Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company
ramgrid.com
ramgrid.com
I started a virtual server service in the past and of course marketed it as such, unfortunately they're a dime a dozen. Your marketing approach might be the edge you need. The $49/month plan ain't bad either, I might grab that just for myself ^-^
One thing to focus on, I think, is to explain what we'd be getting for a CPU, I use Virtual Servers/Machines for everything..even have a few servers at my house for my development needs. Some are old and still usable, while some are razor sharp off the shelf stacked with the latest Xeon's. What I'm getting at is that I don't really care what's in the thing, but I'd like to know what I can run on it efficiently.
For example I buy the $49/12GB package. Do I get more CPU's if I split it up into 6x2GB vs 12x1GB? Or is that a flat rate item of 1vCPU per machine?
If so, I quite like that model: It's not overpriced and splitting everything up into individual VPS is useful, esp. if it comes with an API. A single 12 GB VPS is cheaper, but getting 12 1-GB VPS would probably be more expensive, at least at a provider with an API.
One of the problems in this space is that it's a mature market. Developers are accustomed to Amazon, Digital Ocean, Linode, Azure, and GCE. These are mature products and yes, users are skeptical of new entrants that don't do as much, don't have a complete product, or even have put effort into their website. For HackerNews, it's ironic, but clearly this audience is expecting a mature product not a lean approach. (Self-provisioning while now industry-standard requires a significant effort to prevent fraud & abuse, and slow-provisioning is completely in-line with Lean methodologies)
So, some advice:
* Don't give up just because of the bad feedback. Iterate!
* Focusing on devs is probably wrong if you don't have a plan to leverage individual sales to enterprise sales. Individuals pay less and you need more of them. More customers usually equals more support, they're more fickle, and less likely to be retained. Perhaps surprisingly, they're also traditionally seasonal, with dev-based buy-in being strongest during summer.
* Find a hook. Something you do better, or different. For my hosting company, it was virtual servers for only $6/mo, when at the time the lowest priced alternative was $20/mo. We adopted an architecture that allowed us to radically compete on price. It doesn't have to be price, and honestly, it's better that it's not. Also make sure the hook is understood by the market, one of my company's problems was that our low price had us compared to shared hosting or container-based solutions, because virtual servers at that price was too unbelievable.
* Hack trust. Some people here mention trust. Now, I think this is over-valued. People put data with companies they really don't know much about all the time. At some point, nobody knew who Dropbox, Docker, or Digital Ocean were. If, however, this proves to be a problem - and it could be in the current surveillance state - then look at ways to hack trust. For instance, a service such as AWS Lambda has a different threat (and trust) model than EC2, based solely on how developers use these products. If you stick with VM-based hosting, then develop partnerships, get reference customers, bring on staff that the community already knows, loves, and trusts.
Good luck!
This page is a trove of feedback from potential users of your product.
I personally chose a cloud hosting company called INIZ (that I'm extremely happy with) based on comments and a mention on HN -- just trying to let you know, this is your crowd, and they're angry/confused about your site. Find a way to fix it.
i'm in the infrastructure business.
people are incredibly, incredibly cynical about infrastructure, because there are so many bad hosting companies out there. even the good ones are bad.
also, people expect top tier services for free or close to free. you can thank amazon for that.
your #1 challenge will be to overcome trust issues.
There are so many shitty engineers, shitty lawyers, shitty automotive mechanics, doctors and hosts out there that your market differentiation can literally be phrased in a sentence: "Be just a little bit more competent & reliable than your lazy competition". I'm not the smartest guy, but being dependable to your customers is certainly worth paying the premium.[3]
[0] I've got a lot of equipment with them so I'd expect that kind of treatment if I was operating under my own account but this was off a brand-new account where a speculator bought an energies trading platform from a distressed company. His IT partner didn't have much WebSphere experience so he brought me in, gave me the company card and asked me to get it to work
[1] Even the high priced merchants in Shenzhen are significantly cheaper than what we get at Digi-key and Mouser :(
[2] In that, you'd be very hard pressed to find an engineer who can code "high level Perl" (it was as high level as web-apps went during the LiveJournal days), could write Memcached, could write kernel patches for network drivers, do UI (though things were admittedly far more simple then), all the while taking care of the physical IT ops (see: Coders at Work, for a fantastic account)
[3] And any client you have who doesn't recognize this, you should choose to fire as soon as possible. They don't see the value in the services you deliver and you surely aren't being compensated appropriately.
FAQ when signed in: "Each plan has a maximum capacity for the amount of servers its allowed to create. Due to the significant amount of dedicated resources we provide, we can't literally give you unlimited servers. However, you could upgrade your plan whenever you'd like."
