Today, LowEndTalk turns 15!

$ whois lowendtalk.com | grep "^Creation Date"
Creation Date: 2010-07-12T04:37:25Z

2010 is a lifetime ago in the IT industry.  The iPad was only a few months old when LowEndTalk was born, the iPhone 4 (not 4S) had just come out the month before, and Froyo was the current Android version.

LowEndTalk (LET) has come a long way.  Originally founded by the enigmatic LEAdmin about 2 years after LowEndBox, the intent was to provide some more interactivity for readers of the blog.  Here are some early topics:

• Challenges running WordPress on a 64MB VPS
• 30gb HD, 256mb RAM, 300gb BW for $6/mo
• $7.95 for 512MB, 40GB, 600GB bandwidth
• 256MB | 500GB Bandwidth | 10GB Disk | 6.95$ (coupons available)

Wow, $6 a month got you 256MB of RAM.  Today, we often see 2GB of RAM for $5.  You’re getting 8x the capability over the intervening 15 years.

There have been some changes over the years, though the core features have remained the same – Vanilla forum software, green theme, free speech ethos.  Indeed, LET is probably one of the best free speech forums on the planet.  While off-topic conversations are filtered (especially politics), it’s a free-for-all when it comes to the hosting industry.  Had a bad experience?  Share it.  Don’t like something about LowEndTalk itself?  Post it.

Sketchy hosts don’t survive long on LET, while good ones enjoy community praise.  LET is one of the best ways to filter out bad providers because there is extensive history to search and you can ask before you buy.

LowEndTalk’s History

After LEAdmin, the forum (and this blog) was sold to a guy named @Chief, who then sold it to ColoCrossing.  CC was bought by Deluxe and afterwards, LowEndTalk entered a period of decline.  For a couple years, the forum stagnated and it was challenging for the mods to be effective, given software rot.  Even the help desk stopped working until one was improvised.  About five years ago, Jon Biloh bought LowEndBox/LowEndTalk and began to invest in bringing it back to greatness.

Since then, the blog has been revived and LowEndTalk has put in a robust provider-filtering system to create some standards for who can share offers.  The site’s revenue model is sustainable, membership continues to grow, every year hits new highs for viewership, and the future is bright!

Happy Birthday, LowEndTalk! (And There Are Special Deals!)

I joined in October 2011.  I’d bought a VPS from DamnVPS and it didn’t work out.  After trying a few other host and getting consistently burned, I decided to do some research and came across LowEndTalk.  Not long after that, I bought my first Black Friday VPS 👍

What are your LowEndTalk memories?  Please share them in the comments below or in the LowEndTalk birthday thread!

And hey!  There are some special deals from providers in that thread to celebrate the anniversary!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.