Back in September, we posted an offer from Rabbit Computing. Titled “Rabbit Computing: Neurodivergent, Queer, and Proud to Offer These Deals!” it introduced this new provider.
And now they’re gone.
We did a little Q&A with proprietor Chance Calihan when we posted the story. Like a lot of small hosting companies, Rabbit existed for a while before it launched. We’ve seen this many times: a guy or group of colleagues gets fed up with what they perceive as inadequate service in the market (too expensive, not the right features, whatever) and so they decide to startup their own shop. At first it’s for friends and family, and they they figure, well, we’re already running a hosting company, so why not launch publicly.
Their service offerings were pretty standard. They did offer hosted Fediverse instances (Diaspora, etc.) which is less common, but otherwise their offers were rather meh. Shared hosting with unlimited domains and bandwidth for $5/month was not going to set the world on fire. The companies who sell at that price (Dreamhost, EIG, etc.) have massive marketing budgets.
Rabbit also lead with “gay and autistic” as a marketing identity which was…odd. Your identity as a company is supposed to be what differentiates you in the marketplace. This is not really a differentiator.
As a consumer, I’d assume there are other hosts run by people who are gay and/or autistic. And I perceive no benefit as a consumer if the owners of my hosting company are gay, just as I wouldn’t if they were Irish, left-handed, red-headed, or short.
There could be some affinity marketing in a narrow market. For example, if they marketed heavily to a gay audience or something. But even then, I suspect while there may be a very small percentage of that market that would buy from them just to support a member of their community, the vast majority would not care, preferring to select their provider based on the usual criteria of price, service, etc.
“I’m hoping a year or two from now my teammate and I can make Rabbit Computing our day jobs.”
I tried to reach out to Rabbit, but their web site is down and their email is bouncing.
So why are they gone? My guess is that they discovered that attracting enough customers to really make it as a going enterprise is really hard. And that providing service to the public quickly becomes exhausting.
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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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