So your marketing page is LITERALLY a lie. Good job.
Even the pricing area and the footer text are 100% just a copy.
There is certainly not functional hosting service behind that, but maybe it a vehicle to test the water and collect emails of potential customers...
This is why I love HN. If it is not authentic, you quickly get found out. OP, why didn't you at least edit the page and make it your own?
Is this supposed to be scam or a joke?
Previous comment: Probably a landing page to test a concept before the concept is developed. It's done frequently, but this person has done it rather sloppily.
"I know what you're thinking. FkPaying is a brand new way to watch movies, download books, and download music. I built out a really nice website that's very intuitive and user friendly. Yeah... if you're reading this, the website might have been taken down by the FBI. It was a good run, folks. I hope I don't get taken to jail for this."
Yeah, seems proud of being taken down by the FBI. I'm not really comfortable with people that take such pride in pushing the limits of the law and it doesn't bode well for the reputation of this current venture.
Though I doubt this kid is going to try to be that brazen, especially since he is using his real name to do this (assuming this isn't a fake identity).
Might request a new number just in case. I really don't trust this asshole anymore.
We can't and shouldn't blame potential fraud on simple "youth" for someone who is obviously of an age that he is teaching other people to do these things.
I am not worried about that $9 because I spent that expecting this to be a bust. I've spent far more on stupider things. It'll certainly be the last $9 I spend on this though.
He mentions it is aimed at dev teams to easily allocate resources. I think the packages are you pay for a certain amount of RAM (i.e. 1GB, 12 GB, 100 GB, etc) and you can divide that on to an unlimited number of servers.
So lets say I have a team of 6 people and I buy the 12 GB I can create 12 1GB servers, or I can create 6 2GB servers, or I can create 4 2GB servers and 3 1GB servers.
If I have a team of 10 and I buy the "customize anyway plan" I could have instances that were 1GB, some that were 4GB and others that were 2GB.
You buy the resources but can divvy it up into other instances that make sense for your team (at least that is what I gather).
Stop right there!
You have created all of the servers your Personal tier
allows you to create. If you would like to upgrade your
plan, please create a support ticket under the Billing
section or send an e-mail anytime you're ready to
business@ramgrid.com.edit I'm assuming they are trying to convey that you quickly can spin instances up and down?
It's pretty well known over at Web Hosting Talk. It's one of the reasons services by a certain notorious company called EIG have a poor reputation.
Doesn't make it any more ethical to do it here though. The hosting business may be filled to the brim with sleazy companies and dodgy deals, but you don't need to do likewise in order to become successful.
MotD: Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-32-generic i686)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/
System information as of Mon Feb 1 14:14:55 EST 2016
System load: 0.0 Processes: 86
Usage of /: 4.5% of 18.32GB Users logged in: 1
Memory usage: 7% IP address for eth0: 158.69.xxx.xxx
Swap usage: 0%
Graph this data and manage this system at:
https://landscape.canonical.com/
108 packages can be updated.
95 updates are security updates.
Your Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE) is supported until April 2017.
Last login: Fri Jan 29 22:49:53 2016
/proc/cpuinfo:
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 86
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU D-1540 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 2
microcode : 0xffffffff
cpu MHz : 1999.936
cache size : 12288 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 1
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss syscall nx lm constant_tsc eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe
popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch xsaveopt fsgsbase bmi1 hle avx2 smep bmi2 erms rtm
bogomips : 3999.87
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 42 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
top - 14:16:49 up 2 days, 15:27, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.02, 0.05
Tasks: 85 total, 1 running, 84 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1025276k total, 327124k used, 698152k free, 57376k buffers
Swap: 1044476k total, 0k used, 1044476k free, 197292k cached
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root 19213004 878460 17335532 5% /
udev 502876 4 502872 1% /dev
tmpfs 102528 256 102272 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 512636 0 512636 0% /run/shm
/dev/sda1 240972 32534 195997 15% /boot
RamGrid OVH-CUST-2158206 (NET-158-69-17-144-1) 158.69.17.144 - 158.69.17.159
OVH Hosting, Inc. HO-2 (NET-158-69-0-0-1) 158.69.0.0 - 158.69.255.255Where is/are your datacenter(s)?
What virtualization technologies are in use?
What type of hardware is in the physical hosts?
What operating systems are supported?
Minor complaint: clicking "Enterprise" or "Education" in the footer opens up a new mail message. That's not what I wanted nor what I expected.
To add to your suspicions, the website layout is exactly the same as one of the new bootstrap v4.0 themes, and is just as vague about it's product. (http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing)
Wow. Yeah, that's bad.
Otherwise, re-using a known layout will not play into my purchasing decisions.
