the number of new hosts a month. There have been many very fishy hosts posted that did indeed end up making it to the dead pool.
Don’t take this the wrong way, this is more constructive criticism to help you out and get everyone’s opinion. LEB is very important to us, and I just dont want people to start thinking “LEB is full of scams”. Just trying to look out for the PR of LEB :)
Regards,
Chris
No problem. Just that sometimes it’s very hard to tell how experienced a provider is from their pretty shell of theme forest templates, and even experienced companies fall.
LEA has scaled his posting by how many companies are actually getting into the VPS market. This time last year people were just starting to get all crazy about the VPS market and seeing it like it’s the new gold rush.
At this point everyone and their dog is trying to get by and usually end up dipping into the ‘super lowendbox’ market to try to cover costs.
At some point LEA stopped giving two craps about the ‘you must be 1 year old to offer yearly deals’ rule he put in place, likely because he just has better things to spend his time on :)
Francisco
When a company is posted, there are always people who do some research and post their findings. People just need to do their homework before handing over their cash.
Doesn’t help. You still get folks like this who spend their money on a provider who clearly doesn’t have a clue:
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/ipap-co-6-99-2gb-openvz-vps-in-germany/#comment-53558
Of course. Stupid people will always be stupid. The problem isn’t LEA posting too many offers though. :)
FEHosting should be in this dead pool, vps has been down for a week now, no ticket responding, nothing.
Link? Not heard of them..
Ash
They were offering $20/y VM’s and used the usual ‘You should be happy the service works’ excuse when performance was garbage even by the ‘super lowendbox’ standard a lot of hosts follow :P
Francisco
I’ve been using their $20/yr plan (256MB). The performance was pretty bad when I signed up, but they moved me to another node and performance is actually better than my BuyVM 128MB VPS. Maybe I got lucky by convincing them to move me to another node?
Linkie: http://www.lowendbox.com/tag/fehosting-com/
I like the term ‘Zombie Pool’. Go with it.
Aim for the head?
Lucky I didn’t get the chance to order servers with Byte Bistro. I could have wasted some money. Their site is looks great though.
Lot of people say their vps @ prefiber is down… next ones on the dead pool?
enscloud.com and enetsouth.com are both unresolve now,
I think they can move from zombie list to real dead list….
I agree…
my vps in Birmingham is dead…
Erm, okay i dunno, im sleepy but heh, I WANNA RUN AWAY WITH YOUR MONEY, PLEASE GIVE ME MONEY will be a better banner for a site =P. Some might just give you without asking so much. =x.
Well at least your honest. :)
i hope buyvm and quickweb don’t follow enet’s path :D
these three are my only choices when it comes to cheap vps…
Yeah I don’t know what I’d do without them! XD