Welcome to our third-ever Poll on Low End Box! Last month we asked you which virtualization technology you prefer and this month we want to talk about money.
From the very beginning days of Low End Box there have been specific price limits for any service featured by a hosting provider. Initially all VPS service offerings had to be under a $7/month threshold. A few years ago we raised that limit to $10/month to allow for a greater variety of geographic options, and the inclusion of Windows VPS (that typically require a higher price point due to the overhead of Windows licenses).
Now we are putting it to a poll to get feedback from our audience as to what they want to see moving forward. Do you want us to focus on the least expensive VPS offerings out there? If so, vote for $5 or less. If you would like to see a return to the $7 limit, vote as such. If you are comfortable with $10/month then let us hear that, and if you want no limit at all, vote accordingly.
We are looking forward to your feedback! Remember to vote and then leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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IMHO a $5 limit is the honest definition of a “low end box”.
I’m OK with busting this where the promotion includes an offering OF THE SAME VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGY at or below $5.
So for example an offer for KVMs with different specs at $5, $10, $15, is OK.
But it would be against the spirit to throw in OpenVZ, shared hosting, etc in order to beat the limit.
Thanks for your feedback!
A $5 limit would make it very hard for South American, Asian, and European hosts.
Over $5 monthly is also hard for us South American to pay for. Keep that in mind.
Good point. Especially with the US dollar being a bit stronger right now.
Some site clarity would be useful. What is a LowEndBox? Is it a box with minimal specs (e.g. 128MB RAM) or is it a “cheap” Box? If people just want “cheap” boxes, maybe have a different site that pushes prices to the bare minimum, regardless of specs. If it’s minimal specs, maybe focus on that. You can get minimal specs for $10/month, and much better specs for only a few dollars per month here. I’d guess that many people here want the best specs they can get, from reliable companies, for the lowest price. But these will probably not be “Low End” (particularly regarding hardware). 2-4GB RAM is not “LowEnd” hardware, even if it might be low-priced. The different virtualization technologies also have an effect on the hardware utilization, should they be limited as well? Should price limits be set, or should spec minimums/maximums be set? If LowEndBox caters to everyone and anyone, then why bother setting any limits, just have a way to filter out what people don’t want to see. I’m still amazed that LowEndBox would accept Unmanaged Dedicated Servers & Colocation offers for up to $84 per month, and Managed Dedicated Servers for up to $200 per month. (Those prices are from LEB’s “Submit An Offer” page) Those types of offers should probably be featured on some other site that focuses on mid-range dedicated servers. $10/month is not a low/good price for a LowEndBox; it might be a good price for a HighEndBox. But what site is this again?
Thanks for your feedback Om123!
We recently published this Frequently Asked Question piece about VPS/LowEndBoxes: https://lowendbox.com/virtual-private-server-frequently-asked-questions-vps-faq/
There’s also this “About” page which we recently updated that talks about LowEndBox and LowEndBoxes: https://lowendbox.com/about
Thanks Jon, I was aware of those links before I posted my comment. ;-) Maybe the poll results will help to answer the question, good luck!
Sounds good and I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion!
LEB/LET by their nature would always generate the cheapest price in most polls and I would take the result from one poll with a pinch of salt, I believe Jon you wouldn’t base your website on a single result but its worth considering what followup polls you can do to try and see where this pricing meets expectations – IE the vast majority have voted for $5 or less but as you mention there are some services which simply wont fit into this category – If you expect 10GB RAM, 6 dedicated cores etc for $5 or less that won’t happen, but if the expectations are reasonable then you know what to base future limits on.
The current limits seem to be absolutely fine and you can get a fair bit of bang for your buck by modern day standards for $10 or even $7.
You make good points, and of course this poll is only intended to be a measure of community opinion/input. We also have to balance the desire for low prices with our ability to actually bring in quality offers for our users. Set the price limits too low and there won’t be any offers! At least none from providers you would want to trust and actually run something on…
Maybe some sort of price and specification filtering system would work quite well? Perhaps it could even go into a separate part of the website that is made up of the offers submitted to LEB and each providers offers are ‘updated’ in line with their latest LEB submission? Then users could filter by specifications required, budget etc. Could work well.
I agree with some of the above suggestions. If these higher priced ($5+) offerings will still be accepted, then either a price filtering system should be implemented, or a sister site(s) should be created (midendbox, highendbox). If created, they should still be in the spirit of ‘best bang for buck’ which is what the visitors here expect. There is a difference between ‘low end’ and ‘good value’ which needs to be considered.
The idea of a price filter would be great, I will look into any available plugins that might help create that feature.
Less than $5/month. :)
Based on a $5/month limit what sort of plan specifications would you be expecting to see?
Less than $5/month. :)
Just curious, what sort of VPS plans would you be interested in for less than $5/month?
I voted for < $5 but since this is moderated, if a deal is truly awesome, I don't think there should be a limit. For example, $3 KVM per month 1GB Xeon isn't hard to come by these days, if somebody gives 16GB 4Core for $11, (hypothetically) then that deal is worth being posted here
Good point there!
Less than 5
2core/4gb/20gbnvme/ipv6
possible?