Even the pricing $9, $45 and $119 are the same and the footer text is the same too.
"We’ve been working on Go Analytics for the better part of a decade and are super proud of what we’ve created. If you’d like to learn more, or are interested in a job, contact us anytime at themes@getbootstrap.com."
"We’ve been working on RamGrid for the better part of the last couple of years and are super proud of what we’ve created. If you’d like to learn more, or are interested in a job, contact us anytime at business@ramgrid.com."
Is this some kind of MVP to test the water? Probably not, and just a silly joke...
Show HNers - If I've hit the bottom of the page and I click on a "Features" link, or heck, any link in the footer I do not want to jump back up the page. I already scrolled past it. It doesn't give enough information. Either have a separate page that goes into more detail or don't link in the footer! I'm at the bottom of the page, you're safe to assume I already went past the part you're linking to!
I thought the exact same thing and almost mentioned it. That's very annoying to me.
I can see myself having done something like this when I was 13 or 14, meaning well and just wanting to be involved in a startup. But I think he used a bootstrap template that made the page and product look just good enough that people here are giving it a serious evaluation as a hosting business. It is clearly not ready for serious use, but it is an interesting lesson about how wide open tech is for anyone to come along and create a business.
The problem was the number of mistakes made:
* Offering the support line as a "literal" replacement for emergency services.
* Including a racial slur in a 503 page.
* Falsely advertising the number of servers you can create as "Unlimited", when the limit is actually 2.
* Use of a generic bootstrap theme with minimal modification.
* 404'd refund and legal pages.
* Not established as a LLC.
* No way to manage billing profiles (in violation of Stripe TOS)
* Broken and untested remix of Ubuntu Server.
* No account management portal - You can't change or reset your password at all.
* Advertised as a finished product for use by businesses, when it appears to have barely been tested in-house.
This is how you lose your business, and then get sued into bankruptcy. This kid should be happy he just lost a couple thousand dollars in server hosting and refund fees, rather than millions and the loss of his credit reputation for life.
Learn a lesson from this, would-be entrepreneurs of HN. Don't do what this kid did.
A good lesson indeed, if you pretend to be serious and do a decent job, people are quite likely to take you seriously.
I also don't see how this stands out from the thousands of other companies out there offering "cloud hosting" of some sorts - do you own your own facilities? Lease them? Use other providers? What type of equipment is this and where are you located? etc. Not nearly enough information to determine a unique competitive advantage from what I can see.
What type of security measures do you use? The only "description" I see is "top notch" which doesn't tell me anything. Any compliance info you can share? Security audit results? Something? Anything?
Just my first instinctual opinion here, trying to offer some constructive feedback.
"I know what you're thinking. FkPaying is a brand new way to watch movies, download books, and download music. I built out a really nice website that's very intuitive and user friendly. Yeah... if you're reading this, the website might have been taken down by the FBI. It was a good run, folks. I hope I don't get taken to jail for this."
Couple that with the overwhelming issues others have brought up here and I have doubts this is a serious business at all.
I like the name though
Edit: Also the about talks about there's been spent years on this, while the website looks like something slapped together in a couple of minutes at best.
I for one like it, and would rather have my a company of this nature spend years on their product, rather than their website copy.
I'm just saying, that I don't actually think years was spent on it the product simply because the site is lacking, could be external web developer making it cheaply, I wouldn't know.
For a cloud hosting company, there are few basic essentials:
* Support - live, tickets, email, phone etc.
* DevOps work
* Marketing
* Documentation
* and more...
I'd be little hesitant if everything for so called "cloud hosting" company is done by a single "I".
And glancing at your pricing, I think Amazon is cheaper too.
I'd suggest adding a grid or a bullet list enumerating how you are different.
Also, something to keep in mind -- when launching a new product that replaces the functionality of another, you can't be just as good, or even slightly better, you need to be significantly better to get someone to move. So you should focus on showing why you would be significantly better than your competitors that you're trying to displace.
You are loading two HTTP assets on your landing page, resulting in security warnings for mixed content.
The pricing model is interesting but the wording isn't very clear: what does "monthly RAM kick-start " mean? How does it relate with "Unlimited 1GB or 2GB RAM servers" ?
There's room in niche hosting services, like WordPress or Magento, and you can make a pretty penny off it. But your typical shared, VPS, or dedicated? Yeah, good luck competing.
And people kind of want stability in this type of thing. So if you want Ramgrid to do well, you're gonna have to prove you can keep the company going for at least a few years in order to convince people you're reliable. Remember, many hosting companies are fly by night operations (there's even jokes about some of them being set up by high school kids in the summer holidays), and people are hence more than a tad wary of new ventures in this space. Especially when they don't have a big name like Amazon's behind them.
