Low-end providers have steadily adapted features that were once the exclusive province of big companies. For example:
- Reverse DNS configuration by the user
- Anycast configuration
- Block storage
But one feature that hasn’t made it is hourly instances. If you go to Linode, Amazon AWS, or Azure, you can spin up an instance for 5 minutes, spin it down, and only pay for those 5 minutes. But if you go to LowEnd providers, you can only pay by the month.
Why?
We discussed this in a LowEndTalk thread and several reasons were mentioned:
- Low-end provider margins are so razor thin that they need to lock in subscribers for a month.
- Abuse is higher with ephemeral instances, which means increased support costs.
- Provider panels don’t support hourly billing.
Do you use hourly instances? For everything or only occasionally? Let us know in the poll and comments below!
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
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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