But hey, good luck with the whole thing.
That is to say, you pay for a bundle of resources (x cpu cores, x gb memory, x gb disk, x ipv4) at a fixed price. Then, you can subdivide that into however many VPS instances as you want (well, within reason).
As for trusting it, well...it looks like there might not be much of actual service behind the front page. It's possible it's just a tweaked version of this bootstrap theme: http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing
That said, the Wable business model seems to be popular, and they don't appear to have much competition using the "resource bundle" model.
An API is probably not going to gain you customers before the above.
Just tried to rent a VPS from OVH. Payment failed three times. Three new $3.49 pending transactions on my bank card - No VPS...
Wait, you mean that if I don't use your service then I'll have hassles but at least I'll save money? That's how it reads. You seem to expect that people will parse it like this.
(never-experience X) while Y
never-experience (X while Y)
2) Virtualiztion technology being used?
3) Hardware + Customer Density [ I'm guessing its commodity 32GB nodes with 1 TB disks based on your configuration offerings ]
4) Bandwidth costs????
I don't think this is acceptable in 2016.
Too bad, I was looking forward to launching a server, and running the IP address through ARIN. I suspect the service is just software running atop Digital Ocean or AWS.
> We are the first to do this.
Have cheap prices? Not really a selling a point.
> We care about not only the privacy
"the" is unnecessary here
> we guarantee that our interface is top of the notch
The expression is just "top notch"
> so that you could easily spin up and deploy new servers
"can" easily spin up
> every month you'll receive discounts and other prop
What is a "prop"?
"Security: We guarantee top notch security from the minute you're on the payment page to the second you start creating servers." Meaning that the security ends the moment you start creating a server?
They sell you a monthly subscription to a resource bundle (some # of cpus, ram, disk space, ipv4s) that you can then run as 1 large VPS, or 3 medium ones, or 4 smalls + 1 medium, etc.
Wable is fairly popular because of this approach, and they are relatively unique in doing it that way.
Enjoy the free $9. Your service is unusable, so I'll never really be using it. It'll be the only $9 you ever get from me.
My first step with any VPS is to run "sudo apt-get update". This generates a ton of checksum errors.
I figured I would get around to that later, so I updated what I could. Then I tried to install Asterisk, but it appears that you stripped all the default repositories out of apt, because that package isn't available.
Oh well, I guess I'll compile it from source. Nevermind, make and gcc aren't installed! I was able to install make using apt-get, but not gcc!
I shouldn't have to go through this many hoops. The OS shouldn't come broken like it is. Just push out server-core like you should have to begin with!
It's like you tried to make this service as intentionally bad as you possibly could.
EDIT:
This is so stupid I can't even begin to understand why you would do this:
"If the emergency is completely life threatening and our instant messaging support isn't appearing right now, do not hesitate to call us at: [redacted]. However, you will only weaken relations if you called and the problem is something that literally wasn't life threatening. Like, you actually seriously need to be dying in order to call us."
Don't EVER suggest that someone should call you in a life-threatening situation. I understand you're exaggerating, but you could be sued for millions if anyone ever called that number and they were in an actual life-or-death situation. The only acceptable number to call in a life-threatening situation is 911 (or 999, or whatever you call in your home country).
If you don't want people to call you, don't give out your phone number. It's very simple.
Your site isn't just bad. You could ruin your life with serious legal issues over all of this stuff.
Please, for the love of God, tell me you established an LLC and aren't the sole-proprietor of this monstrosity...
EDIT2:
I just spoke to the founder over support chat, and he's being very humble and apologetic over the problems. He's disabled all recurring billing so that he can end this experiment gracefully and continue working out the kinks before the actual launch. We overwhelmed him a little.
I'll give him credit where credit is due: Half-baked or not, he's taking this seriously and trying to right wrongs. I look forward to seeing what the next four weeks have in store, and I am going to work with him to be the best beta-tester I can.
It isn't a scam, so don't worry. I wouldn't suggest signing up for this for any reason other than to experiment and help him beta-test. It's not stable enough for use with production servers. Hopefully he'll clarify that to potential customers before they sign up, because unlike me, some people may have intended to do real-world things with this service.
EDIT3:
Oh nevermind. Founder is clueless. He stopped responding to me when I told him that I had completely lost control over my services, and when I tried to open a support ticket, this happened:
https://i.imgur.com/G7yAlAc.png
I cannot stress enough that there is nothing on Earth that you handle this way. I am putting 3/1/16 on my calendar, because I'm almost certain I'm going to need to dispute a credit card charge on that day. I don't think I can take his word when he says he disabled recurring payments...